An appreciation of Sandra Kemp, 1939-2023

Jan 03, 2024

Saying goodbye to 2023 was poignant for me as it was the last year in which my mother Sandra Kemp was alive. Sandra was 84 and, despite some health problems, still enjoying life when she suffered a sudden hemorrhagic stroke one summer evening. Soon it became clear that she could not recover.

Sandra came home for her last few days. I am not ready to go into detail about that difficult and painful week, except to say that we tackled it as a family in a way she would have been proud of, and that we had great support from the palliative care team from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and the local medical practice. Nurses from the hospital drove out to East Lothian whenever we called for help, which was almost every night. There was a hospital bed in the living room and my sister Susan made a nurses’ station with a trestle table and a lamp where they could measure out drug doses and write notes. A friend dropped off some lilies still in bud, and the length of time it took for the flowers to open up was the same as it took for Sandra’s life to come to an end.

Newspaper obituary pages tend to skew overwhelmingly male because they are for public figures who, at least in previous generations, tended to be men - so I probably could not have placed one for Sandra. I am grateful to have this space on Substack to write about her.

Sandra Elizabeth Kemp (nee Shand), April 4, 1939 to July 29, 2023

Sandra was a nurse, a health visitor, and for two decades the wife of newspaper editor and journalist Arnold Kemp. In her private life, she was a loving mother, grandmother, and friend.

Sandra’s story started on a wintry night in early April, 1939. She was premature, one of twins - the second baby did not survive. The week before, the doctor had taken another premature baby up to the hospital to put in an incubator but it died on the way. So the doctor decided to leave Sandra at home in the care of her parents Betty and Alec, in a cardboard box in front of the gas fire, literally wrapped in cotton wool. Sandra, their only child, survived and thrived.

But just a few months later Alec had to go away - to World War Two, with the Highland Lights. He became a prisoner of war at St Valery. In the six years Alec was absent, Betty and Sandra grew very close. The part of Aberdeen where they lived was near an army camp and had frequent bombing raids. Sometimes they didn’t go to the shelter - Betty had to weigh up the dangers of bombs against taking a delicate child out on a wild, wet night. Sometimes they would just cuddle up in the same bed and Betty would say “If we go, we go together”. One night, when there was no siren, Betty went to the cot and on impulse picked up the sleeping child - a moment later a bomb dropped and the window shattered, strewing the cot with jagged shards.

The shelter was a tin, green Anderson hut on a back green. Sandra and I went on a trip down memory lane when she was in her 70s - and it was still there, as was the temporary bridge the army had built over the river. Sandra had many stories of those days. One night, they were running across the green in the dark and Betty caught a washing line across her neck and fell back as if dead - a frightening moment. There were two old ladies, sisters, who didn’t like the dark. They would always bring one candle and one match to the shelter. One day they lit their candle and Sandra, who was three, toddled over and blew it out. Laughter made up somewhat for the lack of light.

After the war, Alec returned, in some ways a shadow of the man who went away. As they waited to greet him at the station, Betty jokingly told Sandra “just pick whichever one you want”. But the gaunt figure that emerged from the train was very different from the photos Sandra had seen. For days before Alec returned, neighbours would knock at the door and hand in a wee bag of sugar or an egg and they had a party waiting at the house to welcome him with a banner - but Alec was horrified and wanted the cab to keep driving. The situation was made worse for six-year-old Sandra because she had to leave her mother’s bed and move to a cold room where she had never slept before.

The lines from Iain Crichton Smith’s poem ”Culloden and After” about men returning from a different war could have been written about Alec: “You understand it?/ How they returned…each cap at that low ebb no new full tide could pardon/ how they stood silent at the end of the rope/ unwound from battle; and to the envelope of a bedded room came home, polite and sudden.” Sandra and Alec’s relationship never became close. But Alec, a teetotaller who had signed the pledge not to drink as a young man, worked hard and was good to his family. He was head chef at the Northern Hotel, a beautiful art deco building in granite - a very grand place in those days, popular for weddings and functions. Sandra would often go into the kitchens for a wee ice cream and to be petted by the staff.

Sandra was a keen ice skater and shocked her mum by going to church with her coat over her skating dress one Sunday. She loved the new style of dancing of the 1950s - rock and roll and jive, and nights at the Beach Ballroom. Her favourite dancing partner was her cousin big David Ross (so-called to distinguish him from wee David Ross) who visited from New Zealand and stayed for a few months. They could really cut a rug and others would stop to watch them.

