This is a picture of my father Eckhard Kaempfer.We lost Dad exactly twenty years ago today.
I was hosting the "Best of Steve & Garry" on the Loop when I got a call on the hotline from my sister. She said I needed to come to the hospital immediately because something happened to Dad.
My good buddy Jim Wiser was there at the time of the phone call, and volunteered to finish the shift for me so I could drive out to the hospital in Arlington Heights. I'll never forget Jim for that because I arrived just moments before Dad lost consciousness forever.
Dad was only 54 years old when he died.
His name was Eckhard Kaempfer, but don't bother Googling him. He lived his entire life before the Internet era so there is almost no record of his accomplishments. I'll give you the Cliff Notes version. He was a German immigrant, but he was also a proud American. He served in the United States Air Force, and the US Army Corp of Engineers. He loved westerns and cowboys.
But his real love was soccer. He was one of the founders of the Green White Soccer Club, which still exists more than fifty years later. The current secretary of the club is my sister Cindy. She's another one of Dad's accomplishments; one of his very best. Add my brother Peter to that list. And I suppose I should include Dad's oldest child too; not a child at all anymore, nearly 46 years old.
After they declared Dad dead, and we all came home from hospital, I sat in the darkness and couldn't sleep. I picked up a pad of paper and just started writing. Some sort of a poem or song or essay about Dad came out. I wrote it more for my own therapy than for anything else. I wasn't going to show it to anyone. If I hadn't written it, I wouldn't have slept.
The next morning Mom woke up before I did, and found that pad of paper. She begged me to read it in church as Dad's eulogy. I didn't know what I was getting into when I agreed. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I honestly don't remember a word of it. After the funeral, I gave that pad of paper to Mom and I haven't seen it since.
I'll be stopping by the cemetery today (along with three little boys he never met) to see the stone in the ground with his name on it. It still startles me every time I see it: Eckhard Kaempfer, 1935-1989.
After that, I think I'll stop by Mom's and see if I can read that pad of paper again.
I think it's time.
