You could blame it all on Hair. In this instance, the hair at issue isn't the stuff growing out of the top of the head but Hair, the groundbreaking musical that debuted in 1967. Hair, which carries the tag as the "American Tribal Love-Rock Musical," almost immediately became a touchstone for the cultural and political changes roiling the United States in the late '60s.
The first production of Hair outside of New York happened to be at Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis). Ann Kamps, a student at Memphis State at the time, had grown up in the then-small-town of Huntsville, Ala. Kamps' experience watching Hair was a memorable one, to say the least.
"It was full of stuff I had never heard or thought about," Kamps says. "I was scared about it. It was eye-opening and shocking. I left thinking, 'Are you gonna be a party girl or a hippie?' That was the most important event until I got married. I thought about everything differently after that."
Hair was the first step on a path that would lead Kamps to a more expansive idea of her place in the world. In the midst of raising a family, Kamps dedicated years of her life to government service as well as political and charitable work. She was fortunate enough to step into the administration of Gov. Bill Clinton as his ambitions for the national stage were coming to fruition.
Since before the doors opened 15 years ago, Kamps has been a key figure at the William J. Clinton Presidential Center. For the last several years she has the title of manager of volunteer and visitor services.
"In my position, I oversee the volunteer program and the amazing volunteer corps that together, with all the staff, to work every day to ensure the millions of visitors who have come and continue to come to the center will have a truly memorable, presidential experience," Kamps says. "We all carry the honor of representing the 42nd President of the United States which, for me, is really a labor of love that guides all of my work."
Kamps has her own history of volunteering, which has made her sympathetic to the army of unpaid assistants who keep the Clinton center humming.
"Ann is one of the Clinton Presidential Center's greatest assets," says Stephanie Streett, executive director of the Clinton Foundation. "From her institutional knowledge about President Clinton's gubernatorial administration to her ability to coordinate and inspire our wonderful volunteers, Ann is instrumental to our operations. The staff and the volunteers adore her, even if she is an Alabama fan."
Early childhood for Kamps in Huntsville was idyllic. The oldest of three girls, Kamps had a father who worked in the wholesale grocery business and a mother who stayed at home. Family was the center of life.
"It was like something out of a movie," Kamps says. "It was very Father Knows Best. We knew everybody on our street. There were children everywhere. We went to the same neighborhood school. I was born four years into the baby boom. For us, it was a very safe, comforting, loving environment. My grandparents lived there in Huntsville. It was small and very Southern."
As she got older, Kamps started to become "very cognizant of what separated [people in Huntsville]." Being a member of one of Huntsville few Jewish families put Kamps in a different category from most everybody else her age.
"As I got older, I started to feel like an outsider," Kamps says. "There were clubs that I was never invited to, and for a kid in seventh grade that is devastating."
Kamps says in practically every situation in high school she "was determined not to be noticed."
"But I was active in our Temple Youth Group," Kamps says. "I realized I wanted to be president of the youth group. Perhaps because I was with other Jewish kids I was more assertive. [The Youth Group] was a place where you could be liberal in a time and place where it wasn't looked upon kindly.
"My mother said if you have ever been discriminated against, you can't ever discriminate," Kamps says. "I was born five years after the liberation of the concentration camps. I grew up knowing that any form of discrimination was wrong."
In Huntsville, the past was present for Kamps. She noted that the train station downtown was an old prison for captured Union soldiers. The future, however, didn't seem so far away either as Dr. Wernher von Braun and his fellow rocket scientists had located in Huntsville and were slowly turning the small town into a space capital.
"The past and future were colliding there in Huntsville at that time," Kamps says.
Even at a young age, political figures loomed large for Kamps. Politics, however, was not a subject that was brought up in casual conversation.
"My parents didn't discuss political affiliations," Kamps says. "My father was concerned about being boycotted. So we didn't talk politics outside the home."
President John F. Kennedy was elected when Kamps was in the sixth grade. She was so enamored of the young president that she made a point of memorizing Kennedy's inaugural address.
"I remember the day [Kennedy] was assassinated," Kamps says. "Not everybody around me was unhappy about it. One of my teachers thought it was wonderful news. John and Robert Kennedy were very much for integration, and I was in school in Alabama."
FAMILY SUPPORT
Not long after graduating from Memphis State Kamps went to a party in Denver and met a young man named Wally who would eventually become her husband.
"We started dating even though we didn't live anywhere near each other. And 10 months later, we were married. Wally wasn't Jewish, and we got married in Huntsville at my home because they wouldn't let us marry at the temple. The rabbi who had married my parents and aunts and uncles married us."
But a draft notice would drastically alter the life of the young couple.
"It was 1971, and Vietnam was still going on," says Kamps. "Instead of going into the Army, Wally decided to enlist in the Air Force."
Her husband spent most of his days on the base but Kamps had time on her hands.
