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After 30 days in the murderous cold of the Ardennes Forest, battling Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge to the point of earning the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantry Badge and a pair of Battle Stars, and enduring it without a single change of clothes, Austin Lempit”™s toes were frostbitten.
“So they shipped the frostbite victims back to England,” he said. “But the doctors didn”™t know how best to treat frostbite. They divided us into two groups. One group thawed out, the next group got their toes cut off. I was put in a thaw group.”
That hardly meant a free ride. For the next 30 years, “I got these jolts up my toe and right up my leg like someone was sticking a needle right up the length of my big toe. But I always felt badly for those men who lost their toes; it”™s hell to walk without your toes.”
By December 2008, Lempit”™s toes have healed. He remains a spry 85 years old, still humoring his passion for flashy cars ”“ a BMW sedan ”“ and still doing 25 pushups per day to keep Army trim.
Lempit is retired now. In his day, he was an advertising-marketing executive and, through his then-wife”™s family (he”™s been married to second wife Bonnie for the past 11 years) in the 1960s, he became involved in the music world: advertising, promoting, selling and distributing musical instruments: “Guitars, drums, violins. But the strong element was the guitars ”“ this was the time of The Beatles.”
In 1973, he started Red Tree Music, also marketing instruments. The divorce from his first wife ended the business in 1978, leading to a year-long stint with another ad agency in Bedford Hills.
In 1980, Lempit founded advertising and marketing agency AdTech Inc. in Mamaroneck. The firm lives today as Austin Lawrence Group of Stamford, run by Lempit”™s son, Kenneth Lawrence Lempit. Clients include British Telecom, Infosys and Bakers Pride Oven Co. Austin Lawrence also specializes in Web work, including for financial firms and international corporations.
Nattily attired and with a solid business background behind him, Lempit hardly looks the wiseacre, but in his youth he was just that. He had completed 13 of 17 weeks of Officers Candidate School for the Army, for example, when he offered a little lip to a tactical officer running a drill. “The guy ahead of me ”“ call him D.J. because I have no idea if he”™s still alive ”“ was completely unappealing physically and was emotionally a complete wreck; he was a mess. And this tactical officer was razzing D.J. pretty good. So I, like a jerk, say to the tactical officer, ”˜Have you had enough for now?”™ So I got kicked out of OCS and put in with the misfits as a private.
“By then, I”™d already almost completed OCS, so I knew all about antitank guns, bazookas, artillery ”¦ most soldiers did not have this background.
“It gave me more of an opportunity, but my irrepressible attitude kept popping up. One day the sergeant told me to crawl ahead while the trainees behind me fired at targets over my head. I told the sergeant that I”™d seen these guys on the rifle range and I did not want to get a bullet through the back of my head. So I remained a private.”
Lempit has maintained a number of interests through the years and he pulls up in one: a 500-series BMW sedan. (He wanted the 300-series coupe, but Bonnie would not go for it.) He has always liked cars. In his life, he has owned an MG-TD (“the first sports car I owned”); three Jaguars: the XK-150, the XK-150S and the XKE; a Morgan Plus-Four and a Morris Minor woody wagon (“people would pull me over and ask me to sell it; one guy cut me off and asked me to sell it”). “I also had a 1960 Jaguar 3.8-S; you could cruise at 100 and you wouldn”™t even know it.”
Five months ago, Lempit “out of curiosity” attended a meeting of The Old Guard of White Plains, “Since 1954, an organization of retired and professional businessmen.”
“Realistically,” Lempit said, “many of my old friends are gone.” In the Old Guard, however, he has both made new acquaintances and renewed old friendships. He even found a former owner of an Auburn Boat-tail Speedster, a car that Lempit as a young boy found “absolutely enthralling” and which he credits with his lifelong love of automobiles. Coincidentally, that same former Auburn Speedster owner now drives a custom Jaguar: “also beautiful,” according to Lempit.
The Old Guard meets Tuesdays the Memorial United Methodist Church”™s Asbury Hall at 250 Bryant Ave. in White Plains, although there is no link between the Old Guard and the church. Lempit said the two-hour meetings are equally divided between old news and coming events, which have included a trip to Ellis Island.
“A finance group gets together once a month and moans about what their finances are doing. We”™ll have weekly reports on golf, bowling. It”™s a social group; a great many are professionals. My favorite dentist was there. I told him I was very unhappy when he retired. I didn”™t like his successor at all.”
Austin and Bonnie remain on the move. In January, they will visit Cairo, Aswan and Alexandria in Egypt. They have also visited multiple sites in Africa, Asia and Europe.
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