This page is not about history in general, but about my personal history. (And, oh, yes, just to clarify things, the picture above is a still from the movie, "The Producers." It is not a picture of me. The picture of me is below.)
It will include a little bit of background on myself along with the inevitable photographs, but will mostly be links to relevant WebPages elsewhere. First and foremost are my friends (at least those with HomePages). And also those places I have lived as well as institutions I have been associated with and other miscellaneous links. I have included a few quotations. Some of them are my own and some are from personal acquaintances.
It has been pointed out to me that, up until now, I have included almost none of the material for which WebPages are justly infamous. I can't imagine why anyone would care, but here is some personal information about me. (I hope to add links sometime in the future. Does Galicia have a WebSite yet? B-)
My maternal grandfather, Henry Semat, a physics professor at the City College of New York (now City University of New York) for over 45 years, was born in Russia, just over the border from Galicia (eastern Poland) in 1900 as the border was given in those days.
My maternal grandmother, Ray Semat, nee Koch, his wife of over 50 years, was born in 1899 in Galicia (eastern Poland).
Both of them arrived in America at Ellis Island as young children about 1905. They met as children in the Lower East Side of New York City. My grandfather ran with a tough crowd until he was drafted in 1918. The war was nearing an end and he was not sent overseas. Due to his being drafted, he was made an American citizen. The judge recommended that he shorten his last name from Sematitsky and he agreed. His father and three sisters never Anglicized their names. He had no brothers. (One may have died in infancy in Russia.) His youngest sister, Ida, who was born in the U.S., spelled the name, Siematisky. (Presumably, the difference in spelling was due to Grandpa's name being transliterated from the Cyrillic at Ellis Island and Aunt Ida's being transliterated on her American birth certificate. Given the most likely Russian spelling, Semiatisky or Semyatitsky would be better transliterations than either Sematitsky and Siematisky.)
I have some recollection of my Grandfather telling me that there were other members of his extended family who came to America. Some kept the original name. Half brothers and half sisters of my Grandfather's father changed their name to "Stern." (Thanks to Marsha Taube for this information.) None my Grandfather knew of shortened it to Semat, except himself. In his travels around the world, he never met another person named "Semat." (My WebSearch only turned up that name once.)
After leaving the army, my grandfather used the G.I. Bill to obtain a college education. Initially, he planned on majoring in accounting, but turned to physics after getting a job in the physics library. Eventually, his settling down convinced Ray Koch of his stability and she married him. They had two daughters, Edith Joan ("Edie," my mother) and Barbara Ann ("Babs"). Grandma and Grandpa both passed away in 1986, only two days apart. They were buried together. My aunt, Babs, passed away on June 19, 1990, of breast cancer.
My paternal grandmother, Ruth Kemp, nee Natelson, was born about 1905 in New Jersey. Her family was from Lithuania. They ran the Natelson Brothers clothing store chain in New Jersey and New York. Family legend has it that anyone with the name Natelson, spelled that same way, is a relative. Only half the family is Jewish. Distant cousins were apparently working on a family tree many years ago.
My paternal grandfather, David Kemp, who worked in the garment trade in New York and was founder and owner of Diamond Brand canvas products, first in New York and later in Hendersonville, NC, was born in 1898. I am not exactly sure where. I believe it was either in Philadelphia or New Jersey. His father (my great-grandfather) came from Germany to Philadelphia in the late 1860s, supposedly from the city of Thorn (now Torun, Poland). According to my father, his grandfather's name was Abraham Hillel Kemp and after arriving in the States, Abraham tried to set up farming in South Dakota, returning to Philadelphia after that venture failed. In Philadelphia, he met and married Amelia Michaels, who was 25 or so years his junior. (This would have Abraham born about 1842 and Amelia born about 1867.) Amelia is said to have immigrated to America at the age of 12. Dave Kemp was the youngest of their five children.
