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Chris Hembrough - A Man on a Mission
By Edward RussoAt first glance Chris Hembrough has led a charmed life. On the surface he has much to envy—a former star athlete with brains, self-confidence, and a certain type of American ideal good looks. With a devoted family, active social life, and secure place in his community, you might guess that service to others is pretty low on his list of concerns. You’d be wrong. As head of Springfield’s Big Brother/Big Sister organization he is vitally concerned with helping some of those in our community most in need. His current position is just the latest step in an adult life characterized by reaching out to lend a hand.
Born in Jacksonville, Chris and his three brothers, Mike, Jeff, and Doug, came with their parents to Springfield when his dad, Howard, bought a Springfield auto dealership a generation ago. Howard and Harriet Hembrough gave their sons every advantage they could, including the examples of hard-work, self-discipline and the desire to achieve. Chris openly hero-worships his late father. “If my spouse and children someday say I’m half the husband and father my dad was, I’ll be a success,” he says proudly. And he pays his mother the highest of compliments when he smilingly jokes that she took the raising of a house full of boys in stride. The Hembroughs naturally wanted to give their sons material things, but also the understanding of what it takes to earn them. “If we wanted to participate in sports for example,” Chris remembers, “my dad would help us find the opportunity to work to do that, earning our equipment, or whatever.”
As a student at Springfield’s Griffin High School he figured he would go off to college and return to Springfield to join his dad in the car business, spending the rest of his life here. Circumstances made that impossible. By the time he finished college, Howard Hembrough’s health had begun to fail and he decided to sell the business. Chris, despite growing up in the dealership business, was too inexperienced to step in and take over. But he never lost his keen interest in business and pursued it in his academic studies. From his dad he absorbed business skills like strategic thinking, planning and communication. Sidetracked from joining the family business, his other career dream was to be a professional athlete.
At the University of Miami Hembrough became a football star, reaching the high point of playing in his team’s win over number one Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl Tournament, giving the school its first national championship. Hembrough later told Springfield’s State Journal-Register that the experience “was awesome.” He remembered the team being called by some “the best college football team ever—they had Mike Rozier, Turner Gill, and Irving Fryar.” Heady stuff for a college kid, and it’s obvious why Hembrough was drawn to continuing in the limelight of professional sports. But it didn’t work out that way and, after trying out for the National Football League, he pursued other paths. Still, says Hembrough, it was his lifelong involvement in sports that gave him what he needed to succeed in the world. “Sports,” he says, with the fervor of the committed player, “taught me so much about discipline, commitment, overcoming obstacles, and never giving up.” He admits to being competitive, sometimes too much so for his own contentment. He’s quick to add that our culture takes sports “way too seriously,” particularly when it comes to parents who push their kids to excel at the expense of enjoying sports, or who get into arguments with a Little League coach. Still, it’s clear Hembrough understands how sports can prepare a person for life and work and he can re-live that learning experience with his two daughters, Brittany and Hannah.
While in college some friends got him interested in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes where he volunteered for the Special Olympics and other programs. With a 6-foot-2-inch-tall frame, ex-football player’s build, and reverberating voice, Hembrough is used to commanding attention. But, when recalling how his first volunteer experience affected him, he’s quiet, almost embarrassed. “Our hearts and souls are wired to want significance and meaning,” he says, like a motivational speaker. “And one of the ways we get that feeling is to give to a cause greater than ourselves. Funny as it sounds, helping out with Special Olympics made my heart beat faster.” Chris Hembrough had found his calling, though he didn’t know it.
When he graduated from Miami in 1982, his father was terminally ill. With no business connection to Springfield he began job interviews in Miami, where he met his future wife, Cindy. “Every job interviewer told me I didn’t have any experience, and I wondered how I was going to get any until I got a job.” Finally he landed one with a local church which included coaching high school and middle school students. This temporary job lasted for two years. He began to feel the call into ministry and the couple moved to Richmond, Virginia where he entered the master of divinity degree at Union Technology Seminary there.
fter graduation came one of his major career experiences to date. Sitting around with friends, discussing how traditional congregations turned off many people, a couple of those friends convinced him to head up a new “church for the unchurched” as he likes to call it. A place for those people who had given up spiritually. Hembrough’s little congregation of a few people gathered in the couple’s living room eventually grew into the Atlee Community Church with 2,500 people, a $4 million campus, and a frenetic life for the Hembroughs of ministering, fundraising and organizing. The biblically-based congregation was similar to the famed Willow Creek mega-church in South Barrington, Illinois. “I don’t think of myself as a minister, but as a teacher,” he says. And at Atlee he lived that role fully. But seven years of being available 24-hours every day began to wear on the couple. While rewarding, it also left them little privacy and family time, particularly after the birth of their first daughter.
The Hembroughs have remained a close family despite only one of the three sons, Doug, and their mother, choosing to stay in Springfield. As Chris and Cindy began contemplating a change in life, Doug, a vice-president at Bank of Springfield, mentioned that a local dry cleaner was up for sale. The opportunity just seemed right, and the Hembroughs bought Fink’s Superior Cleaners in February 2003, moving to Springfield to manage the business. Though he admitted at the time he had no dry-cleaning experience, he did know “business, budgets and managing people,” and “I can learn the dry-cleaning business.” His predictions proved right, but the world of business, for all its appeal, still lacked the direct service work that had become so much a part of his make up. Hembrough later sold the cleaning business.
The death of his brother, Doug, from cancer in 2005 was a personal tragedy that made him even more aware of how important it is to make our time here meaningful. Being with his brother in his last months strengthened Chris’s conviction about following his heart. Even though he volunteered in the community, including a stint with a Big Brother/Big Sister golf outing, he wanted to do more. One thing led to another, including getting to know the organization’s board members. When the head job opened up, one of those board members suggested he’d be a perfect fit. Chris agreed to give it a shot and began work in 2007.
In many ways his current role is the culmination on his path of service so far. He speaks movingly of working to help some of the most at-risk members of the community at a critical time in their lives. He is proud of the mentoring program that matches “bigs” with “littles,” and the friendships that sometimes last well into the children’s adult life. It is true that the program can literally save lives. His goals include strengthening the base and public support that the agency already enjoyed when he arrived. He looks for ways to build stronger financial resources and improved ways to recruit new volunteers. For Hembrough the experience of giving time and help to another human being is so obviously beneficial to both giver and receiver, that his enthusiasm becomes infectious. “We would love to see a time when we have a waiting list of adults who want to be Big Brothers and Sisters because all the positions have been filled.” That’s a big dream, but Hembrough’s experience in growing a church from a seed into a major, regional congregation bodes well for the agency.
Chris Hembrough admits to loving the next challenge, the next hill or mountain to climb. And, even if this is not his last career move, it’s apparent he is giving this assignment the same enthusiasm, and what his dad called “stick-to-itiveness,” that has marked his whole life and which brings success. No matter what he does, Chris Hembrough is making a difference in the world around him.
