By Sharon Sheridan, MG correspondent
As the Christmas season he loved drew near its end, Kemper Chambers, 83, was memorialized by his church family on Wednesday and brought home to rest in the cemetery where he volunteered so many hours over the years.
In a sense, he never left home. Born in Morris Township in 1927, Chambers lived his whole life in Morristown before dying on Dec. 23 at Morristown Memorial Hospital. He faithfully attended the early-morning Sunday Communion service each week at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, always seated two rows from the back. He graduated from Morristown High School in 1947 and in later years involved the school’s Heritage Club – an organization devoted to the institution’s history – in honoring veterans at Evergreen Cemetery.
The cemetery itself was where he visited family gravesites as a child and gave tours in period costume as an adult.
His influence was felt throughout town, from Acorn Hall to American Legion Post 59, from the archives at St. Peter’s and the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer to the Morristown-Morris Township Joint Free Public Library, which partially reopens today, eight months after an explosion closed its doors.
St. Peter’s parishioner Valarie Gilliland marveled at the number of mourners who attended Chambers’ weekday memorial service, noting the “tremendously diversified grouping of people” attending from the various civic organizations with which he was involved.
“He wasn’t somebody who just joined organizations to say, ‘I belong.’ He was a doer,” she said. “He knew the history of St. Peter’s, without question, and he was very, very proud of it, I think. He loved Morristown. He’s somebody that did know the history of the town, and he was somebody that got involved in things. As a result of that, he became even more knowledgeable. … He’d done things that made a difference.”
That difference was evident at Evergreen Cemetery, where Chambers used to dress as a Victorian funeral director and lead Sunday-afternoon tours pointing out the prominent Morristown families buried there. Those tours became the basis of a book, “A Walk in the Past,” filled with pictures and stories that he wrote about the cemetery, said Office Manager Jill Edwards.
“In the Victorian times, people didn’t run home to watch Sunday-afternoon football after church. They went to the cemetery,” explained Edwards, who met Chambers when she began working there in 1981. Families picnicked, cleaned gravesites, planted flowers. “This was just what you did. Because Evergreen was established in 1855 in the new era of cemeteries that were considered public versus private ones behind your home or at the churchyards, this was a park-like type of environment.”
Chambers “had many relatives that are buried here,” she said. “Walking through the cemetery for him was walking home.”
A decorated Korean war veteran and later a security guard at Bell Laboratories in Whippany, Chambers made sure other veterans were remembered. Every Memorial Day, he made sure the grave of every veteran known to be in the cemetery – about 1,200 of them – had an American flag, Edwards said. “He for years used to put them out by himself. He inherited the job from another person. As he got older, the kids form the high school, the Heritage Club, would come over and help him put the flags out. … The Heritage Club is specifically a club that promotes the history of Morristown High School.”
“History kind of goes hand in hand with Kemper,” she added.
Among those attending Chambers’ memorial service was David Holdsworth, St. Peter’s parishioner and president of the Acorn Hall-based Morris County Historical Society on whose board Chambers served. In an interview later in the day, he mentioned another of Chambers’ passions that fit right into Morristown’s history as home of cartoonist Thomas Nast, who created the familiar American Santa Claus image.
“He had a collection of Santa Clauses, which is on display at Acorn Hall,” Holdsworth said.
“He loved Christmas, and so in lieu of a hymn they’re actually singing ‘Here Comes Santa Claus,’ and his nephew is going to be singing ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘O Holy Night,’” St. Peter’s Parish Administrator Marie Patterson said before the service.
Chambers’ sister, Rose Underhill of South Carolina, requested the Santa tune. “She thought it was so fitting,” Patterson said. “I went and found all the words and printed them out so they could all sing.”
Chambers’ nephew, Kevin Bettys, lives in Denville. His daughter, Donna Gayle Chambers, lives in Virginia.
“He was a great collector of Santa Clauses,” Edwards agreed. “For many, many years he used to dress up as Santa Claus for the Holly Walk, which the historical society is part of.”
“We’ll miss him,” she sad. “He was like a fixture here.”
Donations in Chambers name can be made to the Morristown High School Heritage Club or to the Morristown Library.
