Banker / civic leader / force of nature R. Crosby Kemper Jr. hated the Kansas City Star…
Seriously.
Kemper despised the newspaper so that six days after his January 2nd death, his obituary has yet to run in the Star.
That’s highly unusual. Because for someone in Kemper’s station of life it’s pretty much de rigueur for families to shell out big bucks to the newspaper for lengthy obituary ads to let everybody know all about the deceased’s accomplishments and where folks can go to pay their respects.
Don’t think for one minute it was an oversight.
Asked if a newspaper obituary would be forthcoming, a spokesperson handling media inquiries for Kemper’s funeral replied tersely, “That’s up to the family.”
Here’s my take on the matter and you can take this to the bank:
Kemper likely made it clear to his family that not one dime was to go to the Star period. Shoot, nobody even phoned in to get the Star’s 7-line freebie obit. Nope, Kemper wanted nothing to do with the newspaper and for more than a decade he made that abundantly clear.
I saw this as problematic, because Kemper continued to loom large in this town long after he’d officially stepped down as top dog at UMB 10 years ago.
In 2002, prior to Squire publisher Tom Leathers death, he scored a rare, extensive interview with Kemper then slapped it on the cover of his thinly distributed weekly.
Kemper did not disappoint.
He unloaded on anybody and everybody, including then KC mayor Kay Barnes. However the only way to get Kemper’s haymakers into larger public view, was to excerpt them in my column in the Star. Because by that time, Kemper wasn’t even returning my calls, although his ire was focused elsewhere at 18th and Grand.
One example of Kemper’s disdain for the Star?
Return with me to a sunny spring morning in April of 1994 in the Kansas City Star newsroom.
I remember it well.
The buzz among the senior citizen guards at the newspaper’s entry was that an enraged Kemper had charged the building and blown past security early that morning in a rage, searching for then editor Art Brisbane. The expressed purpose being to deliver an up close and personal butt chewing.
Joe Rebello
“He was an amazing guy,” Brisbane recalls. “The anecdote you are thinking of involved (business reporter) Joe Rebello and, as I recall, Crosby was ticked off about Joe’s article on succession possibilities at UMB. You might be able to find the clip but, as I recall, the article suggested that Sandy (Kemper) was favored by (his mother and Crosby’s wife) Bebe – and this was what Crosby objected to.
“He may have been delayed by the guards but we did set up a meeting for him to come in and complain. (Mark) Zieman was there. I was there. I am not sure whether Doug Weaver might have been there too – he was the business editor at the time. Crosby delivered multiple monologues, including one on how badly The Star had treated him over the years. I could see that he felt wounded by the paper and that this was a long-term thing. There’s not likely to (be) another Crosby any time soon.”
Business reporter Charles R.T. Crumpley was an eye and ear witness to Kemper’s wilding.
“As I remember it Crosby came storming into the newsroom and got escorted back to Brisbane’s office and was waiting for him to come in,” Crumpley says. “And I remember warning Art when he came in that Crosby was waiting for him in his office and him having a shocked look on his face. Hey, Crosby’s not the kind of guy you want mad at you, I’d have been shocked too.”
Aslin
Rebello’s story had undressed the Big C and called him out for fibbing to UMB staffers the day before in telling them that UMB president Malcom M. Aslin had resigned.
“(Kemper) said he had to set the record straight,” said an executive who attended the meeting,” Rebello reported. “‘He said he had to fire him. He said Aslin wasn’t a team player. Another executive at the meeting confirmed that account. Both executives refused to be identified because they said they feared losing their jobs.”
Nobody, friend, family or foe dared to diss Kemper in his decades long hey day.
Alexander Kemper
“Most bank analysts and United Missouri executives credited Aslin’s departure to friction generated by Kemper‘s recent reorganization of top management,” Robello continued, adding, “Kemper recently elevated his 28-year-old son, Alexander Kemper, to president of United Missouri Bank of Kansas City, a post that Aslin had held until then. He also sent his older son, R. Crosby Kemper III, to run the company’s St. Louis bank.”
Yep, there was no love lost between perhaps the most powerful man in Kansas City and the Star…even in death.
I like the story, but what else got him so excited? Was he thin skinned or justified in his ongoing antipathy. Why did Brisbane call him “wounded”?
The man was such a high profile banking wallah, in the news constantly and to some extent purposfully, I would think minor slings and arrows would be expected and dismissed as part of the job.
Was there an unrightable wrong?
No kidding, for someone that was famed as a business badass it sounds like he had paper thin skin. Makes him sound petty.
probably mad they said he looks like the Predator
I think he could sell a hamburger to anyone!
http://michaelwitzel.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/bobs-big-boy-statue.jpg
Wasn’t there a big national story about dirty deals at Kemper Insurance in the 80s? Living in Philadelphia then but remember seeing article in the Inquirer and Bulletin about Kemper and the law.
Kemper was pretty much KC’s Monty Burns.
Kemper Insurance was not related to the Kemper family here.
The Georgia O’Keefe fake artwork acquisition by RC made national news but no criminal issues aimed at Kemper on that. HC may want to expound on that story.
Good stuff Hearne. This is real fertile ground for you.
doesn’t aslin or a relative own some banks right now here in kc?
didn’t kemper hate the star…
no big deal…the star didn’t need kempeer and his b.s.
and as far as tom leathers…you’re wrong again hearne…
you referred to his magazine as “thinly distributed” weekly…..wow..
tom was a nice man…had more connections than you ever wished for…
did some great things in the early days of Johnson county development
including standing up for blacks and jews in leawood (bobby bell)…
working on projects to make joco really boom…..fought kroh….
and many other things….and he was very well known and liked
throughout joco….
why try to beat another deceased guy down….he got the kemper interview…
not the star…
plus he did some strong articles about the schools in pv/op etc. that
lead to some big things happening…
and besides…outside his family…no one really cares that kemper had no
obit in the star…except YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111
Probably not important, but I really, really enjoy Crosby Kemper III on “Ruckus” and his “Meet The Past” program. The last one I saw was about a equestrian expert named Tom Bass who had been a slave. Excellent in my opinion.
+1
Hey Chuck, got something off topic for you too. Again, don’t mean to highjack Hearne’s Kemper piece and you can respond if you want, back on the previous posting by Dwight. Been meaning to ask you since you wrote it but let it go at the time.
On Dwight’s piece about “Monument Men” written a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned that back in 1969 when you were 19 and had a scary draft number, you were a hardcore democrat. I’m curious what moved you over to the “Dark Side”. Maybe the first time you got a paycheck and somebody named FICA had their hand in your pocket? Maybe it was related to the Winston Churchill quote; ” If you are not a liberal at the age of 20, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at the age of 40, you have no brain.”
Just curious what the defining moment may have been.
Thanks 🙂
Churchill +1
🙂
All that money and his pants are too short.