Schools

VIDEO: In memory of Jack Kemp, Footballer, Athlete, Patron of the Arts—and Bob Dole's VP Running Mate

Occidental College honors one of its most accomplished athletes.

Footballer Jack Kemp was the nation’s third-ranking small college passer and a Little All-American honorable mention in his senior year at . An aspiring pro, a track team athlete and a record-holding javelin thrower, he was also a patron of the arts, especially opera and ballet.

On April 29, Occidental College honored Jack Kemp, who died in 2009 at the age of 73 after serving nine terms in the House of Representatives. Kemp was secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Bob Dole's vice presidential running mate on the 1996 Republican presidential ticket.

At a well-attended ceremony on Patterson Field, Los Angeles’s oldest college football field, where Kemp demonstrated some of the earliest athletic feats, Occidental College President Jonathan Veitch unveiled a new statue of Kemp to honor his memory. At the ceremony were Kemp’s widow, Joanne, an Oxy alumna, and some three dozen of their children and grandchildren. John Farmer, chairman of the Occidental College Board of Trustees, announced that the board had voted to name the college’s first and oldest athletic facility, bordering Patterson Field, Jack Kemp Stadium.

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