Kemp recalled, praised as advocate for poorest citizens
Daylong tribute celebrates his passion for Bills and football, ideas, people
WASHINGTON—The now-graying guardsmen of the Reagan revolution and Jack Kemp’s family gathered Wednesday for a daylong tribute to the onetime quarterback and local congressman who, they agreed, was a champion both for the Buffalo Bills and for the nation’s poorest citizens.
Nearly six months after Kemp succumbed to cancer at age 73, “A Celebration of His Life and Work” drew hundreds of luminaries to the storied Willard Hotel.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott were there, and former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton offered video tributes.
But most of the day was devoted to those who knew Kemp best. They shared stories about Kemp’s extraordinary life, which took him from a middle-class childhood in Los Angeles to two American Football League championships with the Bills to the Republican nomination for vice president in 1996.
And if there was a thread that linked all their stories, it is the thread of passion — Kemp’s passion for football, for ideas and, above all, for people.
Kemp’s son Jeff said his father often leavened his passion with a bit of humor. The younger Kemp told of the time that Ed Rutkowski replaced an injured Jack Kemp at quarterback for the Bills in 1968.
Kemp had been booed at other times in the season, but after Rutkowski’s first pass ended in an interception, the crowd cheered. To which Kemp said:
“Eddie, if only I was Polish! If only I was Catholic! If only I went to Notre Dame!”
Rutkowski — a former Erie County executive—had a much more serious parting thought about his friend and former teammate.
“He was a man of ideas,” Rutkowski said in an interview. “He said ideas have consequences. And that’s what he fought for all his life.”
Even when Kemp served as best man at Jessie Teague’s wedding in the late 1970s, he couldn’t stay away from his favored topic of supply-side economics — the theory, expounded by economist Arthur Laffer and others, that cutting taxes can boost government revenue.
“At our rehearsal dinner, he was drawing the Laffer curve on the cocktail napkins,” Teague recalled.
What’s more, Kemp’s passionate advocacy of supply-side economics and the tax cuts that are central to it had a real impact, said Alan Reynolds, who helped Kemp on his 1978 book “American Renaissance.”
“I don’t think the supply-side revolution would have happened without Jack Kemp,” Reynolds said. “Jack Kemp persuaded Reagan, Reagan persuaded [then-British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher.”
Yet several people said Kemp won’t be remembered most for his impact on presidents, but for his impact on the nation’s poor.
It was under his watch as federal housing secretary that the hulking towers of the nation’s public housing started to be replaced by more livable communities, that the nation’s poor won greater opportunities to buy their own homes.
That’s why when Kemp went into poor communities, he was cheered, said Robert Woodson, founder of National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.
“He was a champion of the unheralded, the unappreciated, the ignored,” Woodson said. “He will always live in the hearts of low-income people.”
In Kemp’s absence, the Jack Kemp Foundation — which sponsored Wednesday’s event —will work to extend his legacy by promoting what he said, using its Web site to show him talking about topics that are still important today. The foundation will also promote a series of issues forums and initiatives consistent with his career, said his son Jimmy, who will run the foundation.
“It will be about expanding and growing the economic pie, not just for those at the top of the ladder,” Jimmy Kemp said.
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