John Kempe is reported to have died on the 10th May.
Kempe was widely known in the mountaineering world, as a member of the Alpine Club, having climbed extensively in the Alps, and having played a notable role in the first ascent of Kanchenjunga ("The Five Treasures of Snows") in north-east Nepal, at 28,169ft the world's third highest mountain.
In 1951 Kempe had been appointed founding principal of Hyderabad Public School in India, and among his first acts had been to ensure that the dates of the school holidays coincided with the Himalayan climbing season.
At that time Kanchenjunga had never been climbed – indeed, some considered it unscalable – but in 1953, with the Welshman Gilmour Lewis, Kempe undertook a reconnaissance. The next year they returned with a stronger party to examine the mountain's south-west face, and their report concluded that the climb might after all be possible.
This attracted the interest of John Hunt (fresh from the conquest of Everest) and the Himalayan Joint Committee, which in 1955 sent what is known as a "reconnaissance in force", led by Charles Evans. Also in the party were the British climbers George Band and Joe Brown, who became the first to reach the summit of Kanchenjunga. Band has said that the achievement would never have been possible without the earlier work of John Kempe.
In 1956 (by which time he was headmaster of Corby Grammar School in Northamptonshire) Kempe was the leader of an expedition to the Peruvian Andes which climbed Huagaruncho, the first time the 18,797ft peak had been conquered. Legend had it that the Incas had reached the summit, where they were supposed to have planted a gold cross (no such thing was found).
This was to be Kempe's final expedition. He gave up climbing in 1957 after marrying his wife, Barbara Huxtable, the daughter of an Australian doctor who had won an MC and Bar at the Battle of the Somme.
John William Rolfe Kempe was born in Nairobi on October 29 1917, the son of an officer in the Colonial Service. When John was four his father died of a fever, and his mother took her young son and daughter to live at her family's home in Norfolk. John was educated at Stowe and Clare College, Cambridge, where he read Economics and Mathematics. At Cambridge he also joined the University Air Squadron – of the 22 undergraduates who trained with him at Duxford, only two others were to survive the war.
Kempe was about to enter the Indian civil service when war was declared, and he volunteered for the RAF. In 1941 he was posted to No 602 Squadron, flying Spitfires, and in May the next year promoted to squadron leader. The next year he was mentioned in despatches.
In June 1944 he was posted No 125 Squadron, flying Mosquitos. From a base in North Africa he escorted convoys making for Malta. He commanded Nos 153 and 255 Night Fighter Squadrons, and in 1945 was posted to Algiers as chief test pilot (Middle East). Shortly before being demobilised in 1946 he was again mentioned in despatches.
After the war Kempe worked briefly at the Board of Trade and in private business, but found himself dissatisfied and restless. Discovering that his former housemaster at Stowe was now teaching at Gordonstoun, Kempe wrote to ask if there was a vacancy for a mathematics teacher. There was, and he got the job.
It was after only three years in Scotland that Kempe was invited to Hyderabad, the brief being to create a facsimile of an English public school. In 1955 he was appointed head of the grammar school at Corby, the Northamptonshire steel town, where he remained until 1967.
Kempe was a member of the Mount Everest Foundation committee (1956–62) and chairman of the Round Square International Service Committee (1979–87), through which young people undertake voluntary work in developing countries. He was also vice-chairman of the European Atlantic Movement Committee from 1982 to 1992 (and its vice-president thereafter), and a trustee of the University of Cambridge Kurt Hahn Trust from 1986 to 1989.
The Telegraph:24-5-10Post Title
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