THE BOOK OF TOM: The Life History of Thomas Houston Hemphill

By Holofernes Press

This is a collection of newsletters and photographs covering the life of Tom Hemphill, intended for his family and close friends. He worked in international development and was ordained following his spiritual studies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Holofernes Press
• Release date: Dec 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869038111

Book preview

1

INTRODUCTION

Totally unexpectedly, Tom Hemphill suddenly died one Saturday morning of a brain aneurysm. He led a fascinating life; it would be a shame to lose his story. I am therefore writing this book as a memorial to help me heal from his loss, and also, I trust, as a gift for his descendants.

Who am I? Grandma Judith, Tom’s third wife. How did I know what to write? Actually, I found quite a wealth of material in Tom’s files: correspondence he had saved, cards, newsletters, photos, newspaper articles, and business communications. In other words, I used lots of resources. I also researched terms I did not fully understand. Trying to turn it all into one coherent story was a little bit like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together. It may seem that way to you as you read each individual section. I will try to help you end up with a full and complete picture.

I was planning to remain an anonymous and impartial storyteller, but I found I couldn’t always manage that. I also admit to being hopelessly biased, since I was—and am—deeply in love with the man. I believe all three of his wives loved him dearly, in fact, as so many people did. I think it’s fair to say that in many ways his entire life is a love story.

2

EARLY YEARS

Once there was a boy named Tom, born on November 22, 1948, the exact middle child in a family of five boys and two girls who grew up together in a small town in Iowa in the 1950s: Bill, Jim, John, TOM, Margi (also known by the family as Jeanne to distinguish her from her mother), Bob, and Ruth. Both grandfathers, one originally from Ireland, were Presbyterian ministers.

The children’s father was part of a small law office across from the courthouse in the town center of Clarinda, where they lived. He also served as an elder of the Westminster Presbyterian Church of Clarinda, a member of the Iowa Supreme Court, the Clarinda Industrial Board, and the Board of Directors of Tarkio College.

Their mother was their very full-time mother until she became a special needs teacher once the youngest child started school. Even with both parents working, cost savers and hand-me-downs were the norm, but somehow there was always some money for music and books, and every one of the children, some on scholarship, went on to get college degrees. Everyone played at least one instrument, sang in church and school choirs, and harmonized together for family singalongs, usually hymns. Tom’s baritone voice was good enough to take him eventually on a European tour with his college choir.

The family passed around a Bible every morning and read a chapter together. The children were welcome to ask questions and to challenge things that did not make sense to them. Then each person said a prayer.

Tom delivered newspapers as boys did in those days, collecting enough pocket change to buy candy bars to feed the sweet tooth he retained all his life. There were winter mornings when snow crusted on his long eyelashes, and he was frostbitten at least once. He also got sunstroke one year while he was haying. By the time I met him, he had trained himself out of an Iowa accent, so the fact that he grew up in the Midwest often caught me by surprise. I suspect that, in addition to his strong desire to be understood by people from all over the globe, his musical ear made the change in accent possible.

He wasn't a particularly attentive student, but he did a stellar job as drum major for his high school's award-winning marching band. Since he was tall, handsome, and a natural leader, I can picture him readily in that role.

The opinion of the neighbors meant a lot to his mother, and she instilled a strong sense of Hemphills don’t do things that way in her children. Although there were some relational difficulties among family members now and again, some carried forward into adult therapy, for the most part Tom’s was a protected and happy childhood with a foundation of honorable values.

His father encouraged discussion, especially around the dinner table, but he was not able to develop close relationships with his children since his own father had not done so, and he had no model.

Although I had heard stories about it, I wasn’t present for Tom’s first fifty years of life. I have no idea what it’s like to grow up in a family of seven siblings with a workaholic father and a mother addicted to pain medication as a result of having had polio. I’m sure there are at least nine versions of how it was. I have included the ones I found most compelling or fun to read.

