A History of a Journeyman Poet

Robert Mäder-Kammer was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His mother, Charlotte, was German and his father was an American soldier. He was never fully a German and never fully identified himself as an American. For most of his early childhood, his mother was a single parent, attempting to take care of her two sons. Her boys also lived with several families in small rural villages. These were informal foster-care arrangements. His mother was unable to work and to take care of him and his younger brother, Mike. She also felt that this was the best living arrangement for them. She was concerned for their health. She lived with her father, a German veteran of World War II, who had contracted tuberculosis while he was an English prisoner of war. Robert’s mother had also been a prisoner of war, first with the American forces and then with the Soviets. She escaped and narrowly missed being shipped to Siberia. When he was eight years old, Robert and his brother Mike, age five, were taken from Germany by their mother when she immigrated to the United States. Within a few months, Charlotte married Edward Kammer. It was not a happy marriage or childhood for Robert and Mike. Though Robert never completely assimilated into the American working class culture of his stepfather, he developed a strong loyalty to his adopted nation, and a lifelong belief in John F. Kennedys words, “. . . ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” He graduated from high school during the Vietnam War. After a great deal of soul searching, and a strong anti-Vietnam War sentiment, his sense of duty led him to volunteer for the army. Orders sending him to Vietnam were lost. Instead of Vietnam, he and his classmates were scattered around the United States and Europe. When his active duty time was up, he returned to California, got married, went to college, and joined the reserves. After graduating from Whittier College with a BA in philosophy, Robert went back on active duty and obtained a MS in clinical counseling while stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. Over the next thirty plus years, Robert worked as a counselor, accumulated twelve years of active duty, and retired from the army reserves as a master sergeant. He became a father four times, divorced, a grandfather, married once again, a stepfather (or nonbiological father) and a father-in-law. Through DNA testing, he finally found the recently deceased American soldier that was his father and an impressive paternal ancestry that is now his. He is an active member of his local congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is a member of the Disabled American Veterans, and along the way, became a journeyman poet.