Clay County couple exemplify Christian call to live ‘in service with love for others’
Larry and Martha Tempel of Annunciation Parish in Brazil pose in Madison in June after he was named Mr. IVFA—the Indiana Volunteer Firefighters Association’s highest honor—during the organization’s convention. The red jacket is a traditional part of the honor. For 53 years, the Tempels have served in numerous ways to better their community. (Submitted photo)
By Natalie Hoefer
STAUNTON—When the Indiana Volunteer Firefighters Association (IVFA) district chairman “started twisting my arm” to go to the organization’s convention in June, Larry Tempel says he “knew he had something up his sleeve.
“But I didn’t expect this.”
“This” was Tempel’s selection as Mr. IVFA, the organization’s highest honor for service to the association and to “fire service in Indiana as a whole.”
Tempel, who along with his wife Martha is a member of Annunciation Parish in Brazil, has served as a volunteer firefighter for all but a few years since 1968, including the last 43 years with the Posey Township Volunteer Fire Department in Clay County.
His list of contributions to the department beyond responding to fire and medical runs stretches as long as a fire truck ladder—all while working full time and raising a family.
Being named Mr. IVFA “was a pretty big honor,” says Tempel.
But when the smoke from the accomplishment clears, a larger story of quiet, behind-the-scenes service emerges.
“If there’s someone in need and they can find a way to help, they’ll be there,” Jennifer Tames says of Larry and Martha, who celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary this year.
Tames, assistant agency director of Catholic Charities Terre Haute, says whether it’s for her organization, their parish, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul or their local community, the Tempels “epitomize servant leadership.”
A lesson learned early becomes a way of life
Larry and Martha were raised in the faith, he in Dale, Ind., in the Diocese of Evansville, and she just 10 miles away in St. Meinrad.
“We grew up Catholic—it was just part of your life,” says Larry.
Such a life included service, a quality he witnessed his parents, Edna and Leander Tempel, practice to its fullest.
“They were married 62 years, and I’d say at least 50 of them they were very dedicated members of St. Vincent de Paul,” he recalls.
And when a family of Vietnamese refugees moved into the area after the Vietnam War, his parents “kind of adopted them and helped take care of them for many years.”
Larry launched his own life of public service by joining the Saint Meinrad Archabbey Volunteer Fire Department in St. Meinrad in 1968 when he was a sophomore at the former Saint Meinrad College.
The fire chief at the time was Benedictine Brother Daniel Linskens. He also happened to be Martha’s boss in the college’s student health services office.
And so, Larry and Martha met. He was drawn to her “friendly and outgoing” personality, and the couple started dating after he graduated in 1971.
The spark fanned quickly into a flame.
“By Halloween, I had proposed,” says Larry.
The couple married on April 15, 1972, had four children and are now the proud grandparents of eight.
A year after they married, Larry began working for Farm Bureau Co-op. Although the name changed a few times, he worked for the company for 52 years, retiring this January.
In 1981, his job took the family to the small town of Staunton in Clay County’s Posey Township.
It was here that Tames says the couple, through “generosity of their time and their selves,” quietly set about “making their community a better place.”
The most obvious of those efforts was with the Posey Township Volunteer Fire Department.
‘That’s a good feeling’
Larry joined the department in 1982. Its current chief, Cody Barnard, calls the veteran firefighter’s dedication “unmatched.”
When an emergency call is sent to Posey Township volunteer firefighters, “you can pretty much bet that Larry will be responding unless he is out of the county,” Barnard wrote in a letter nominating Larry for the Mr. IVFA honor. “This dedication is evident, as Larry has been the top guy making the most runs for the department every year since 2019,” all while working “60-70 hours a week at his full-time job,” he added.
Larry credits his high response rate to working from home starting in 2019 and living “just a mile and a third” from the department.
In recent years, most of the runs are medical rather than fire-related, he adds. Consequently, Larry has become a familiar face to some in the community.
“One guy fell three times while we were on vacation” for a week recently, he says. “He fell again yesterday, and when I showed up, he said, ‘Oh, Larry! You’re back!’
“People really appreciate it when you help them, and that’s a good feeling.”
His service to the department has gone far beyond responding to calls.
“Larry has held every position possible in our department,” including chief for nearly 14 years, Barnard wrote.
The veteran worked “tirelessly” to obtain a grant for a new firehouse and oversaw its two-year construction. Both in the past and currently, he has served on and led department committees and the department’s board of directors.
Memories ‘we get a good laugh out of’
One of Larry’s greatest contributions Barnard noted was establishing the local service area as an official fire district, allowing the department to receive tax funds beyond those allotted by the township trustees.
