GREENFIELD — Barbara Hembree received a late-night phone call from the nursing home and learned that her husband, who had tested positive for COVID-19 almost two weeks earlier, had taken a turn for the worse.
She and her daughter, Lori Hembree, went to see him the next morning. Like so many of their visits since the pandemic began, the closest they could get was to stand outside his room’s window.
They couldn’t hug, kiss or touch him, but only look on as his breaths grew further apart.
“My mom and I stood there and watched him take his last breath through a window,” Lori Hembree said.
Lawrence (Larry) Hembree, 81, died of the novel coronavirus on Nov. 29, 2020, at Golden LivingCenter-Brandywine in Greenfield.
On Sunday, March 21, it will have been a year since the first Hancock County resident died of COVID-19. Lawrence Hembree is among 135 in the county lost to the virus; more than 12,500 in the state; and nearly 540,000 in the U.S.
To the world, he is another grim number among the numbing statistics charting the mortality of the deadly disease. But those who loved him remember him as a devoted Christian and loving father, grandfather and great-grandfather. They remember him as someone who dedicated so much of his time to leading social service agencies, helping those in prison and speaking out against the death penalty — purposes driven by a sense of kindness that he passed on to his children.
A man of faith and family
Lawrence Hembree met his future wife at St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Indianapolis, near where they both grew up.
“His faith was incredibly important to him, and family was a big part of who he was,” Barbara Hembree said.
They were married for 55 years.
“We joked that marriages are made in heaven, and so are thunder and lightning,” she said with a laugh.
Faith and family made up the strength behind that half-century.
“Those were the two really big blocks that we built everything else on,” she said.
Along with Lori, the couple had another daughter, Lisa Hembree-Keeton-Jordan; and two sons, Lawrence Hembree Jr. and John Hembree.
“He was joyous with the birth of all our children; that was huge to him,” Barbara Hembree said.
Lawrence Hembree always wore an old bomber jacket. One year for Christmas, his children saved up to buy him a new leather jacket, and their mother matched their earnings. About a week or two after the holiday, however, he came home from work wearing his former bomber jacket once more. He sat his kids down and told them about a young man he spoke with that day who had just gotten out of prison and didn’t have a coat.
“It’s always easy to give something away; what’s hard is to give away the best of what you have,” Barbara Hembree remembers her husband telling their children.
He gave the man his new leather jacket and told him it was filled with so much love it should keep him warm all winter, she continued.
“The kids, at the time, were not very happy with their father,” she said with a laugh. “As they became young adults, it began to have a very real meaning to them.”
Lawrence Hembree started the first Youth Service Bureau and the first work-release program in Marion County and served as the executive director of Public Action in Correctional Effort, or PACE, for 20 years. He lobbied against the death penalty, focusing on juvenile executions, and testified against capital punishment in a number of trials. He advocated for better health care in Indiana prisons as well.
“He was very devoted to his faith, and to the equity of people,” Lori Hembree said. “He always wanted the best for everyone, beyond himself. He was an amazing father to myself and my sister and two brothers.”
Lawrence Hembree also taught criminal justice and juvenile justice at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, held tenure at the University of Indianapolis and taught psychology for Vincennes University.
Hard-fought battle
Lawrence Hembree had lived at Golden LivingCenter-Brandywine for about two years, following a stroke that occurred about four years before that, during which Barbara and Lori Hembree along with other family members helped take care of him at home.
“He had lots of medical issues but was relatively stable,” Lori Hembree said, adding he couldn’t walk and was in the early onset of dementia.
Barbara and Lori Hembree visited him and brought him meals at the nursing home often until the pandemic struck. After that, they had to drop off his food and visit through his room’s window.
“God was good and gave us a window,” Barbara Hembree said.
They’d often talk about his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Last summer, some of his young great-grandchildren from out of town visited him with landscaping rocks they had painted to look like dinosaurs, which they placed outside his window.
“We took them back and set them on Grandpa’s window so the dinosaurs would watch out for Grandpa,” Lori Hembree said. “He would always ask, ‘Are my rocks still out there?’”
He tested positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 16, 2020, amid an outbreak of the virus at the nursing home that contributed to a total of about 90 resident infections, 30 resident deaths and 50 employee infections.
Hancock County, Indiana and the U.S. were reporting surges of the virus at the time as well. The day Lawrence Hembree tested positive, more than 70 others in the county had too, according to the Indiana State Department of Health.
Barbara and Lori Hembree came to see him after learning of his positive test result. He appeared to be fine, Lori Hembree recalled, but they noticed that began to change over the days that followed.
“I remember telling my mom you could see him kind of pulling away a little bit, just shutting down more and more,” Lori Hembree said.
But he didn’t have symptoms of the virus like a fever or loss of taste or smell, she continued.
“So about day six, seven, I’m thinking he may beat this,” she said. “Hey may just not get really sick.”
Eventually, he did get a mild fever, however, but never a cough, she said, adding he also slept a lot.
Then, the night before he died, the facility called to say he was getting much worse. When his wife and daughter arrived at his window the next morning, they noticed he wasn’t very responsive, was struggling to breathe and had been receiving morphine.
They watched him take his final breaths.
“It was a horrible thing,” Lori Hembree said. “To see that through a window was atrocious.”
Mourning alone
Lawrence Hembree’s funeral service in the chapel at Calvary Cemetery in Indianapolis had to be private because of measures in place to stem the spread of COVID-19. His children and their families came, amounting to a total of fewer than 20. Families sat in every other row, and after the service and burial, they went their separate ways.
“There was no time to mourn together,” Lori Hembree said.
No time to come together as a family and share memories, Barbara Hembree added.
“Everyone waved goodbye and went back to where they came from,” she said.
After being unable to be close to Lawrence for so long, now they couldn’t be close to those who also grieved his death.
“I think mourning is an incredible process, but when you find that you have to do it alone and see your children having to do it alone, it’s heartbreaking on top of the loss,” Barbara Hembree said.
She credits her faith with helping her through her grieving.
“It reminds you you need to go on because of that good person,” she said.
She knows so many others have lost loved ones to the virus.
“Those numbers continue to grow,” Barbara Hembree said. “Every time I see the numbers, I try to remember to say a little prayer. That’s all those families.”
Each person’s grief is unique, she continued, adding she remembers telling her children a metaphor that everyone gets a cup that holds eight ounces, and no eight ounces are the same.
“All we know is what we have in our eight ounces is the loss of this wonderful man, whom we got to see through a window, and respect that there are other families who didn’t have a window,” she said. “In our grief, in that hour of despair, of mourning, this is what we have, what we’re dealing with, and it doesn’t take anything away from anyone else or add to it. This is our journey.”
Barbara Hembree added she’s grateful for all who have reached out with kind words and who have donated to the St. Michael Catholic Church Building Fund in her husband’s name. It keeps her hopeful that good things can arise from the devastation of the pandemic.
“Hopefully, if anything comes from this — we’ll be kinder, better persons knowing other people have had great sorrow,” she said.
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This story is part of a continuing series chronicling the lives of people we’ve lost during the pandemic. If you’d like to tell your loved one’s story in these pages, we’d be honored to participate in that journey with you. You can email us at [email protected]
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