Irene Kampen

Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Great Neck, New York, she graduated from Great Neck High School. Kampen attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison before becoming a copy girl at the newspaper, New York Journal American, in 1943. She soon married Owen Kampen, an active-duty World War II pilot with the United States Army Air Forces.[1] She went on to work at several weekly newspapers, becoming a reporter for the Levittown Tribune when the family moved to Levittown, New York in 1948.[1]

In 1954, the Kampens moved to a new house in Ridgefield, Connecticut, soon divorcing her husband after a fourteen-year marriage.[1] While working at her father's flower shop in New York City, she wrote fiction stories. She also frequently contributed to the local newspaper, The Ridgefield Press, using the pseudonym, H. Loomis Fenstermacher.

Kampen's first book, Life Without George, was published by Doubleday in 1961 and was about her divorce. The book became the basis for The Lucy Show, a television series that ran from 1962 to 1968 and starred Lucille Ball, who had also experienced divorce, from Desi Arnaz, just a few months before Kampen's book was published.[2] Producers re-wrote Ball's character, Lucille Carmichael, as a widow, but the show portrayed Vivian Vance's character, Vivian Bagley, as a divorcée.

Kampen lived in Connecticut until 1988, when she moved to California. She died February 1, 1998, of breast cancer at the age of 75.

Kampen's published books include:

• Life Without George
• Are You Carrying Any Gold Or Living Relatives?
• Due to Lack of Interest, Tomorrow Has Been Canceled
• Fear Without Childbirth
• Nobody Calls At This Hour Just To Say Hello
• Here Comes The Bride, There Goes Mother
• Europe Without George
• We That Are Left
• Last Year At Sugarbush

• Levittown Tribune Obituary, February 20th, 1998