Bill, the eldest, wrote a many-paged early family history* for a reunion in 2000, in which he tells of household chores, gardening—particularly much detested hand-weeding—planting sprouted potato eyes, peas (ugh), green beans, limas, sweet corn, carrots (fortunately not many grew), green peppers, some leaf lettuce, tomatoes, eggplants, and sweet potatoes. Mom hated cucumbers (understandably), so we didn’t grow those, but we tried watermelon once.

"By the time I [Bill] was ten or so, it became popular to blanch fruits and vegetables (partly cook them in boiling water), and put them in plastic bags and freeze them. Rich people had food freezers in their basements, and the rest of us rented space in the commercial food-locker area behind the meat counter at Nelson’s Market. Our family rented three lockers. . . . When we went to Nelson’s to buy groceries, we could request our locker keys from Chuck or Eddie and get several packages out of the locker area. The temperature in there was kept below zero, two aisles with lockers on both sides, floor to ceiling, each one about two feet by two feet by three feet.

"On many summer weekends, we canned. . . . Applesauce was our biggest product, and tomato juice was second. . . . The family applesauce recipe was sweeter and spicier than the version you can buy in stores, but it was consumed often with winter meals, and I have not been very fond of applesauce since. [Tom wasn’t, either.]

"As time passed in Clarinda, family finances underwent a period of serious strain. In the early ‘fifties was when Mom had polio. . . . She was hospitalized, first in Clarinda and then in Omaha for several months. . . . There was no hospitalization insurance in those days; Mom’s hospital bills amounted to one year’s income for Dad, and Mom was seriously disabled when she first returned home, emotionally as well as physically. . . . Then, in 1957-58, there was a recession in the U.S. that hit farmers particularly. They paid for food and electricity, but they postponed paying their lawyers.

When Dad was county attorney, the swimming pool and most of the restaurants in town were quietly desegregated. This was not his doing alone, however; the Ministerial Alliance played a strong role, along with others in the town. When the Tuskegee College Choir sang in town, we always put up a few choir members. Our house was rotten-egged once or twice in connection with Dad’s stand on racial matters.

Second son Jim remembers helping his mother learn to walk again in the halls of the Omaha hospital where she was for a significant amount of time. Tom’s memories center on feeling abandoned by her; he was only four at the time of her polio.

He wrote about it, too:

The pattern of my childhood was that I would work very hard to be acceptable enough that Mama would be emotionally close to me. When she was able, we were close; it felt good, and the effort I put into the relationship was very much worth it. But I now know that often she was unable to respond or responded erratically due to her primary commitment to her addiction to Darvon. When she needed a fix, everything, including little Tommy, got shoved aside, ignored or abused. . . . . Not only did all my best efforts to please her, appease her and win her prove inadequate. I never knew from one addictive episode to the next what it was I needed to do or stop doing in order to get her back and feel safe again. And I never figured out, until very recently, that it all had nothing to do with me.

*Bill’s family history, along with other assorted papers that Tom kept in his files, have been saved in case the time comes when anyone else wants to read them.

3

UNCLE FRANKLIN

There are more than one significant themes to Tom’s life.

If you are at all aware of matters spiritual, you may well have heard of Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), an American clairvoyant who claimed to speak from his higher self while in a trance-like state. Cayce would answer questions people asked him on a variety of subjects such as healing, nutrition, reincarnation, dreams, the afterlife, past lives, and future events. A devout Christian, Cayce said that his readings came from his subconscious mind exploring the dream realm, where all minds are timelessly connected. Several books have been written both by and about him, and the organization he started in 1931, the nonprofit Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) is still in existence today. Although a figure of some controversy, as is usually the case with people demonstrating mystical powers, his clients included Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Edison, Irving Berlin, and George Gershwin.

