Burt Constable Article

Burt Constable is a columnist for the Daily Herald. On May 18, 1999, he wrote the following column about me.



VETERAN CONTEST-KEEPER HITS GOLD ON THE FLIP SIDE

With most contests, veteran radio producer Rick Kaempfer is merely the guy behind the scenes crushing the hopes of listeners vying to be that lucky caller.

"Oldies 104.3, you're caller 6, sorry," the 35-year-old Mt. Prospect man tells the disapointed near misses every weekday in WJMK's $1000 Song of the Day giveaway.

Kaempfer showed up for work at 4:30 a.m. Monday with a new perspective on contests--as a grand prize winner.

"He's an award-winning-writer," gushes on-air personality Catherine Johns, who joins co-host John Records Landecker in telling the world how their show's producer spent the weekend hobnobbing with publishing bigwigs and best-selling authors.

Elmore Leonard, Mary and Chrissy Donnally, Nora Roberts, Lisa Scottoline, Barbara Taylor Bradford, and Maeve Binchy served as judges and selected Kaempfer's story from among more than 4000 entries.

It all began a months ago when Kaempfer, 35, saw a Daily Herald story about Diet Coke's "Living Life to the Fullest" contest.

"For some reason that made me think of my grandfather," says Kaempfer, who used the memory as inspiration for a table about a man who honors important people in his life by adding their names to his own. The story ends with the man dying, and his granson lovingly naming a son after the old man."

Kaempfer's grandfather did die in 1993, and Kaempfer does have a three year old son named Tommy, but "I didn't actually name him after my grandfather because my grandfather's name was Engelbert," Kaempfer notes.

Young Tommy and his one year old brother Johnny got left behind as Kaempfer and his wife Bridget jetted off to New York where they spent the weekend in a $400-a-night room at the Plaza overlooking Central Park.

In addition to talking with writers and publishers about his writing, Kaempfer and his wife dined with authors at the Algonquin Hotel, made famous in the 1920s by Dorothy Parker and other writers of the Algonquin Round Table.

"I had a 14 dollar corned beef sandwich," Kaempfer says, adding, "The authors were really nice."

The couple flew back Sunday night and "I was immediately brought back to earth when I realized it was garbage night."

A graduate of Prospect High School and the University of Illinois, Kaempfer honed his comedy writing skills at Second City, once produced the popular Steve Dahl and Garry Meier radio show, and has been writing comedy routines and wacky parody songs with Landecker for the last six years at WJMK 104.3FM.

"I've always wanted to be a writer," Kaempfer says. "That's my ambition."

While his songs "Viva Viagra" ("Maybe that's not a good example for the Daily Herald") and "Sink the Titantic" ("The movie's too long, he's drinking a Coke, and every scene has water gushing everywhere--you get the picture") won't wow the Nobel Prize folks, Kaempfer now says he has the inspiration to work on a book.

"I just can't tell you how proud I am of him," Johns says. She says everyone at the station is pulling for Kaempfer to make his writing dream come true--up to a point.

"The last thing I want is for him to become a full-time writer and ditch us," Johns says.

Kaempfer's winning story will soon appear on the Diet Coke website as an e-book, and the authors and publishers he met gave him their phone numbers and promised to help his career.

"So now all I have to do is come up with a book idea and write it," Kaempfer says with a laugh. "That's all."


It took me five years, but in 2004, my first book, co-written with John Swanson, "The Radio Producer's Handbook" was published by Allworth Press. In 2007, my first novel "$everance" was published by ENC Press.

For more information about the Diet Coke contest I won (including the original poem that inspired the winning entry), click here: The Man with the World's Longest Name