David Kemp and Ruth Natelson married in the 1920s and had two sons, Bernard Allen ("Bernie," my father) and Arnold Herbert ("Arnie"). My grandma Ruth divorced my grandfather in the late 1940s while my father was in college. My grandfather Dave married twice more before passing in 1966. Grandma Ruth passed away in 1986. My Uncle Arnie inherited the family business when his father died. From 1966 up until 2000, Arnie Kemp owned and ran the Diamond Brand store in Hendersonville, NC. He then retired and sold the business. (Uncle Arnie has since died, on February 25, 2005.)
My parents, Bernie and Edie Kemp, met as undergraduates at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Hillel office, which was then on campus in the YMCA building (second floor, Northeast corner) and still stands. Hillel moved off campus in 1950, due in part to my mother's organizational skills. She was treasurer for the building fund. They married in 1948. My father became a professor of Economics and my mother, who took her Masters at UNC in sociology, became a survey researcher.
I was born September 30, 1956 at 9 pm CST in Highland Park Hospital outside of Chicago, IL. I am the eldest son, Steven Michael Kemp. I have two younger brothers, Paul Graham, and Sidney Aaron ("Sid"). I was the first born, but the result of the fifth pregnancy. A doctor named Ernest M. Solomon, MD (whom I later heard was a rather renowned and politically active obstetrician in the Chicago area), was responsible for my birth as my mother was subject to chronic, spontaneous miscarriage. I am thus, in a sense, a pure product of modern medical technology.
At the age of eleven months, my parents moved me to East Lansing, MI, as my father was leaving a job at NorthWestern University for one at Michigan State. We lived in an apartment on campus and then in a house in town until May of 1962, when the family, now including my two brothers, moved to Falls Church, VA, as my father had a job at a think tank, the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) in Arlington, VA.
In 1967, my family moved to Center City in Philadelphia, PA. We lived there six years. There, my parents separated and eventually divorced. I completed high school at Central High, the last remaining sex segregated public school in the United States at that time. I went to college at Princeton University, in Princeton, NJ, graduating with a major in Psychology and a minor in Theatre, in 1977. I spent my summers living with my father in Foggy Bottom, in Washington, DC, where he had moved.
After college, I went to Fresno, CA, where I worked for a theatrical lighting company for four months. I then returned to Washington, DC, in September, 1977 to job hunt. The job hunt having been unsuccessful, I moved up to New York City in January, 1978, to apartment sit for my grandmother Ruth who was wintering in Miami, FL. I looked for a job in advertising.
My grandmother returned April 1st and I went to stay with family friends in Princeton while I waited for call backs from my interviews. I received an offer from Ries, Cappiello, Coldwell as an assistant account executive. I was laid off six months later in the reorganization that eventually split the firm into Trout & Ries and Cappiello & partners.
I remained in my apartment in Manhattan, unemployed, and started acting school at the Lee Strasberg Institute. In June of 1979, I took a summer program in Business Data Processing, which finally made me employable. I worked at the Big Eight accounting firm, Coopers & Lybrand and then at the brokerage firm of E. F. Hutton as a computer programmer.
In April of 1981, exhausted by the New York lifestyle, I moved back to Washington, DC, splitting my time living with my father and renting sleeping space from an old college buddy while I built up an independent consulting business in Data Processing. I continued my work in theatre, taking a role in a local production. Early on in 1982, I was able to afford first a room of my own and then an apartment.
In May of 1983, I took a lucrative contract in Boston, MA, which led to a job offer from the principal contractor, Network Solutions. I signed on as a full-time employee and was given a choice of seven cities for a year's contract. I selected Los Angeles, since I had long wanted to live in California.
I left for California in October of 1983, shortly after the first signs of what turned out to be Ulcerative Colitis appeared. I was diagnosed in February of 1984 and returned to DC in March of 1984. Within a few months, the colitis had incapacitated me to the point where I could no longer work and I left both Washington and the company.
