Kansas City Kansas Community College

The Kemper name has and will always be known in Kansas City for banking, civic leadership and patronage of the arts.

But now, thanks to Crosby Kemper III, education has been added to the family resume.

For the past five years, the one-time chairman and CEO of UMB Financial Corp., has led a Kansas City renaissance as Director of the Kansas City (Mo.) Public Library – and earned selection to the Mid-America Education Hall of Fame at Kansas City Kansas Community College. A fund-raiser for the Scholarship Fund for the KCKCC Endowment Association, Kemper’s induction will come in gala ceremonies Saturday, Nov. 7.

An avid reader, author and proud possessor of a personal library, Kemper proved to be the perfect fit when his decision to leave UMB coincided with the Public Library Board’s search for a new head of the library system.

“I was so good at collecting past due loans, they felt I could collect overdue book fines,” laughs Kemper, 58. “But seriously, it was a great opportunity. I was looking for something with a culture flavor in the latter part of my career. The Library is a great place and thanks to the support of the Kauffman and Hall Foundations and Public Reach program, it can be a leader in Kansas City’s literature and culture.”

He first turned down the position but due to the persuasiveness of the library board and his “sense of potential of the job,” he accepted in 2004. “Originally, I was invited to do it on an interim basis but I looked at the financial structure and enjoyed the whole role. And they said I was a book guy.”

“Superbly qualified,” said John Laney, a former city development director, assistant city manager and chairman of the Downtown Council. “He’s quite natural in the job and quite happy in it. That’s good because he might stay in it for years. The library director will need to continue raising money, not just for the downtown library but also for the district itself. He’s good at that.”

Kemper’s hiring also coincided with a $52 million renovation of the library, which is housed in the former First National Bank, a white marble columned building built in 1913 and on the National Registry of Historic Places. Since his hiring, the Library has added an H&R Block Career Center and children’s library and updated its film vault.

There’s also a new and bigger branch of the Plaza Library opened four years ago featuring the 500-seat Truman Forum Auditorium. In all, Kemper oversees a 10-branch public library system with a budget in excess of $18 million, but still reliant on public donations.

Certainly no one makes better use of the library. He estimates he either reads or intently peruses 400 books a year, mostly on history and political philosophy although he admits enjoying good mysteries and suspense novels now and then. “I was a history major so I have a lot of interest in philosophy and the history of the science,” says the Yale graduate.

He has written one book and is working on another. The first, “Winston Churchill: Resolution, Defiance, Magnanimity and Good Will,” was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1995.

His current undertaking is a book on a man Kemper calls “America’s greatest educator between Horace Mann and John Dewey. You probably won’t know who it is but its William Torrey Harris, who was the Superintendent of Schools in St. Louis from 1968-80 and U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1890-1906.

“In 1883 he wrote with others a report called the Committee in 10 Report that was the most important document written between Mann and Dewey and was the key guy in American education from 1880-1910. He was a great man. He started the first kindergarten in the world in St. Louis, the first vocational high school, the first extensive equal education for African Americans and the first bi-lingual school, which was German because of the large German community in St. Louis.”

Kemper’s association with education dates back to 1981, when he and his wife spent a year teaching English in China after being approached by an associate of his college roommate at Yale, Fred Streeby. “I was given 48 hours to make a decision,” he remembers. “It was a time of dramatic change in China, from Communism and medieval beliefs into the modern world. When we arrived, you could be jailed for dancing in public to western music such as in the fox trot. When we left, there were discos on top of every hotel.”

Kemper also spent four years in New York as executive director of the British Institute of the U.S., a group that awards scholarships and promotes contact between British and American scholars. While there he supervised a show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington titled “Treasures of the Great Country Houses” and featured a talk by noted writer Gary Wills on Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson’s famous home, Monticello.

Kemper’s career in banking began with UMB from 1977-81 and he returned after heading the British Institute, serving seven years as president of UMB-St, Louis before succeeding his father, R. Crosby Kemper, Jr., as president and chief executive officer in 2000.

The father of three daughters, 20, 24 and 11 and a 17-year-old son, Kemper’s outside activities also include working with the Show Me Institute, a state policy think tank located in Clayton, Mo. But clearly the Public Library is his No. 1 passion. “I’m having fun,” he says. “Sometimes I miss banking and the discussions of the economy but I’ve very happy about the things I’m doing.”