Rose O’Keefe stumbled into local history when she and her husband bought an 1865 cottage in the South Wedge in 1976. They now live near it, in a 1913 American Four-Square. Rose first got hooked on South Wedge history as a volunteer writer for The Wedge, association newspaper for South Wedge Planning Committee, (bi-monthly circ. 7,000.)

For 13 years, Rose was writer and editor of The Wedge. She is a member of Whistle Stop Writers, fiction-writing group, Rochester Association of Children's Writers & Illustrators, Friends of Ganondagan and the Rochester Historical Society.

In March 2005, she began her first Arcadia book on the urban village called the South Wedge and also started organizing a Regional History Fair. Fortunately her first boxes of Rochester’s South Wedge arrived an hour before the start of the Fair!

Organizing Rochester's South Wedge was such a satisfying challenge, Rose was inspired to pull together another vintage photo collection for Southeast Rochester’s neighborhoods.

Five years ago, Rose started an informal South Wedge history club that meets on an occasional basis at the Episcopal Church Home. The only requirement for membership is showing up at the same time as the speaker.

Rose has started research on WPA-era projects in the greater Rochester community. She is putting the word out for photos of people who worked on any of the many projects from local playgrounds, schools and bridges from 1933 to 1941.