DVD puts Keith Reinhard back on the football sidelines

The question is not asked as often as before, but it's still out there.

I hear it occasionally at high school events or in conversations with people who have a history in this area.

"What do you think happened to Keith Reinhard?"

I always give the same answer.

"I have no idea. I wish I knew."

It has been 19 years and four months since Reinhard, a Daily Herald sports writer for 22 years with a passion for covering our high schools, disappeared in Colorado.

To this day, nothing has been found to indicate Keith is still alive. However, there also have been no clues to indicate he's dead.

He's just missing, apparently lost in the mountains of Colorado that he loved so much. Vanished since Aug. 7, 1988. A cold case that did appear as a segment on the "Unsolved Mysteries" television series.

Most of our high school athletes today weren't even born when Keith disappeared. They don't know the story of the man who walked off the face of the earth.

Keith had taken a leave of absence from the Herald to regenerate during the summer of '88 in the tiny former Colorado mining town of Silver Plume, 70 miles west of Denver. He was no stranger to the town, and a close friend from Deerfield owned an antique store.

Many theories have been offered about the disappearance of Reinhard, who was approaching the milestone age of 50 at the time.

• He died in a mountain fall and fell into an area impossible to find despite the massive search. Maybe an abandoned mine. Around 5 p.m. on Aug. 7 and wearing casual clothes and gym shoes, he had announced he was heading into the mountains for a brief hike. He apparently had a lot to drink the previous night at a party and told friends he was going to "walk off" a hangover.

• Some incident triggered total amnesia and he's still out there.

• He walked off to a new life because he wanted to disappear.

• He took off for a few days and was ready to come back when a Civil Air Patrol pilot was killed in a crash during the ground and air search. That changed everything.

Keith wrote me a long letter two days before he disappeared, and that letter has been analyzed over and over by the authorities and the media.

Yes, there were some interesting references in the letter that might raise some suspicions about what really happened on Aug. 7, 1988, but Keith still talked about coming back to the Herald in the fall. He also talked about plans he had with his wife for the following weekend in Colorado.

After a week and more than 10,000 man hours, the search was abandoned. Back home, a prayer vigil was held. A former FBI agent eventually was retained to investigate, but he found nothing.

The reason I started thinking about Keith again was a DVD sent to me by Jim Millay, 1969 graduate of Wheeling who played basketball and baseball for the Wildcats.

Millay, a friend of Reinhard, had been invited to share the football sidelines with him in 1987 with his camera, and this DVD shows the last football game Keith covered for the Daily Herald.

Talk about a jarring trip down memory lane.

There in living color on the DVD are Hersey and Naperville North squaring off at Naperville in the semifinals of the 1987 Class 6A state football tournament.

And there is Millay's camera occasionally catching Reinhard walking the sidelines, making a few comments to Millay, congratulating Hersey coach Bruce Glover after the big win and telling him he couldn't make the trip to the state title game.

Reinhard and Millay had put together a special 25th anniversary banquet of Mid-Suburban League sports, and it happened to fall on the day of the IHSA title game.

Good idea. Bad timing.

In the DVD you see Hersey climbing on top 10-0 after three quarters at Naperville, falling behind 14-10 and then storming back to win 17-14 and gain a spot in that state championship game, which they won with an overwhelming 26-6 victory over favored East St. Louis.

In that semifinal, junior quarterback Duke Tobin engineered a 65-yard drive with less than two minutes remaining, hitting Craig Ellinger on third-and-goal with 15 seconds left on a surprising 1-yard touchdown pass called by Glover.

Millay's film-to-DVD project is exceptional considering we weren't as sophisticated in the photography world in 1987. Jim is still involved in photography today and also is a cabinetmaker living in Westbrook, Maine.

The color on his DVD is sharp; the sounds of the crowd and players and coaches are there. I could feel the tension as the clock ticked down.

I found Millay's DVD fascinating but also unsettling. Fascinating for the excitement of reliving this dramatic playoff game and unsettling because of Keith's disappearance nine months later.

Keith Reinhard and I worked together for 22 years and shared the same passion for high school sports. Today, he would have been 69.

OK, if I knew him so well I must have some strong thoughts about his mysterious disappearance.

What do I really think happened on that August day in 1988?

I have no idea.