Eastern Shore Post
119
Mr. Kearn Charles Schemm Jr., of Cape Charles, passed away on Jan. 20, 2021, at the age of 72, another soul lost to cancer.
Kearn was born June 22, 1948, the third child of Catharine (Gilbert) and Kearn Schemm Sr. He passed his happy childhood in Nutley, N.J., and graduated from Nutley High School in 1966. A life-long historian, Kearn earned his B.A. in history and anthropology from Upsala College in East Orange, N.J. Thereafter, he received a scholarship to attend Seton Hall Law School in Newark, N.J., graduating in 1977.
After being admitted to the bar, he formed his own law firm in Union, N.J. – Schemm & Fitzgibbon. Kearn was a trial lawyer in New Jersey for many years before relocating to Vienna, Austria, where he met and married Eva Maria Bartl. He was a freelance journalist in Austria, covering many issues of the day, including the Bosnian War. He was a talented communicator, making friends wherever he went while honing his gift for languages, especially German. His linguistic skills led him to a position with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), where he taught English to Eastern European refugees and assisted with their relocation, mostly to the USA and Australia. In the mid-1990s, he returned to the United States and began his final career at the U.S. State Department. There, his duties included monitoring sensitive communiqués and translating them from Russian to English.