Thousands honor Jack Kemp at Washington memorial service
His children tell of passion, optimism
WASHINGTON — Looking over the crowd that gathered beneath the stained glass of the Washington National Cathedral to pay tribute to Jack Kemp, the cathedral’s dean, Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, said: “This started out to be a small family service.”
But the nation’s capitol wouldn’t stand for it. So the service was moved to a cathedral where thousands assembled Friday to pay respects to the former Buffalo Bills quarterback who became a star congressman from the city’s suburbs and one of conservative Republicanism’s happiest champions.
Kemp’s memorial service, held six days after he died of cancer at the age of 73, was a vast coming together of Kemp admirers ranging from tourists to the Washington power set of the 1980s and 1990s.
Everyone from former Sen. Bob Dole to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan attended. But the focus of the service was not on the politicians, but on the people who mattered most in Kemp’s life: his children.
“My father was a man of great passion,” said Kemp’s son James in one of four family remembrances that together formed the centerpiece of the service. “In fact, his passion was passion itself.”
Football was his first passion, James Kemp said, although his Buffalo Bills teammates surely must have known that more was going on inside their quarterback’s mind and heart when they saw the books on history and politics that he read on the team plane.
Of course, something more was up: Kemp got himself elected to Congress in 1970 and quickly became a standard-bearer of a new kind of Republicanism built around tax cuts and opportunity for all.
“He was a bridge-builder to a better future,” said another son, Jeff.
Yet Kemp’s children focused not on their father the politician, but on the raspy-voiced father who oozed optimism as much in private as he did in public.
“Our father was larger than life, all-encompassing, energetic,” said his daughter Jennifer Andrews, who addressed the crowd along with the Kemp sons and daughter Judith Nolan.
As if to prove that point, Jeff Kemp noted that his father taught him to never end sentences in prepositions — but then the younger Kemp added: “I think it might be because he never ended sentences.”
And James Kemp recalled his father going on at length about a series of political passions ranging from tax cuts to support for Israel — “and, yes, the gold standard.”
Despite his fondness for football, Jack Kemp never took to other sports quite so readily. For proof, James noted that he took his father golfing only once, and it ended badly, with Jack Kemp breaking one of his son’s new clubs on his first and only swing.
Afterwards, “he silently walked off to the car and drove away,” James Kemp said. “I was 13.”
Similarly, Charles Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries, delivered a tribute to Kemp that was at turns witty and warm.
He noted one time when Kemp appeared to be picking constant political arguments with Colson, a longtime friend and political ally, over dinner and in front of Kemp’s children.
When Colson later asked Kemp why, Kemp said: “Oh, this is for the kids. Think of what they learned!”
Colson noted that Kemp was one of the leading Republican thinkers of his time. And while Kemp ran for president in 1988 and vice president on Dole’s ticket in 1996, Colson said there were reasons why Kemp never became president himself.
“I think he wouldn’t do two things that are essential for high public office,” Colson said. “I never heard him say anything unkind about anybody. I don’t think he could have run an attack ad — and how do you get to higher office without attack ads?”
In addition, “I don’t think he could have compromised his convictions,” Colson said.
Outside the cathedral after the service, Gingrich listed those convictions succinctly.
“He meant optimism,” Gingrich said. “He meant inclusion of everyone and he meant growth through lower taxes.”
Former Sen. Trent Lott, RMiss., called Kemp one of the intellectual architects of the Reagan revolution.
“We went about 20 years living what Jack preached,” Lott said. “That’s a pretty good legacy for one man.”
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