It was a Tempel team effort, says Larry, as part of the process involved getting 500 signatures from people in the area.
“So, every night after supper for several weeks,” he and Martha would “get in our truck and go driving,” says Larry. “We went around, knocked on doors and got people’s signatures for the fire district.”
Martha has supported Larry’s service throughout their marriage. She did her part to raise the children and care for the home when duty called him away, even when she worked for 20 years for the Purdue Cooperative Extension in Clay County.
And when the kids got involved in 4-H, she became a 4-H leader “because then I would know where my kids were at,” Martha says with a grin. She served as a 4-H leader for 20 years.
The Tempel’s children and even their grandchildren have also supported Larry as a volunteer firefighter—although not always by choice. In his nomination letter, Barnard noted Larry’s sudden departure from family events to respond to a call, whether during dinner or Christmas morning—even an aunt’s funeral.
“All but one of the eight grandkids has been with him at a restaurant when he left because he had a run,” says Martha.
She recalls one time when Larry got a call while with a grandson at the 4-H Fairgrounds in Brazil.
“He said Grandpa grabbed him and threw him in the car,” says Martha. “He said, ‘Grandpa was flying down the road, and I got to go to the fire station!’ ”
Another time while eating out with Martha and a grandson, Larry got a call “and left us with no transportation,” she says.
But with the Tempels’ home just a third of a mile away, the walk home just made for another memory that “we get a good laugh out of,” Martha adds.
‘It was just clear to us what to do’
Working, raising a family in the faith, dedicating time to the fire department or 4-H—some might call this more than enough.
Not the Tempels. In the midst of their busy schedules, the two found even more ways, as Tames says, to make “their community a better place.”
When it comes to executive boards, Larry is king—or at least secretary, vice-president or president.
Even an incomplete list of organizations whose boards he’s led or served on—both formerly and currently—is extensive: the Clay County Fire Chiefs Association, the Wabash Valley Community Foundation, WorkOne, the Indiana Agriculture Leadership Program, Catholic Charities Terre Haute and more.
Larry has done his share of in-person volunteering, too. But overall, that type of hands-on service is more of Martha’s realm.
She’s clocked countless volunteer hours for Catholic Charities and other organizations, cleaned Annunciation Church weekly for nearly 20 years and helped with a women’s parish service group for about 15 years.
And the couple found time for serving the parish together, too. They lent their voices to Annunciation’s choir and cantored on Sundays “for years” and spent nearly a decade coordinating food for parish bingo events—“I worked once a month, but she worked every Sunday,” Larry admits.
Then there are the couple’s financial contributions. They’ve created several endowment funds through the Wabash Valley Community Foundation to better their community.
Other donations are more personal, like the one the couple made for their parish’s St. Vincent de Paul food pantry.
By the late 2010s, the pantry had outgrown its space in the basement of Annunciation’s former school. Members from the parish’s St. Vincent de Paul conference determined the cost of a new building and set about raising funds.
But soon after construction began, the COVID pandemic hit in 2020. Prices skyrocketed, especially in construction, “and suddenly we needed so much more than we’d budgeted,” says Patrick Hardman, who was then president of the parish conference.
“That year, my dad passed away,” says Larry, adding that his mom had died years before.
When the inheritance check arrived, he and Martha thought of his parents’ dedication to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
Then they thought of their parish St. Vincent de Paul food pantry’s unexpected lack of funds, “and it was just clear to us what to do with my inheritance from Dad,” says Larry.
When construction of the new food pantry was completed in 2022, it was named Leander and Edna Tempel Hall in honor of Larry’s parents.
‘It’s that servant leadership’
Whether it’s serving their local community, a charitable organization or their parish, Larry and Martha “get in and do what needs to be done,” says Tames.
“Oftentimes, with either one, you don’t have to ask because they’ve seen a need and they’re going to take care of it.”
She likens both of them to Martha in the New Testament, busy serving in the background.
“Those people who do the work behind the scenes, if they were sitting with everybody else, nobody would be comfortable and everyone would be hungry,” she says. “You need to have those people who are willing to serve and be behind the scenes, because they’re the ones who make it happen.
“It’s that servant leadership. They’re not there for the glory or to be acknowledged—they’re very deserving, but that’s not why they do things.”
Larry and Martha don’t bat an eye when considering all the ways they’ve served for the last 53 years. Service, they agree, is “just what you do.”
For Tames, it’s not just what Larry and Martha do but how they do it.
“When you’re with them, you can feel their love for each other, the love they give to others,” she says.
“I think they’re just a true definition of how we’re called as Christians to really live out our life in service with love for others.” †
