In the summer of 1962, Sherri Finkbine of Phoenix, Ariz., discovered that she had inadvertently taken thalidomide during her pregnancy. Fearing her fetus might be deformed, she decided to seek an abortion, first in Phoenix, then Japan and finally Sweden. Finkbine’s story drew intense national coverage and prompted the Minneapolis Tribune to send a reporter to North Dakota to interview a 12-year-old boy with the kind of birth defect that led her to seek an abortion. An August 2008 interview with him follows this Tribune report.

Johnny Kemp, left, played marbles with a neighborhood friend, Phil Carufel, in Bismarck, N.D., in the summer of 1960.

Armless, Legless N.D. Boy is a ‘Pretty Lucky’ Young Athlete

By JIM HICKS
Minneapolis Tribune Staff Writer

BISMARCK, N.D. – While Mrs. Sherri Finkbine was in Sweden last week, Johnny Kemp – a boy she does not know – was in Bismarck, doing the things that most 12-year-old boys do.

He was eating his breakfast, brushing his teeth, playing third base for the Midget League “Milwaukee Braves,” telephoning his friends, swimming and getting ready to work his Sunday newspaper route.

Mrs. Finkbine, from Phoenix, Ariz., underwent an abortion yesterday. She had taken the now-dreaded drug Thalidomide, and she was afraid the child might be born without arms and legs.

Like Johnny Kemp.

THALIDOMIDE was unknown when Johnny was born Oct. 10, 1949, and the stunted-limb deformities now being blamed on the drug were extremely rare. But Johnny’s deformities, said his doctor, orthopedic surgeon Paul Johnson, are “exactly the same kind of thing” now afflicting thousands of newborn children whose mothers took thalidomide in early pregnancy.

Johnson described Johnny’s condition as “congenital absences of portions of all four extremities.” His arms end above the elbow, one leg above the knee, the other at the knee.

A wave of fear has swept the world since thalidomide has been blamed for an epidemic of deformities in Europe. In Belgium, a mother stands accused of murder for giving her new born, deformed infant an overdose of sleeping pills. Mrs. Finkbine’s quest for an abortion has made headlines across the United States.

“THIS IS a little unfortunate,” said John B. Kemp, Johnny’s father. “The situation is not at all hopeless. It’s far from hopeless.”

“When Johnny was born that way,” said Kemp, “it was just one of those things. Nobody knew why he came that way but we immediately elected to make a good home for him, to make him happy.”

Johnny’s mother died in 1950, leaving Kemp to care for Johnny and his two normal sisters.

By the time he was 3 years old Johnny was wearing artificial limbs. Learning to use them was not easy for the child.

“HIS FATHER did the right things,” said Johnson. “Parents can be over-sympathetic. His father made him learn. He said, “You put those on and you’re going to leave them on.”

At 7 Johnny was playing baseball. He now plays football and basketball, and caddies at Bismarck’s Apple Creek Country Club.

Johnny had to work out some things for himself. He uses a catcher’s mitt at third base and after much experimentation finally devised a way to hold it with his mechanical hands.

HE MUST grip his bat at almost the middle of its length, which means that he has to be almost on top of the plate when hitting.

“So what if I crowd the plate?” asked Johnny. “Some of those batters in the majors do too. Like Rich Rollins, he crowds the plate.

“Most of the other teams have caught on to how I hit, so they play up close. It makes me mad. I hit pretty well last year and I have been only one for 14 this season, because they know where I’m going to hit.

“Boy, someday I’m just going to line one right through them.”

THERE ARE THINGS that Johnny has not learned to do. His attempts to ride a bicycle have been unsuccessful so far. “When I fall the bike comes down like a ton,” he said.

“I don’t care though. There are some kids that can’t do anything. I think I’m pretty lucky to do all this stuff,” he said. Two years ago he was the national Easter Seal boy and saw many children hopelessly crippled.

When school starts Johnny will be in the eighth grade at St. Ann’s School, where, he said, he is an average student (“They keep telling me my penmanship isn’t too good.”)

RIGHT NOW his goal is to improve his kicking in hopes of becoming a conversion specialist for Bismarck’s St. Mary’s High School football team in a few years.

“Dad said he’d buy me a pair of spikes if I kick all right this year,” he said.

Johnny said he would like to become either a priest or a doctor, but right now his mind is full of baseball.

“I don’t like the Yankees at all,” he said. “But Mantle – with all those injuries, he can hardly run. I feel sorry for the guy, even though I don’t like the Yankees.”

AUGUST 2008 UPDATE: The subject of this story was easy to track down. John D. Kemp, 58, is a partner with Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville, a Washington, D.C., law firm that specializes in disability issues. He’s a nationally recognized expert on disability law and a co-founder of the American Association of People with Disabilities. He and his wife, Sameta, live in a condo 10 blocks from the White House. He rides a three-wheel scooter to work each day.

Before our interview, I e-mailed him a copy of the 1962 Tribune article. He’d never seen it before, and didn’t recall talking to a Minneapolis newspaper reporter that summer. But he welcomed the chance to “walk back through time” and hear again the voice of his father, John B. Kemp, who passed away two months ago at age 89.

“My dad was a very fair and loving man,” Kemp said. “Very positive, very careful about ethics and commitment and hard work.”

Being born with no arms or legs “is far from hopeless,” he added, “and that’s the way I was raised — my outlook on life was formed by my dad.”

	John D. Kemp

The story doesn’t explain what caused Kemp’s birth defect. Does he know more now?

“No, not much more,” he said. “It was a birth anomaly. It was probably a morning sickness drug that my mother took, DES. Years later there was litigation, but we never thought about litigating it. My dad was all about moving on.”

Despite his disability, Kemp’s education was strictly mainstream, from elementary school in Bismarck, N.D., to high school in Frankfort, Ky., to college at Georgetown and law school at Washburn University.

How have prosthetics improved since he was a boy?

“Oh, my goodness,” he said. “The materials have changed dramatically. They’re much lighter weight and durable and functional. I wore thick leg braces then, and now I wear lightweight leg prosthetics, maybe 2 pounds each. Carbon fiber and a little bit of metal. My artificial arms are still very much the same as I was wearing back then. I still wear clamps. It’s what I’m used to, and they’re easy to repair.”

Did he ever learn to ride a bike?

“No, I never did. I probably stopped right about then. I couldn’t hold onto the handlebars and keep my feet on the pedals. I waited till I was 16 and got a driver’s license. I’m as bad a driver as anyone else – or as good.”

How about high school football?

“No, I never learned how to kick well enough. But I was a student manager and earned seven high school letters for various teams, track, swimming and basketball” in Frankfurt, where his family moved in 1963.

In photos, Kemp looks pretty fit more than 45 years after the Tribune interview. Does he still play sports, exercise, work out?

“I swim a lot, and I try my hardest not to gain weight,” he said. “I like good food, good wine.”

I asked him what advice he might have given that summer to Sherri Finkbine, the “Romper Room” actress whose thalidomide-related abortion prompted the Tribune to do a story about his life.

He thought for a moment. “I would have said … it would have underestimated the value and quality of the child’s life to terminate it before it had a chance to grow and develop. [The abortion] was a radical and unfortunate procedure. Life with a disability can be quite rewarding and fulfilling.”

He paused again: “I have had a fulfilling life. … I didn’t know then I would work in the disability field, and I have done that work all my life. It has been fantastic. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

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