DISABILIT Y
In an interview with New Mobility, a magazine that
encourages the integration of active-lifestyle wheelchair users into mainstream society, Kemp says that
all through high school, he was trying to pass as “
non-disabled.” It wasn’t until his early 20s that he “found his
true identity as a person with a disability” when Easter
Seals asked him to go on the road to speak on behalf of
the organization. (At age 10, Kemp also traveled around
the country on behalf of Easter Seals with actress Hedda
Hopper, who was the National Easter Seal campaign
chairman in 1960.)
“I began to listen and think,” Kemp says. “I began to
pay attention to ways of discrimination and I became
offended by things. Eventually, I came to see myself: ‘I
am one of those people. I’ve got to get proud.’”
Kemp has spent his entire life advancing this coun-
try’s commitment to hiring, retaining and promoting
qualified people with disabilities and to value them as
important customers and consumers in the marketplace.
In 2007, Kemp was awarded the national New Freedom
Initiative Award by U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao,
which recognizes exceptional commitment to helping
Americans with disabilities succeed in the workplace
and build careers. And in 2006, he was the recipient of
the Henry B. Betts Award, considered the highest honor
for disability leadership and service in the United States.
“The way my father sold me basically and my inclu-
sion in the school system was that the other kids needed
to realize there are many kids with disabilities in their
own communities and this is a lesson for them to learn,”
Kemp says. His father’s argument was that “‘as help-
ful as that is for [the other students] to realize, it’s also
helpful for John to be in the schools and learning and
modeling and keeping up and doing bad things and good
things along with everyone else.’”
This same philosophy applies to corporate America.
“You can do all the awareness training you want for all
the protected classes, but unless everyday people sit side
by side with each other and see how similar they are yet
how different they are, you don’t get that acceptance and
understanding for the differences we all bring,” he says.
Kemp, who uses prosthetic hands and legs as well as
a scooter, says in the New Mobility interview that he can
gauge people by the way they react to his shiny metal
clamps when he extends his hands to greet them. Those
who reach for his arm above the clamp, or those who
start bowing, are “uncool,” he says.
Kemp went to college in the late 1960s and early
1970s—years of great social change when many margin-alized groups were questioning basic social inequities
and came forward to demand concrete changes.
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973—the greatest achieve-
ment of the disability-rights movement until the
passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
in 1990—passed two months after he graduated from
law school. The act, particularly Title V and, especially,
Sections 503 and 504, confronted discrimination against
people with disabilities for the first time and ultimately
formed the framework for the passage of subsequent
federal laws, such as the ADA, he says. “The law says
that in 180 days, regulations shall be issued and promul-
gated that carry out these legislative statements,” he says
of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. “It took four years to
get the regulations out and a lot of protests and people
with disabilities being civilly disobedient.”
With his law degree in hand, Kemp went on to become
a lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency, then
with a law-school buddy started a consulting firm to help
companies comply with emerging disability laws. Along
the way, he met the leaders of the disability-rights move-
ment who nurtured his disability pride, including Judy
Heumann, Marlee Matlin and Tim Cook.
In 2004, Kemp published a book, “Reflections from a
Different Journey: What People with Disabilities Wish
All Parents Knew,” co-authored with Dr. Stan Klein. The
book is a compilation of 40 inspiring and realistic essays
written by successful adult role models who share what
it is like to grow up with a disability.
“What I’m doing today is building on what I started
to do in 1977,” he says. “So here I am 33 years later, loving
the fact that I can educate and inform and help grow
employment opportunities.” I
