Jack Kemp

What's nice about Jack Kemp's passing (pun intended) is that I actually have a second hand account of the man, which serves to better dimensionalize the man.

My dear old friend, Terryl Bechtol, jr., not to be confused with the semi-famous Southern Entertainer, Terryl Bechtol, sr., was heavily involved with the young Republicans back in the late Eighties. He went away to some big summer retreat in Washington, DC and met all these other young Republicans. Apart from some heavy underage drinking and requisite "hooking up," the big keynote of the whole shebang was an intimate engagement with "the next President of the United States," Jack Kemp. Everybody lined up, hoping to get one of those Clinton meeting Kennedy photos. And I know Terryl got one, and I know I saw it, and I know I was duly impressed. Where it is now? Maybe Terryl will find it and scan it for me.

Back in that summer, and it had to be 86, the Republican party had a lot of mojo. And Kemp was really at the center (and quite possibly the source) of that mojo. And, like Ronald Reagan didn't recall how the Contras got those weapons, I don't really recall how Kemp faded at the turn and didn't get the nod in 88. But we'll let the internet help our memories there, if that is OK. My point is that Terryl met an almost president, and I knew Terryl pretty well, so that is about as close as it has gotten so far for me, short of shaking hands with Bob Graham in 1990 or so.

Let's do the link format that I have now settled into for Jack Kemp. Kind of neato coincidence that on the footsteps of Danny Gans, there is another former athlete who is better known for something else. For Kemp, though, his football career was anything but a footnote.

What else? I was actually quite moved by his last writing, the target="_blank"letter to his grandchildren. There's a nice reel of great moments in vice-presidential debates, which is a fun little piece of time travel that makes me start to feel a little old. Oh my...then there's the homosexual allegations. I'll have to check back with my buddy Terryl and get a little more information on exactly WHAT kind of parties went down in that summer of '86.