A most remarkable character in Tom’s personal story is his mother’s brother, Rev. Dr. Franklin Loehr (1912-1988). After graduating with a degree in chemistry, he returned to college to become a Presbyterian minister. As a chaplain in World War II, he saw more and more death and less and less faith, which began his own quest for answers to spiritual questions, answers not based on religious dogma but on facts derived from personal research and experience. He knew nothing of Edgar Cayce at the time, but he did join a ministers’ study group which shared what they found in spiritual research of all kinds: comparative religions, life after death, the power of prayer, psychical research, reincarnation, parapsychology, etc. It was during the two years of those meetings that Franklin learned a non-hypnotic method of past-life research.

For a first-hand account of what evolved next, read the chapter written by Franklin himself in the book (1975) by Noreen Quinn called She Can Read Your Past Lives. He, like Tom, is a most engaging and credible storyteller. I will attempt a summary:

In short, Franklin met a woman named Grace Wittenberger, whom he trained as a medium who specialized in past-life readings. Spiritual mediums are people capable of conveying messages from the spirit world to this world, sometimes acting as a vessel or channel for the spirit guide to speak through. Franklin was her conductor, and together they generated literally thousands of past-life readings for individuals who sought them. Once Grace was counted into trance, the voice that came through her was that of Dr. John Christopher Daniels, referred to simply as Dr. John. When Grace eventually moved away, Franklin himself became the medium. What I have written in a few sentences transpired over the course of many years. One of the factors that helped Franklin accept what was happening was discovering the Edgar Cayce story.

Life readings addressed an individual’s past lives, soul age, purpose of the present life, past life relationships with current acquaintances and family members, and other pertinent information, and most recipients were blown away by them. They were invaluable for understanding certain specific challenges in a given life and provided a wealth of general knowledge about the purpose and process of spiritual learning and growth through having human experiences in a series of preplanned lifetimes.

In addition to the life readings, Dr. John would have informal teaching sessions for the staff of Religious Research, the non-profit organization created by Franklin to study and perpetuate the spiritual teachings of Dr. John. Those sessions were times of fellowship for all involved, and the team, including Dr. John, came to feel like family.

Tom began his spiritual studies with Franklin and Grace between high school and college when he was 17. One of the concepts Tom learned is that we all have spiritual guides helping us with each of the life plans in our human incarnations. He referred to such guides as his Upstairs Team, and he often talked to or about them with me, sometimes with gratitude, sometimes with exasperation when things weren’t going the way he wanted them to.

Another book (2002) that is helpful in understanding this story is Helen Robert’s There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth . . . Here is part of what Tom wrote in his Foreword to her book:

We are all working on different lessons, each of us at his or her own pace and place in a grand process of awesome spiritual growth . . . . The teachings of Dr. John have been part of my faith, understanding and life since my childhood. The extent to which Dr. John’s wisdom influences my understanding and helps with my personal growth cannot be measured. They are like a framework in which other knowledge, insights and beliefs may be applied.

Tom’s identifying question was Why? No matter how large the concept or how small the incident, he wanted to know the why of it. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here?

Dr. John and Uncle Franklin gave Tom answers that made sense to him. Consider this: If we can confirm that we have had past lives, we are simultaneously verifying that there is some part of us that not only does not die, but is, in fact, taking part in a calculated, intentional process of learning and growth. We truly do have immortal souls.

Portrait of Franklin

4

LIFE READING FOR TOM

Tom himself had more than one life reading, which can help give you a concrete idea of what they were like. I have chosen excerpts I know remained relevant to Tom and copied them down with slight alterations for the sake of clarity.

When Tom was 18, Dr. John had this to tell him:

This present life is built very definitely upon the immediate prior life in the 1800s in Russia. It was, as this one is, a masculine life. The personality was an only child of wealthy parents and grew up indulged by parents, by other relatives, by servants. He had only himself to think about, and he did a very good job of that.

