Lives of Consequence
Dave Hemelright '66
Moving to Tennessee, Hemelright came out of retirement and accepted a position with Loudon County Schools where he developed the school building program, established the maintenance department, and instituted a performance contract that obtained $4.5 million in energy efficient upgrades.
“I know all about the public school buildings from construction, to renovation, design, energy efficiency, maintenance and sustainability,” he says.
With this much knowledge, it was hard for Hemelright to give up using it come retirement again -- so he didn’t. Just two weeks after retiring from Loudon County Schools, Hemelright, who says he doesn’t like “sitting around or even sitting too much,” took a new job working for a Tennessee school architect as a K-12 facilities expert.
He’s also chairman of the Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board, a federal board for the cleanup of nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War at the
Oak Ridge Reservation site; a regional vice president of the Board of Directors of the American Truck Historical Association; and on the board of directors of the Tennessee School Plant Management Association.
“People like to stick to what they know, but I’ll try something different,” he says. “My personal motto is ‘proceed forward in spite of yourself.’ I’ve gotten into areas where I’ve never been before and been very successful.”
His best evidence to this claim? At the Colleges Hemelright took only one math class, and looking back he says he’s spent his lifetime “working in and around mathematics.”
Hemelright graduated a semester early and was in flight school when the Hobart Class of 1966 was gradating. He became a Marine Corps helicopter pilot and was later deployed to Vietnam. Upon his return he served as a Marine Corps flight instructor, logging over 800 combat flight hours and over 250 missions before moving into construction where he spent the majority of his time abroad building facilities in places like Saudi Arabia, the Sahara Desert, and Algeria.
When not working for the architectural firm or at one of his many other current positions, Hemelright is a self-taught “motor-head” and can be found restoring one of his street rods, motorhomes, or trucks.