In 1985, I moved to Chapel Hill, NC, where my brother, Paul, lives. I have lived here since, working part time when I can and completing a doctorate in psychology at the University in 1993. In 1990, I acquired a cat, Eureka, the love of my life and my only long-term companion to date. In 1994, I purchased a small house south of town.
In 1996, I was diagnosed with extensive food allergies. This and other medical matters have changed my life considerably. (More details to come.)
In August of 2002, my Mom, who was still living on her own in Center City, Philadelphia, was diagnosed with both Alzheimer's and ovarian cancer. I and my brothers relocated her to an apartment connected to my brother, Paul's, house in Carrboro, NC, about ten minutes from my place, so that we could care for her. On August 20th, 2004, I had my cat, Eureka, euthanized. She was suffering from an injection-site sarcoma. On September 4th, 2004, my mother finally passed away after a two-year ordeal with her cancer and Alzheimer's. I miss them both.
In 2005, with the gracious help of my brother, Sid (who is an author of seven or eight books), I became an author, co-authoring Business Statistics Demystified with him for McGraw-Hill. I have recently (2006) completed a second book, this one with my friend and colleague, Anna Romero, entitled Psychology Demystified. I currently list my profession as "author" on my yearly tax return.
On July 22, 2006, I adopted two new kittens, both female, from a neighbor. I have learned to wait before naming cats. Their current names are Gwendolyn and Cecily after the ladies from "The Importance of Being Earnest." Cecily took no time in bonding with me. Gwendolyn is a bit more shy. However, they have already bonded to one another, so I am optimistic that we will all be a family very soon.
Speaking of things for which personal WebSites are justly infamous, I can't really imagine too many reasons why someone would want to see a picture of me, but I suppose if you haven't met me and need to pick me up at an airport someday, it will help to know what I look like. Whatever your motivation, here is me:
... and, of course, what would a WebSite be without a picture of one's cats? Here they are:
Cecily is on the left. Gwendolyn is the one giving me a nasty look, because I am shining a flashlight on her hiding place behind the couch.
At present, I am only including WebSites for those folks who have them. I am in contact with a number of other folk. If you are interested in tracking down someone that you know I know, email me and if I am in contact with them, I will pass along your email address. (I don't want to interfere with anyone's privacy.) If you are a friend of mine without a WebSite and would like your email address or other information published here, just drop me a line. I am simply working under the assumption that URLs are public, but that email addresses are a bit more private. So I will only list email addresses of friends with permission.
my brother Sid's company
Mike January, a screenwriter, whose latest project is Red Gold, and who now has a bargain travel WebSite to Europe as well.
Lawrence Watt-Evans (a.k.a. "Malachi")
Jim Kukula, whose site is apparently becoming quite popular.
a trio that includes Elissa Weiss and her professional WebSite, Everybody Can Sing™.
Lee Geffen, who recently made contact after a long absence.
Quotations presented elsewhere on this site are usually from famous folk. Most of these here will be by me and my friends. Here, first, is my old email signature from the 1990s. So far as I know, this sentiment is original with me:
New Left slogan from the Sixties: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean no one's out to get you."
New Age slogan for the Nineties: "Just because you're schizophrenic doesn't mean no one's sending you messages."
Searching for a replacement to my signature above (which will, after all, be out of date when the 1990s end), I took the Computer-Weenie's way out and consulted a book of aphorisms. A dear friend has advised me to forget about this quote on the basis that, to the degree that it reflects my character, why advertise the fact? According to my source, the quotation is from: The Cynic's Breviary of Sebastian Roche Nicholas Chamfort for Paul Elmer More.
"The difference between you and myself," said a friend to me, "is that you have said to all the masqueraders: 'I know you,' whilst I have left them the hope that they are deceiving me. That is why the world favours me more than you. It is a masked ball, the interest of which you have spoiled for others and the amusement for yourself." -- Sebastian Roche Nicholas Chamfort
My brother, Paul, offered up this gem and gave me permission to publish it here. It's his suggested title for one of the newer success treatises:
"How to Succeed in Business without Forgetting your Mantra."