When he came into manhood, partly as a result of very real ability on his part, partly as a result of family wealth and position, and partly as a result of some clever conniving, he came into an important political and social position under the czar; he had definite programs to set in motion based upon the czar’s wishes, and he had a number of people working under him to direct, to see that the programs and projects were set in motion.

Now he had a very quick mind. It took only a few words for him to get the scope of the project and know what it was that he wanted to initiate. However, there were very few people whose mind worked as quickly in that particular way as his did. The people to whom he passed on his orders were not so quick to grasp the whole plan as he saw it, and he was very impatient with this lack on their part.

The result was that he was actually a very poor director of those under him. He wanted the job done, and he wanted it done his way, but he paid very little attention to the people working under him in the light of them being people. His attitude toward them was mechanical. He did not think of them as men with love and hopes and ambitions and dreams and desires and difficulties and troubles. As he saw it, they were there to be used by him to implement his plans, to do his bidding. He was a perfectionist and felt that everyone should perform to his pattern of perfection.

Nevertheless, there was commendation for the soul in what it achieved in that lifetime. He was successful in initiating some patterns that were good for the people, but he fell down in initiating good relationships with people. And it is that learning that the present personality expression of Tom Hemphill has been brought about to correct.

Now the soul has been given a great deal of help by the very environment into which it was born. There is everything going for it to bring about this major learning.

In his current lifetime he was brought into a family of siblings, and he was not given the first place, where he might receive all the love and attention of an only or first-born child, and he was not given the last place, where he might receive the love and attention of the baby of the family. He was purposely put in the middle, giving him a framework to experience having to relate to others.

It is the Tom personality’s responsibility to show to the soul a personality expression different from the Russian expression, holding to the good of the Russian expression but adding what the Russian expression could never add. And the key for Tom in this achievement is what he has heard from childhood on up in the Christian teaching of putting others first and considering the feelings of other people in deciding his reaction towards them.

Dr. John goes on to say that having heard what is needed and expected of him, even if he is feeling uncertain about his ability to be successful, Tom has been given everything he needs in this lifetime to accomplish his soul’s goals.

The other most significant part of the life reading involves his mother.

The two of them were together when the Tom soul was in feminine expression in a life in the 300s B.C. in Palestine. She was a girl of 10 when a baby sister was born (Tom’s mother’s soul incarnation). The older sister welcomed the baby sister with great joy. She had both older and younger brothers, but no sister. So the personality gave glad welcome to the little sister and took a great deal of interest and some responsibility in her growing up. As the little sister grew, she grew very close to her older sister.

However, when the older girl was 19, the young sister died, a loss from which the older sister (the Tom soul) never completely recovered in that lifetime. She grieved and never allowed the grief to be healed, a grief so profound it kept them from incarnating together for centuries.

In the present lifetime, Tom and his mother therefore have between them very real joy on the soul level in the opportunity to be together again in Earthliving.

Because he told me so himself, I am aware that Tom’s relationship with his mother was perhaps unnaturally embroiled. As for the first part of the reading, I witnessed many times his uncanny ability to see the big picture in any employment situation, and I also watched the close relationships he built with members of his staff. Do these things relate directly to his life readings? I cannot say for certain, but I would not be surprised.

In Tom’s life reading two years after the first one, Dr. John specifically suggests, It would be very good for you to be a parish minister for a while. You would learn a great deal. Dr. John also suggested at one point that Tom do his best to try to stay on the sunny side of the street. I heard about that many years later when Tom was struggling with depression.

Both his first and second marriages were endorsed by Dr. John as having good potential. The possibility of a third marriage was never mentioned, which only makes sense. Dr. John read past lives, and although he might speculate about the future, he did not predict it.

I never met Uncle Franklin or Dr. John and didn’t even hear about them until I was over 50. I envied Tom his life reading and knowledge of the Loehr-Daniels spiritual teachings, which present a sound and thorough explanation of why spiritual beings would choose to experience human incarnations. The teachings increasingly