Philip Sharples Kemp
Philip Sharples Kemp, 88, passed away Wednesday, May 10, 2017, at Kitty Askins Hospice Center.
Born in Easton, Md., he was the son of the late William Powell Kemp and Elizabeth Atherholt Kemp. The family moved to Goldsboro in 1931 to start Kemp Specialty Furniture Co. Phil graduated from George School in Pennsylvania, where he excelled at wrestling. Continuing on to the University of North Carolina, he won the Southern Conference Championship.
Phil entered the United States Air Force, and graduated flight school in Columbus, Miss., class of 1952. He was stationed in Naha, Okinawa, with his wife, Ruth, where he flew the F-86 Sabre fighter jet in training missions at the end of the Korean conflict.
Phil was an adventurer, enjoying adventure in the air, on the land, on the sea and under the sea. He was a creative engineer and entrepreneurial horticulturist, and made farming his career.
Phil and Ruth moved their young family to a farm in the country, where he innovated many useful inventions for his pork, row crop and dehydrated coastal Bermuda farming business. Grapes and persimmon trees later became his passion.
Phil Kemp was a member of the Third Haven Friends Meeting of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Easton, Md.
Phil loved his family, extended family and friends. He is survived by his greatest love, his wife of 64 years, Ruth Norwood Kemp; his daughters, Molly Larsen of Baker City, Ore., and Jeannie Frash and husband, Martin Frash, of Newburyport, Mass.; and sons, Thomas "Hart" Kemp of Dudley, N.C., and partner, Kristina Jones of LaGrange, N.C., and Philip "Skip" Kemp Jr. and wife, Grace Kemp, of Morehead City, N.C. Phil loved his 10 grandchildren and their spouses and three great-grandchildren. Phil was predeceased by his parents and brothers, William P. Kemp Jr. and Robert L. Kemp.
Phil's philosophy was articulated in many works of Rudyard Kipling, and summarized in the concluding verse of "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee Jr.
"Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
"I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
"Where never lark, or ever eagle flew --
"And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
"The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
"Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."