Betty’s mother, Granny Ross, was a legend in the family - she would visit Aberdeen for the month of May each year, and in the summer holidays would take half a dozen grandchildren away for a week to Millport - Jim and David, Morag, Rae and Ellis and Sandra. Other family members were frequent visitors. Betty was a Conservative while most of her siblings were Labour and political arguments would rage around the kitchen table - but there was a lot of love as well.

Sandra did well at school and she passed the 11 plus - but she didn’t get a place at grammar school. There weren’t as many places for girls as boys and there was a bit of politics around who got them - anyway Sandra didn’t get offered one. She left school as soon as she could and went to nursing college. She found this a rewarding career, meeting people, traveling the country. Two close lifelong friends from Aberdeenshire she made in these days were Edith and Lorna, and on the phone to them, Sandra would go back to the Doric speech of her childhood.

When Lorna was dying in Aberdeenshire, Sandra packed a bag full of home-cooked meals, tucked it into her wheeled zimmer frame (she suffered from psoriatic arthritis) and took three buses to go and spend a few days with her old friend. She also made it over to Boston to visit when I was living there, again with that Zimmer (which said ‘Nitro’ on the side to the kids’ amusement), and when we went to look round Harvard College, she joined in on a protest about Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Sandra stood at the front, chanting ‘Hell No, Kavanaugh’ as loudly as anyone.

Joining the protest at Harvard: “Hell, No, Kavanaugh”

Back to the days of Sandra’s nursing training. Part of that was as a midwife at Rottenrow in Glasgow, where they would go around in the distinctive uniform of capes and brimmed hats. She recalled the midwives were treated like royalty in the East End - usually. One of her stories of that time was arriving at a tenement flat where the husband had had to deliver the previous baby. As they came in, he turned the key in the lock and said “Nabedy’s leaving until this baby is oot”. They had to sit by the range for hours as the woman went into full labour. They didn’t have mobile phones in those days so nobody knew where they were for all that time - until eventually the baby was safely delivered and they left.

A portrait of Sandra in her nurse’s uniform

In the early 1960s, Sandra went down to London where she worked at Barts (St Bartholemew’s Hospital). She lived in the nurses’ home and had a great time, made lots of friends, often going out dancing. One story was she had asked the porter to phone her for a wake-up call for her morning shift - and just as she was getting out of her dancing clothes into her nightwear, the phone went. It was her wake-up call and she had to get straight into her uniform and go on shift. There were challenges too and she would occasionally share some sadder memories - such as a woman who had had premature twins that were taken to the intensive care unit. She continually asked Sandra about her babies, and Sandra reassured her that the unit would phone down if there was any news - but they didn’t and in the morning she had to tell the woman that both babies had died in the night.

Sandra met a young journalist called Arnold Kemp in London at the Down Under club - he was with his Australian flatmate Bert, and Sandra was with her cousin David. Sandra and Arnold fell in love and got married. They moved back to Scotland and had two daughters, Jackie and Susan.

Bert, Arnold, Sandra and her cousin Morag Ross

Sandra was in the background as Arnold built a successful career as a journalist. She enjoyed the stimulating company of the friends he brought home. There were parties and delicious dinners that she cooked, and many lively political discussions. To the end of her life, Sandra maintained a strong interest in politics and current affairs. She was a passionate supporter of Home Rule for Scotland in those days, when that was the great cause of the Scottish Liberals. She and Arnold were both hugely disappointed by the failure of the 1979 referendum to deliver a Scottish Parliament.

Sandra and Arnold with Susan - or Jackie

After nine years as deputy editor of the Scotsman, Arnold was starting to feel stuck in his career and the lack of a centre of political power and decision-making in Scotland added to his frustration. He was delighted to finally be appointed editor of the Glasgow Herald in 1981 and determined to make a success of it - he would go on to build up its circulation so that it rivalled that of the Guardian. But the marriage did not long survive the move to Glasgow. Arnold fell in love with a colleague, Anne Simpson, who became Arnold’s partner until his sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 63.

The unexpected end of her marriage in her early 40s was a difficult time for Sandra - she was devastated. She regretted having sold the Edinburgh home where she had formed a family-like bond with her older neighbour Isobel Gracie. But friends put her up until she was able to buy a flat in the High Street.

Isobel Gracie and Sandra in her new flat

Sandra got a job as a health visitor in Leith, and found consolation in family - including her childhood companions, her cousins (wee) David, Jim and Morag Ross and their families. On her last conscious day, she asked for David and he came and sat with her and even made her smile.

She also found support in strong female friendships. Her close friend Judy Greenwood wrote this poem when she died.