When we were kids growing up at our family home in Pacific Palisades, I thought my big brother Kemp Aaberg was invincible. A boy of boundless energy, he galloped his horse Venus bareback in the hills above town, pumped iron at the local gym, and played every sport at the park. In our backyard, Kemp built a high jump pit, a high bar for gymnastics, a duck pond, a rabbit hutch, and a special cage for his homing pigeons.
The summer of 1953, our father, Dr. EL Aaberg, a surgeon; and our mother, Jean Littlejohn Aaberg, a writer, divorced. To get out of town for a while, mom loaded Kemp, age 13; our brother Steve, 11; and 6-year-old me into her ’52 Nash Rambler station wagon and headed for Texas. Well before I-10 was built, the Rambler rumbled down old Route 66, across the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico to Marshall, a small town in East Texas where mom had family. There, Kemp, Steve, and I attended our great aunt’s five-week resident summer camp, Camp Fern, with its row of rustic log cabins, alongside a small lake in the piney woods, several miles outside of town.
For competitions, the hundred or so campers at Camp Fern were split into tribes, the Caddos and the Tejas. Kemp was voted chief of the Caddos and led his tribe to victory that summer. He won swimming, running, and canoe races, set a new chin-up record, and got first place in the horse show. After achieving the Pathfinder, the Hunter, the Brave, and every other award Camp Fern had to offer, the counselors had to invent a new one called the Arrow, just for Kemp. Maybe his frustration over not having a dad at home anymore contributed to Kemp’s incredible drive. I just know he had more focus than most kids.