"Back then military wives didn't have to work," Kamps notes. "There were all kinds of volunteer opportunities, and I got involved in Family Services."
Kamps hit upon an initiative that helped close a gap in assistance for military families.
"We decided to do a program to help families moving overseas," Kamps says. "We called it 'Smooth Move.' It became part of what we would call the Family Support Center. They gave us a little closet and telephone. We decided to bring all the groups together that focused on what the family did. If you were going overseas, your husband knew exactly what he was supposed to do. Military families had difficult times in getting ready for the move to a country that they didn't know. Perhaps they would be going to Germany, and they didn't speak German."
Those who have crossed paths with Kamps speak about her spirit and her dedication.
"We met over 40 years ago," says close friend Gail Riley. "Our friendship survived long distances apart, and this was before cellphones. Our husbands were in the military, and military families are so dependent on each other. There was nothing common in our backgrounds. I was Catholic, and she was Jewish and about as Southern as you can get."
Riley saw firsthand how Kamps worked with military families. Even as time and circumstances separated the two friends, Kamps stayed in touch with Riley and would be there for her in significant moments.
"She is so loyal and so supportive," says Riley of Kamps.
LIFE IN POLITICS
Post-military life found the Kamps family, now swollen to four members with two young children added to the mix, setting up a permanent residence in Little Rock.
"After we moved here, I got -- I don't know what you would call it -- I would just have this feeling that something good was going to happen," Kamps recalls. "I would always make resolutions in the new year. In 1983, I made a resolution that I wanted to work for a presidential campaign. And later that year I started volunteering for Gary Hart. Before then, I wasn't involved in politics at all."
Volunteering opened the door for Kamps to Arkansas' political circles and she worked for first lady Betty Bumpers' Peace Links organization. Kamps' next stop was the governor's mansion where she took on the role of administrative assistant to Hillary Clinton.
And what was Hillary Clinton like?
"[Hillary] was the kindest, most caring and most brilliant woman I had ever met," Kamps says. "She had a wonderful sense of humor."
Kamps found a sympathetic soul in Hillary, who was at the same stage of motherhood that she was.
"Our daughters were the same age," Kamps says. "I said I was concerned about being at work and away from my kids because they were just starting school. [Hillary] said, 'Why don't you come in after they get on the bus and work until 2:30 when they get done from school?'"
The focus of her early days with the first lady was "to follow up on a pre-school project in Miami she read about called HIPPY."
Kamps' role expanded and eventually she was named the governor's special assistant for early childhood programs. When the Clintons left for Washington, Kamps worked for Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and was the first director of the Arkansas Commission for National and Community Service. In that position, she helped establish the AmeriCorps program in Arkansas.
Working as she does now for the Clinton Foundation, Kamps is happy to reflect on her longtime relationship with the Clintons that seems to have come full circle.
"One thing I have found with [the] Clintons is that you look back and you achieved more than you thought you could," Kamps says. "Every day I try to honor them with what I do. They invested time and money and their own work with somebody like me who was totally unproven. It was magical what happened to me."
Kamps speaks of the sacrifices her husband had to make to allow her to continue. Even after 15 years, "I never had to get up and psyche myself up to go work in the Clinton center."
"It's a dual mission. I have over 200 bosses, which I mean the volunteers. These are people who have volunteered there for over 15 years. I recruit them and train them and try to keep them passionate about what they do. They take that passion and give it to our visitors. I try to keep the 4 million visitors we have had so far happy. It's a gift to work in that building and take people through history."
That's not a bad return for a single ticket to Hair.
SELF PORTRAIT
Ann Kamps
• DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Oct. 21, 1950, Chattanooga, Tenn.
• MY DAY CAN'T BEGIN WITHOUT: Coffee and CNN.
• MY FAVORITE TELEVISION SHOW IS: The West Wing.
• NOBODY KNOWS THAT I: Am the world's worst procrastinator!
• MY BIGGEST INSPIRATION IS: My father.
• THE OUR GUESTS AT MY FANTASY DINNER WOULD BE: My mom and dad and my two granddaughters.
• MY PET IS: A white Persian named C.C. Cupcake Biscuit Margaret Sparkles Kamps.
• THE BEST ADVICE I'VE RECEIVED WAS: From my mom -- When kids are the least loving, that's when they need loving the most.
• MY FAVORITE PLACE IN THE CLINTON CENTER IS: The second-floor landing, overlooking the Arkansas River. At a certain time in the afternoon, you can see the perfect shadow of the Clinton Park Bridge reflected in the water.
• THE LAST BOOK I READ AND ENJOYED WAS: The Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon.
• MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY IS: Thanksgiving, a holiday for everyone.
• MY FAVORITE MEAL INCLUDES: Fried chicken and potato salad.
• FOR MY LAST VACATION I WENT TO: England, Scotland and Wales.
• ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Grateful
High Profile on 11/17/2019