Body shop owner Tandy Kemper dies

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November 23, 2009

BY JOHN CANNON The Daily Independent Mon Nov 23, 2009, 10:53 PM EST

ASHLAND — Tandy Kemper said his success in business could be summed up in a piece of advice his uncle, Gaylord Kemper, gave him when he was only 15: “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.”

For decades a sign bearing those words hung on the wall of Tandy Kemper Body Shop at 259 Central Ave. in Westwood and, in an interview earlier this year, Kemper credited it with making his business one of the oldest in Boyd County and certainly the oldest to be owned and operated by one person for more than six decades.

“We don’t just do work, we do it right,” Kemper said. “Always have and always will”

Kemper, 81, died Monday.

After learning the trade from his uncle at his body shop on Greenup Avenue, Tandy Kemper opened his body shop in 1947.

Kemper’s death came on the eve of the annual Ashland Christmas Parade in which for decades Kemper and his horses were one of the top attractions, equal to the El Hasa Shrine clowns. While it has been four or five years since he had been in a parade, Kemper said last spring that he was considering a comeback.

“I sold the stage coach and buggy, but I still have an old covered wagon, and of course, I still have the horses,” Kemper said then. “I always enjoyed the parades, and I might just do it again.”

Kemper and his horses also appeared in numerous other area parades over the years.

In addition to doing auto body work, Tandy Kemper Body Shop at its peak also sold used cars and used auto parts, operated a salvage yard and even did some auto repair and towing.

“If it had to do with automobiles, we were involved in it,” Kemper said.

But in recent years, Kemper downsized his business, going from 15 full-time employees to four. The junked cars that once covered most of his 12 acres of land had been reduced to one small lot from which Kemper sold a handful of used parts. His horses grazed on most of the land where the junked vehicles had been.

Kemper’s property originally covered 16 acres. But four acres were deeded to the Ashland National Little League in the early 1990s for its new home field.

Kemper was born in Carter County in 1928 but moved to Boyd County in 1936. In more recent years, he made his home in Flatwoods.

Despite his age, Kemper said last spring that he had no intention of retiring.

“My father retired from Armco Steel at 60 and died at 66,” he said. “I decided then and there that retirement wasn’t for me. I have to stay active. This is the only life I know. I know automobiles and I know horses.”

Kemper was a 55-year member of Rush Lodge 715 F & AM, a 32nd degree Mason and a member of El Hasa Shrine. He was a member and treasurer of Ashland Baptist Church.

Among his survivors are his wife of 45 years, Judy Evans Kemper.

Kemper’s funeral will be at 3 p.m. Wednesday at Caniff Funeral Home. Burial will be in Smith-Claxon Cemetery in Hopewell.

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