Feature: A Path to Happiness

Three Clues to a Path to Peace

by Karilea Rilling Jungel

Douglas Eugene “Doug” Kempton learned early in life that some things are just meant to be. Call it luck, fate, or better yet, divine providence, and Doug smiles, particularly at the latter choice. “My dad, Chuck, was a chiropractor late in his life. He was 30 when he started college, 34 by the time he graduated. But from the time he began this life, chiropractic became our way of life. It was a process of naturalness: healing and health. It was about treating a body right; being one’s own advocate, and introducing this way of life to others; like being a Christian. It was not only following the teachings, but the way of being and acting.” That is how Doug looks at his profession: as caring for one’s body and soul, much like Christianity is caring for one’s spirit and soul. He realized early on that his father was making a statement in society. That became one of Doug’s first clues to finding his own path.

The second clue came when Doug reached an age where he had to think about being an adult. “Chiropractic was not my first choice! I wanted to be an oceanographer until I learned I was claustrophobic. I tried to join the military: the Marine Corp – that didn’t work; then the Navy. I tried to join the Army; I joined the ROTC but when it came time to sign papers to stay in and become an officer that too fell through.” He felt something was guiding him yet another way. He just hadn’t pinpointed it yet.

When he was studying his way through Junior College, he was also working at Schafer Plow in Pratt, Kansas. “This was my first real job. I had worked on the farm, in the fields, but here I was making real money.” After about two and a half years, he also received his first “big” raise. “I felt I was making good money, like adults made, and figured this was what I wanted to do, like the guys around me, this was going to be my life’s work.” His co-workers thought otherwise. Doug recalls “I was told ‘No! You’re not going to do this. You are going to go to college and be better than us. You’re going to do what we should have done.” Doug felt the guys up in the front office would have kept him on, but his co-workers in back, the welders and painters and other hard hats, had a different idea for him.

He recalls one day when they were all cooling off. “There were these 50 gallon drums filled with water; we would take our hard hats, dip them in and pour them over our heads to cool off.” That was the day when he had been talking about staying that his peers picked him up and put him in that 50 gallon drum of water. “You can’t get out of that by yourself when fully clothed, boots on. They said ‘when you come to your senses and decide to continue college, then we’ll let you out.’ Well, I stayed in that thing for about an hour and knew I wasn’t going to get out of there. You could say I was baptized by my peers. Yeah, I figured I better see the light and go to college.”

That was his second clue. But his friends weren’t done with him. In his second semester at college he called his Mom, explaining that he couldn’t continue, that Chiropractic College “was unbelievably hard.” Somehow his buddies at the shop found out and found his hard hat. They boxed it up and mailed it to him with a note: “This is to remind you where you came from, and how hard it was back here. So when college gets hard, just remember us.” That hat has been with him ever since – on his college desk, and now in his office, as a reminder of why he knows he stays in through the tough times. “Schafer Plow no longer exists. I would have been without a job.”

photo by Karilea Rilling Jungel

Doug’s third clue that he had been placed on the right path was after he graduated college and began to set up office. He looked at potential places in Hays, Russell, Chanute, Wichita, Great Bend, and Hutchinson…but none of them felt right. He called his father’s friend in practice, Dr. Pennington of Salina. “Old Doc Pennington said ‘get your butt down here…we need another new chiropractor here in Salina.’” So Doug did just that. While looking for a place to set up business, Doug was peering in a vacant window on Santa Fe when he was approached by a fellow who stated “it’s perfect for you.” Doug began a conversation with Sandy Sanborn, a local and well-known realtor in Salina. The year was 1978. Part of that conversation with Sandy was his being told to go see Chuck Carroll of Carroll’s Book Store, who would help educate Doug on how to lease the building, how to talk to businessmen, bankers, etc. “I was 23 years old – I didn’t know how to do all of the things these men taught me.” Later on, Doug admits Dr. Pennington told him “If I had known you were going to become so successful, I wouldn’t have invited you to town.”

Doug leased the office. He had walls to put up, plumbing to put in. A small inheritance from his grandmother’s will was seed money, but he forgot to talk to the local plumber about the cost for basic plumbing; when he got the bill, it was half of his inheritance. Doug recalls it was his first “man up” time and talked to the manager. Doug said he would pay for the one man who actually did the work; but he wouldn’t pay for the time of the other three guys who just stood around and watched.

Doug opened Kempton Chiropractic on January 25, 1978, at 225 S. Santa Fe. His father told him he would need time to set up. Before Doug and his mother could unload his boxes of books, forms and other papers, he arrived at work to find his first client at the door. By the second day, he had another client. He worked in patients as he got his office set up. He recalls people in his life who helped bring about his success by keeping his nose to the path, like Barbara Graham, who became a lifelong client and friend, and who encouraged his practice by telling other people about him.

In 1984 Doug and his family relocated and dedicated his office where it stands now at 1027 The Midway. A final name change was made to Kempton Family Wellness Center. “When you become a patient of ours, you also become part of our family. Our clients interact with one another. Everyone is ‘first’ but everyone takes turns when someone else’s need is a little greater, due to pain and/or time constraints. We all understand one another’s needs. Sometimes after an adjustment, some of my friends just need to talk things out, so we sit on the stoop outside my back door.” It is also “Family” because his wife and children have at one time or another either worked in the office or has entered into the same practice. His two sons, Chris and Kyle, residing in different parts of the country, simultaneously decided without discussion between themselves or their father, to leave their good jobs and enter Cleveland Chiropractic College.

photo by Karilea Rilling Jungel

Doug is sure that when he is called from this plane his conversation with God will be to answer God’s question “Doug, when I sent you down there, tell me, what did you like?” Doug has his answer ready. “Oh my Gosh! Everything!” And Doug’s philosophy? “Why spend a short time in misery and suffering when He gave us so much of everything that we should live as well and happy as we can for 100 years?”   

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