Divine Direction:

Alumnus Nathan Bemo takes skateboarding parks around the world

For Nathan Bemo, skateboarding is far more than a hobby. It's a life calling. As unlikely as that sounds, it makes sense when you know that only divine direction could have led Bemo ('92) to pursue such a seemingly impractical vocation.

The American Ramp Company, of which Bemo is founder and president, designs, constructs, and installs skateboarding parks around the world. The company, based in Joplin, Missouri, has flourished, having a net worth of several million dollars. This past year alone, ARC bought out two competitors, had sales of $11.5 million, and installed 225 parks. In total, ARC has installed more than 1,000 parks worldwide.

Bemo readily credits the company's success to God's hand. After all, the company's humble beginnings — in Bemo's garage — wouldn't have led anyone to predict its current stature. And Bemo's childhood as a missionary kid in Thailand wouldn't be the typical upbringing of a professional skatepark builder.

“Over time God decided to bless us for some reason,” Bemo says. “God knows we don't deserve it. God brought some amazing people into our lives, and after God, they are the reason for our success.”

Bemo grew up in Thailand as the son of missionaries involved in church planting and agricultural work. Up until his ninth grade year, he knew very little about skateboarding and didn't even own a skateboard. That year, while the Bemo family was in the United States for furlough, Bemo saw a professional skateboarding demonstration video. That same day, he purchased his first skateboard. Soon he was skating in the streets and old drainage ditches with his friends.

Bemo came to Dalat International School the following year. His brother Jon had attended Dalat for a year five years earlier, and two of his sisters, Sarah and Rachel, came to Dalat as they reached high school in the years following. At Dalat, he discovered some other students who shared his interest, and they became a tightly knit group. “[They] were really encouraging and dedicated to the sport,” he says. “I fell in love with the sport, and would skate for hours every day. The weekends we skated all over Penang, with Komtar being the spot of choice.”

Along with incredible friendships, Bemo remembers plenty of other signficant experiences at Dalat, such as a camping and canoe trip with other guys, jumping off cliffs into the ocean, his senior trip, awesome dorm parents, and the beach. His most memorable teacher was Mr. “Tommy” Tompkins, who pushed Bemo “both mentally and in my spiritual walk,” Bemo says. “In many ways the things I learned in his classes were more useful and stuck with me more than any college course I have taken.”

After high school, Bemo pursued a degree in business and met and married his wife, Katy. On the side, he paid the bills by building a skatepark, charging admission, and selling skateboards and accessories. By the time he finished two years at Ozark Christian College and completed a B.S. in general business at Missouri Southern State University, he and his wife had two daughters, and it was time to get a “real job,” Bemo said.

“It didn't take long before I landed a job as a loan officer,” he says. “Every day I had to wear a tie, shave, sit behind a desk, show up 8 to 5 — and I hated it. I never really cared about making a lot of money, but what was important to me was to be involved in something I loved.”

That something was skateboarding. Bemo had never seriously thought about making the sport his career. But the misery of his day job made him think again. A friend's encouragement and his wife's support helped him make the change. In October 1998, Bemo and Daman Schuber (a good friend from church and college) started American Ramp Company in the garage of Bemo's brand-new house. They shared a phone line and computer — and a “passion to make something out of nothing,” Bemo says. They took turns being designers, engineers, salesmen, and spent too much time on the road building skateparks with skeleton crews of anyone they could talk into travelling with them.

Over time, the company grew and staff with expertise were added to fill the gaps. “We hired people that were smarter than us,” Bemo says. “We hired the best designers, engineers, welders, manufacturers, sales reps, managers, accountants, and a CEO. My partner and I knew just enough to get ourselves in trouble but hired the right people that were smarter than us in each field.”

Bemo's background overseas has provided an added bonus to his business. ARC skateparks have been installed all over North America — and in countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Iceland, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan. “Some of our competitors have shied away from the unknown,” he says. “This is just the opposite for us. If anything, we pursue international projects more than projects in the U.S. Because we love to travel, the adventure, and everything that goes along with it.”

Through it all, Bemo and his business partner have sought to give God the honor for ARC's success. One small way they've done that is on the company's Web site, www.americanrampcompany.com, where they offer a link to explain the way to Jesus.

“We wanted to put God first in all that we did,” Bemo says, “so from the very beginning we dedicated this business to God. A small way that we show this commitment is by our ‘Jesus' link. We get a lot of Web traffic from kids that haven't heard the ‘good news,' so hopefully it has made some type of impact…We simply love God and want others to know that is the priority in our business.”

Photo 3: The Bemo family: Nathan, Katy, Phoenix (14), Asia (12), and Israel (5)

A Call to Justice

Like many Dalat alumni, Evelyn (Sahlberg) Lundberg Stratton grew up knowing what it meant to be called by God. Each of her parents had felt the tug to pursue missionary work long before they met each other. It was a call to give up the security of life as they knew it to bring hope and joy to people in need.

Evelyn knew all about her parents' calling. What she didn't know was that God would ask her to do the same thing. But for her, the venue would be far different.

Preparing for the call

The preparation for Evelyn's unique calling began even before her parents, Elmer and Corrine Sahlberg, set foot in Thailand. As missionary candidates with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Sahlbergs were required to raise $1,000 for their passage overseas. With Elmer's $50-a-week salary, saving the $1,000 seemed impossible. But Evelyn's mother prayed each day for the money and asked her father each night when he came home if he had the check. One night he did.

