The Terrible Man on the Plane
and Other Poems About My Mother

The Terrible Man on the Plane paints a portrait of my mother, Dr. Bea Klempman. It starts with the story of how she came to study medicine in England during World War II, and her passage, by ship, in late 1943, back to South Africa.This is followed by poems about her marriage and her time in England after the War.

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My family moved to America in 1967 and my mother, age 51, had to pass medical exams in order to practice. She did so and became the Director of the Albany, N.Y. VD Clinic. My mother, so conservative as she was in her attitude to sex, was totally nonjudgmental with her patients.

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As I reached my late seventies, I wrote two of the final poems. Old age has made me more sympathetic about some of my mother’s decisions that had troubled me when I was younger.

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​The final poem is a reminder of how charming my mother could be.

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