8 minute read
Featured Pro: Joan Kemper’s Bridge
sex symbol sensation that he would soon become. After the dance, Joan and George went to a diner for a burger and a Coke, and found themselves sitting at a table next to “Ol’ Blue Eyes.” When Sinatra heard that George was a licensed pilot, he was thrilled and asked if he could “go for a flight.” George said to meet them the next morning (Sunday) at the local air strip.
The plane was a small two-seater, so someone would have to sit in someone else’s lap while George piloted.
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The men naturally thought that Joan would sit in Sinatra’s lap, but Joan, being rather tall, looked at Sinatra, who was 5’7”, and suggested that he sit in her lap.
After the men stopped laughing, they realized, problem solved! And that’s how Joan had one of the soon-to-be biggest stars in the history of show business sitting on her lap as they flew through the air. She and Sinatra became lifelong friends after that.
George was later killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and when Sinatra invited Joan to the recording session for “Come Fly With Me,” he told her he was dedicating it to George.
Joan Kemper was born in Chicago. Her mother was a classically trained soprano and her father a railroad executive who often let his young daughter sit in on business meetings and take notes. His reliance on her built a sense of order in Joan, because her father would often ask her to summarize the points of the meeting. Joan’s love of theater started at an early age, as well. In Chicago she studied theater at Northwestern, and worked at the Goodman Theater. She also starred in the radio soap
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She’s lived in many places throughout her life, including Beverly Hills and Pasadena, California, and she’s owned an 1,800-acre horse ranch in Colorado, all while raising four children. While living in Pasadena she accompanied her son, Bob, to The Ojai, the country’s oldest amateur tennis tournament. Later, Joan chaperoned her daughter, Judith, to a dance at the Thacher School. During those trips she fell in love with “Shangri-La” and in 1986, picked up stakes and moved here, although rather circuitously because of one pesky problem: she had sold her ranch in Colorado before she had secured a place in Ojai. Undaunted, she packed her quarter horses and family, then headed south, stopping only once at the Las Vegas fairgrounds. Through a friend she found a stable for the horses in Santa Paula and a place to live in the Ventura Keys, before finding her beautiful home in Oak View. “I don’t know what I’d do without friends,” she says.
Having an extensive background in public relations, working for airlines, hotels and the Cunard Shipping Line (for which she still lends her considerable expertise at her splendid age) gave her a solid background for making her mark in Ojai. “I didn’t know a single soul before I moved here,” she says.
That changed by leaps and bounds, and she has since served on the boards of the Ojai Film Society, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Help of Ojai, the Ojai Museum, the Thacher School, the Ojai Valley Community Hospital, (where she helped form its nonprofit status and developed its annual gala fundraiser) and for the Ojai Land Conservancy, which she also helped create in the mid ‘90s.
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Joan “recognized the need to protect what we now all know is special about Ojai, the beautiful lands that surround us” explains OVLC Deputy Director, Tania Parker.
When the Ojai Music Festival was nearly cancelled for a year back in 1989, Joan became a board member and Executive Director. She cut costs, convinced the bank to extend a line of credit and found an “angel” who needed a tax write-off by donating land to the festival, which the festival sold to keep it solvent. Joan simply says that she was “on the right corner at the right time.”
If that weren’t enough, Joan also was instrumental in creating the “Bravo” program, which brings music to schoolchildren in the Ojai Valley. “Her infectious enthusiasm, coupled with her business brilliance and love for Ojai, has benefitted the community in so many ways,” offers Jamie Bennett, former President of the Ojai Music Festival. “And we are the lucky ones, because she invited us all to join her on her very creative musical and theatre journey.”
Her ultimate dream is the creation of a space to house a performing arts theater. “We’re still a few million short,” she says.
Until that comes to fruition, she has created the next best thing, the Ojai Performing Arts Theater (OPAT), a company that works without a brick-and-mortar space, primarily at Matilija Auditorium.
In existence since 2004, OPAT has produced plays, musicals, holiday shows and more, with the profits benefitting various non-profits in town, including the Ojai Unified School District (approximately $85,000). Donations to charities have totaled more than $175,000 over the years.
OPAT believes in taking full advantage of the pool of award-winning performing arts professionals from the theater, television and film worlds who live in the Ojai Valley. OPAT also prides itself in mentoring young people in the creative and technical aspects of theater, including acting, singing, dancing, directing, choreography, sound and light design, set design and construction, prop mastering, costuming, music and stage management. As Artistic Director of OPAT, I’m happy to say that we plan to continue bringing high quality entertainment to Ojai, and currently have put our production of “Harvey” on pandemic hold. “As soon as the Governor gives us the go-ahead to gather again, we’ll put it up,” Joan ruefully but optimistically offers. Joan’s efforts have also helped rebuild the Pergola in Libbey Park, and she was the driving force, along with designer Tom Bostrom, for the installation of the park’s bridge and pathway to Montgomery Street, all of which have greatly facilitated and enriched that tranquil haven in the middle of town.
For their efforts through the years, Joan and Tom were recently honored in a ceremony with a plaque installed at what is now called “Bostrom’s Bridge,” and with a street sign that designates the walkway as “Joan Kemper Way.”
A small, socially-distanced champagne reception on the Music Festival patio followed, where civic leaders toasted Joan’s numerous contributions, and a zoom session allowed her many fans to offer their tributes.
How appropriate that it’s named “Joan Kemper Way,” for the woman whose favorite song of all time is her friend Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” a paean to strength and fortitude, to standing up for what you believe in … “I faced it all and I stood tall, and did it my way.” Joan Kemper has certainly stood tall in the civic lore of Ojai and continues to harbor plans for a better future. “Ojai is the place where I’ve lived longer than any other place in the world,” she says. “And I wouldn’t trade that for the world. I’ve met so many wonderful people here who have helped me turn my fledgling dreams into fully-developed realities. That’s what I am most proud of … other than still being alive, of course!” she says, with a wink and a twinkle in her eye.
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