School is a place where teachers and students come and go, and people tend to forget that teachers have their own lives outside of school or even that they had lives prior to being instructors. Physics teacher Charles Hemphill had a lifetime of experiences before he even came to Freedom High School. As he entered adulthood, his journey began in California and carried him through South America. His travels involved performing many plays through a Christian ministry called Ministry Covenant Players.

“I was old enough to know better, it was spiritually satisfying and challenging, very challenging. There were four of us, I was the leader. We received no financial support outside of offerings, unless the government paid for us to perform, like when we performed for the largest prison in Bogota [Colombia], the government put us in a hotel. We normally would house with the people we performed for,” said Hemphill.

Training for his ministry’s plays would be done over the summer, he took full advantage of the resources offered to him.

“We would train every summer in LA in which we did props, sets, makeup, pretty much everything. I had advanced acting classes available to me there. I even learned stage fencing. We had a stage master that was trained in San Francisco. We rehearsed every day on the road, hundreds of different plays, always working and making new material. Could you imagine getting in a van from Los Angeles and planning enough programs to last you the next four months for the next team that went through.”

Along with his acting he picked up a bit of skill in the field of miming.

“At the time, one fellow I knew, Tim, Tim was so good and I asked during one of our summer training times, and he very graciously agreed to teach me. I did it on the side with Tim, and one other guy that was very good; I did some solo performances later on,” said Hemphill.

“I haven’t kept myself as limber as I should have. I could probably still do a 1-2 minute piece. I come up with my own of course, that’s not something you get from anywhere it’s something you come up with; you use your own ideas.”

Trips back and forth weren’t short, Hemphill’s team would drive all day and night as far as they could until they reached their destination.

“We drove from the U.S. through Mexico to Guatemala to do a week-long seminar to teach acting and drama skills. We just drove straight through, there’s nothing like trading drivers, someone would stay awake with the driver, we called that ‘riding shotgun,’ your job was to keep the driver awake, and you would sleep on the bench seats wherever there was space. At the time the president was fighting guerilla troops and we ran into a militia that stopped us, and a teen was holding a gun and looked very nervous like he didn’t know what he was doing, but we explained what we were doing and they were skeptical but eventually let us go,” said Hemphill.

Hemphill’s plays used little to no sets or props, and required some imagination from the audience in most cases.

“We had almost no sets of props during our touring. I worked right there in the prison yard in Bogota. One play or vignette of maybe half an hour; so people had to use their imagination to make up for the lack of props. Vignettes were shorter plays, not skits. A play has a structure, skits start and end in the same place. Our performances could only be 3 minutes but they had a structure making them plays.”

Hemphill’s scenery carries well outside of South America into unfamiliar territory, such as Greenland.

“During my time I went through South America and went as far as Greenland. I went as far as above the Arctic Circle. There were Chaplains with the U.S. Air Force there covering radar sites throughout Greenland. We showed up to the sight and basically doubled the women population. It was very remote and run by the Danes since it was a primarily Danish area, the radar bases were used to look out for potential Soviet threats,” said Hemphill.

 Air Force chaplains are religious ministry professionals who support the spiritual resilience of Airmen all over the world.

While in South America Hemphill didn’t only perform plays; he would also teach those that were interested in how to perform their own.

“I would do week-long drama workshops, 8 hours a day, and teach them. I learned a lot of Spanish vocab that had to do with drama. There was a woman who found out I had a degree in physics and wanted me to tutor her son. I was also in Columbia when FARC [militia group] took over the supreme courts and killed 2 of the members. I never had a run in with them but two of my team members on the bus were stopped,” said the Physics teacher.

Language barriers are everywhere and definitely came up as an issue while traveling.

“Many people in Mexico spoke Mayan as their first language, so we had a Presbyterian pastor translate for us but everything didn’t always translate perfectly. You couldn’t say at one point that someone was a Christian, saying someone was a Christian was like saying they were a human being. We had to do it phonetically in some cases. Over time I became fluent in Spanish.”

This wasn’t Hemphill’s first interview. His very interesting story has been shared numerous times.

“I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve done over the years in English and Spanish. I’ve been in front of 2-3 thousand people like when I was in Seattle. And another time I was having dinner at a host home in Mile City, Montana, when I was asked if I wanted to be on TV and I said sure. He, his wife, and his granddaughter ran a short wave Christian ministry talk show, HCJB out of Quito, Ecuador.”

After 20 years of travel Hemphill decided it was best for him to take a break.

“I was running the last two years in regional offices and I couldn’t go on the road with a five-year-old so I had to take up a teaching job here at a Christian school, but they dropped enrollment so I switched to public school,” said Hemphill.

After getting his Bachelor’s degree in physics from The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) he continued to progress at the University Of South Florida (USF).

“I had an offer from UCLA but the Lord intervened and I took a year off from college and traveled and ended up working in ministry for 20 years and the Lord found me a job here and a Masters in Physics at USF.”

Hemphill found himself teaching physics at Freedom High School, as well as a college course at Pasco-Hernando State College (PHSC).

“I taught at PHSC for a couple years, it was just taking too much time. I was teaching an astronomy class and they also wanted me to teach physics. It was a one class a week from 7:00-9:40pm. I had 36 students every time which is the limit. Whenever PHSC opened I was there. I think I taught 3 semesters there, so a year in a half,” said Hemphill.

His desire to learn and progress in his studies still continues today.

“I was USF’s first student in a Physics education program for a PHD, my degree will say doctorate and applied physics. All the course work is done, though I still have more research to get to.”

Hemphill’s interest in science started early, and followed him in everything he does.

“Since I was a young, young kid-it must have been back in 7th grade, I’ve always been fascinated in science and physics especially. I don’t think there would be anything else I’d rather do, maybe research, or I wanted to do theoretical teaching and I would’ve finished school but we didn’t have the finances.”