Todd Kemble shares his story of losing his brother and almost losing his friend’s and his own life to addiction before getting sober in this LebTown-exclusive interview.
In early 2011, Kemble was living with a friend in Newmanstown and working at a water treatment plant in Pine Grove. “And at that time, I was doing everything under the sun — drugs, drinking, everything, you name it,” he said.
Kemble, who recently turned 37, was 23 when he decided to drink at a bar in Pine Grove for hours after work – before getting behind the wheel of a Mazda 626 with his friend, Brandon Kramer, in the passenger’s seat.
“I fell asleep at the wheel,” Kemble said. “So, my car went to the left instead of the right [over a hilly area of State Route 501], and I hit a guardrail. And this guardrail, this guardrail launched me up 24 feet in the air and 145 [feet] … the long ways. The car landed on its wheels. And before the car hit the wheels, it hit three trees. And we have a picture of that somewhere that a singular bar went ding, ding, ding.”
Kemble, who was intoxicated at the time of the crash on Feb. 25, 2011, described being pulled out of the vehicle by Kramer, whose side of the vehicle was smashed in from the crash. Kemble then grabbed his best friend’s sweatshirt, pointed to his exposed ankle bone, walked into the middle of the road, and saw two lights approaching him in the dark.
Kemble also described the thoughts that were racing through his head at the time of the crash and the what-ifs that have continued to haunt him.
“I got airlifted to the Reading Hospital, and I was there about a month, coming back to life, and I really mean coming back to life,” he said. During his time in the hospital and, later, the post-rehabilitation center, Kemble healed from his physical injuries sustained in the crash and relearned how to walk.
After he was released from the post-rehabilitation center, the Myerstown native spent over half a year continuing to physically recover on the first floor of his father, Gene Kemble’s house.
Kramer was also transported to Reading Hospital, where he spent time physically recovering from the crash. If Kramer had not made a full recovery, Kemble said, “I don’t know how I even could have lived with that. I would have been absolutely crazy. But he’s well … today, I thank God, grace to God, that he’s alive and is still my friend and everything.”
Kemble said that his drug use started with bath salts and led to cocaine, methamphetamine, percocet, fentanyl, and prescription pills and that his alcohol use was a constant. He would use each type of drug for about two years before moving on to the next one.
“And I sit back and think, ‘What the heck [was] I doing?’ Like, a quarter of my life just doing all that stuff,” Kemble reflected.
Then, on Aug. 5, 2015, Kemble’s only sibling, Shawn Kemble, died at the age of 23 from an overdose involving a bad batch of heroin. “We were two peas in a pod, and I miss him every day,” Kemble said.
Kemble said the crash “was a life changer. My brother’s death was a life changer. So, with all that negative stuff, bad stuff, there is something good that came out of that: My son, and his name is Talon Kemble, and he is my universe, hands down.” Talon Kemble was born soon after Shawn Kemble’s death.
In spite of these life-changing events, Kemble emphasized that he was still living in addiction.
More than five years ago, Kemble was pulled over for driving under the influence of controlled substances, including percocet and fentanyl. He served about a month at the Lebanon County Correctional Facility before entering the Jubilee Ministries Aftercare program for about nine months.
The Jubilee Ministries Aftercare program is a five-phase program for people who are “affected by incarceration,” with each phase being measured by growth rather than time. Each phase focuses on the spiritual, social, financial, career, life skills/recovery, and administrative realms.
“So, I went to the Jubilee program, and that, it sucked going through it,” Kemble said. “But would you rather be in jail? Or would you rather be in a program that’s trying to help you, benefit your life, even if you’re not a Christian, or just go there just to escape the jail? I would hope that someone would learn something from it and get something out of it because you could be in jail.”
Kemble attended OnFire Ministries as an adolescent. He identifies as a Christian and has mainly attended Calvary Church since leaving the program at Jubilee Ministries.
“That program most certainly changed my life. There’s so many relationships I’ve gained over the amount of time I’ve been there,” Kemble said of the program at Jubilee Ministries. “But in that amount of time when I was there, first months or so, I couldn’t see my kid. That bugged me out, I couldn’t, it was part of the process, they called it the blackout process, where there’s no contact, no call, no nothing.”
Kemble said that the reason behind this no-contact period is to allow the individuals in the program to focus on recovering. “They way they said it before was like, no one really has a year off to focus on Jesus,” he said.
Kemble said he would have stayed in the program at Jubilee Ministries longer but they would not allow him to take tramadol for health issues because it could have led him back into addiction. Kemble was close to graduating when he left the program.
When asked how the Lebanon County Correctional Facility helped him turn his life around, Kemble said, “When I was there, you know, I was never mistreated or nothing like that, but [I was] there because I did something I shouldn’t have. But just the law, just how things go, if you want to acknowledge that you are there for a reason, so if they’re doing their job, they’re not doing anything out of the ordinary, you know, it may not look like it when you’re sitting in a cell, but they’re doing the job.”
Kemble said his son and late brother are his top reasons for getting and staying sober. He also noted the importance of having a solid support system while recovering from addiction.
He expressed his gratitude for his father and his mother and for them providing housing, food, rides, money, and “everything under the sun.”
“They’ve always been there to pull me out of, especially my dad a lot, pull me out of holes where maybe they should’ve let me sit in as far as learning from stuff in my past,” Kemble said.
Kemble named Ken Lightner, who was his life coach at Jubilee Ministries, John Kline, who is his landlord and the executive director of OnFire Ministries, and Pastor Thom Keller from Calvary Church as his mentors.
Kemble said Keller is “a preacher, and he’s [got] a lot of people to attend to. But each person, he takes time out just to really mean something to each person, not just one person and then push the next person off or whatever. Like he takes as much time that he needs for every single person.”
About four years ago, Kemble started his art business, Get Checkered. The inspiration behind his business name came from his two checkerboard tattoos, and he strives to incorporate a checkerboard element into each of his pieces.
At the time, he was still drinking but quickly realized, “I can’t do my art if I drink.” After his realization, he decided to quit drinking. He is going on 20 months of being alcohol-free.
Kemble described his son as a “phenomenal drawer. He’s better than I am.” Their art has been displayed at various locations, including Myerstown Community Library in 2024.
Kemble’s five-year probation ended on Thursday, June 6.
At the time of the interview, Kemble had recently passed his driver’s test and was eligible to get his driver’s license again. He was also set to become a custodial worker at the Wernersville State Hospital.
His ultimate goal is to own a store run by himself and his son that sells their custom art as well as art supplies. He envisions it to be a space where members of the community can spend time together, grab a coffee, and learn about the word of God.
“With my experiences and all the trauma and everything that I’ve been through, I’ve been slowly gaining traction over the years to help to get to this point,” he said. “But now I’m like, it’s time to either not [do anything], or try to hit this head on and be like, well, I want to start helping. I want to get this out there to help people. If my story can help one person out of Lebanon County, could save their life or something, you know, that’d be amazing.”
Kemble is focusing these efforts on people who are incarcerated “because I’ve been there, and it sucks, and it’s like [those] are the people with the lowest hope.” In June, he was recognized for donating art to the Lebanon County Correctional Facility.
Kemble encouraged those struggling with addiction to reach out to talk to someone, and even offered himself as a resource. He also suggested getting connected with a church community.
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