On this special centennial of his birth, I hope you don't mind if I share the thoughts I shared with the mourners at his church seven years ago. I'd like for there to be some record of his life on the internet (right now it's like he never existed).
They asked me to say a few words about my grandfather, Peter Kaempfer.
To my cousin, my sister, my brother and I, he was Otta. He gave us more than our name. He taught us what it meant.
He was a Kaempfer. Most of you know that’s the German word for fighter or warrior.
A man doesn’t make it nearly 93 years without being a Kaempfer.
This Kaempfer was born BEFORE World War One. He told me that he remembered seeing the soldiers come home from that war.
That was in his hometown in Rumania. He would have happily lived in that town for his entire life. It was all he ever knew. In that little German speaking town, Otta and his brother Andreas were musicians and singers. When he and his brother played and sang together it was among the most special moments of his life. He told me that if he could have done anything he wanted with his life, that would have been it. The performing Kaempfer brothers. I never got to see the brothers perform together, but I did get to see Otta. He played that accordion for his children…and his grandchildren…and his great grandchildren. You could tell that music was something that touched him as deeply as he could be touched.
That town was the place of his fondest memories.
It's where he met his wife Anna, my Oma. If he had lived until January (2004), they would have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. I don’t know what the record is, but it can’t be much more than that.
Both of his children were born in that town, too. Eckhard, my father, was born in 1935. Hedy, my godmother, was born in 1938. Otta was in his late-20s then, a well respected member of the only town he ever knew. A man that was held in such high esteem, he was the bookkeeper of the entire farm co-op.
He was a Kaempfer. But he had no idea at the time how much of a Kaempfer he would need to be. He was in the army, fighting in the second World War, when everything he had ever known was taken away from him. The Russians were coming, and his family had no choice but to flee. By the time he finally met up with them, he would never see his hometown again..
If the war years were rough, the years after the war would really test his mettle as a Kaempfer. In Austria, times were so hard that he and his family were forced to live in a chicken coop. Last night at the wake we had a few pictures on display from those years in Austria. Going from that world to Chicago must have felt like going in a time machine. A big city. A totally different life. A totally different language.
But he did it, and he thrived. Because he was a Kaempfer.
What kind of a man was Peter Kaempfer?
*He was a thoughtful man. A thinker. A man that thought any problem could be solved with your brain. Anyone who ever played cards against him could testify to that.
*He was a caring man. A worrier. I know everyone in the family can give you a few examples of that.
*He was a man of few words. But he loved to listen.
*He not only figured out how to hook up a VCR when he was in his 80s, he figured out how to hook up two VCRs and record from one to the other. He made copies of all his German videotapes for his friends.
*He always added on to his age. When he turned 80, he said he was almost 90. The day he turned 90, he said he was almost 100.
*He had 27 years of retirement. And good years too. He loved those winters in Florida.
*He lived 92 ½ healthy years and 2 bad weeks.
When you live to 92, you have to be a Kaempfer. He was at many ceremonies like this. He lost his little brother. He lost his only son. He lost nearly every friend he ever had.
But he was a Kaempfer, and he’ll live on much longer in the Kaempfers he left behind.
*My brother, also a Peter Kaempfer, is an accountant—just like Otta was for his farming co-op. My sister Cindy is a CFO—the bookkeeper for her whole corporate town.
*My cousin Robert isn’t a Kaempfer, but he has his grandfather’s personality…and hairstyle.
*My son Tommy shares his great grandfather’s love of music. It touches him as deeply and in the same way it touched Otta.
And we’re all thinkers. And we’re all worriers. And we’re all Americans.
And we have Otta, Peter Kaempfer—someone who really lived up to the name Kaempfer--to thank for that.