A couple in Toledo, Ohio, whom the Sahlbergs had never met, randomly chose them from a list of missionary candidates and sent $1,000 for their passage. This miracle paved the way for the young family to fulfill their calling in Thailand.

Moving to Thailand

The Sahlberg family moved to Nongkai, a small town near the Laos border, about a 13-hour train ride from Bangkok, where Evelyn was born. Before the rail line extended to Nongkai, the nearest train station was a two-hour trip along a dirt road.

The 3,200-square-mile Nongkai province had only 14 miles of roads. Bridges were so rickety that Elmer Sahlberg would have his wife and children get out of their Land Rover and walk across the bridge, before he'd drive across alone in case the bridge collapsed.

In their early years as missionaries, family members lacked overseas telephone service, relying on telegrams to send news of births. The Sahlbergs, who brought their young son to Thailand, welcomed the arrival of three more children including Evelyn after moving to the country.

Discovering Dalat

At age 6, Evelyn went to boarding school at Dalat International School, which was then located in southern Vietnam. It was difficult to be separated from her parents, but she was excited to be a “big girl” going to boarding school. “I had a very independent streak,” Evelyn said. “And my parents always made me feel very loved. So I absolutely loved [Dalat]. I had a very, very positive experience.”

Set in the mountains, the school was surrounded by conflict — it was the height of the Vietnam War. As the war intensified, students were confined to the campus. In 1965, after eight American servicemen were killed and 100 were wounded in a pre-dawn attack nearby, the school was evacuated.

During this upheaval, Evelyn happened to be in Bangkok getting braces on her teeth. She returned to Dalat once classes began again in Bangkok, then went with the school when the campus moved to Tana Rata, Malaysia.

“Up in the mountains, it was just beautiful,” she said. “I'm a great outdoors person, and we did a lot outdoors. I loved the hikes. One of the most memorable hikes was when they took the entire school on a hike and we got lost in the jungle. We stumbled onto a hut, and they directed us back to a major road. We thought it was great, high adventure.”

Dalat was like one, big family, Evelyn said, and students often bonded closely with teachers who were like surrogate parents. Evelyn was especially close to a teacher named Mary Forbes, who taught at Dalat for more than 20 years. “Whenever I had troubles, I would go to her chalet,” Evelyn said. “She was my confidant. She was someone I turned to when I was lonely.”

More preparation

Evelyn's experience as a missionary kid was “ideal training” for the call God had prepared for her. “It taught me to stand on my own two feet, to be independent and strong,” she said. “I learned to make my own decisions…I'm really not much afraid of anything.”

She also saw firsthand how people suffered in societies without basic freedoms. “I grew up in countries that had no free speech or religious freedom, where the media was controlled by the government. Little did I realize such exposure would be a wonderful education for my future responsibilities.”

At age 18, Evelyn returned to America alone with only a few hundred dollars in her pocket. Working her way through school, she began her studies to be a scientist. When the program she was majoring in was cut, she changed her focus to law. A “small feeling” slowly grew into a solid conviction that God had called her to be a judge, Evelyn said.

Evelyn earned a Juris Doctor from The Ohio State University College of Law. She was hired by a small trial firm at a time when almost no law firms were hiring women. At age 34, she ran for office and became the first woman and youngest trial judge in Franklin County, Ohio. Presiding over major cases ranging from complex civil actions to capital murder, she established a solid record of judicial integrity, fairness, and diligence.

Her success on the trial bench led to an appointment in 1996 to the Supreme Court of Ohio, where she was elected to a second term in 2002. She is currently running for re-election for a third term.

Evelyn's calling to help those in need has been at the forefront of her work. She is deeply involved in reforming the process of adopting abused and neglected children and also works on reforms for those with a mental illness who are trapped in the revolving door of the criminal justice system. “With the ‘clout' of my title, I have been able to bring about real attention and reforms to this area,” she said. “[I] feel that this is part of why God gave me this important job — so that I would have a big platform from which to preach the need to treat persons with mental illness with compassion and medical care instead of prison.”

Evelyn is also married to John Lundberg and has raised two sons, Tyler and Luke, who are now grown.

A full circle

Confirmation of God's calling on Evelyn's life came unexpectedly shortly after she began practicing law. At that time, Evelyn worked on many wills and estates for members of her church in Columbus. One of her elderly clients mentioned that her sister, Violet Moon, had to have serious brain surgery but her insurance had been cancelled.

Evelyn offered to investigate and learned that a medical side effect of Violet's condition was memory loss — which is why she had forgotten to pay her insurance premium, causing the cancellation. After consulting with doctors and a hospital, Evelyn persuaded the insurance company to reinstate the coverage if Violet paid the back premiums. As a result, Violet's very expensive (and successful) brain surgery was paid for by insurance.

Later, when Evelyn's parents were visiting the church, Evelyn invited Violet and her sister to come to the service. When Violet heard their names — Corrine and Elmer Sahlberg —she said, “Thirty-five years ago, my husband and I gave $1,000 to Corrine and Elmer Sahlberg to go to Thailand. I didn't know they were Eve Stratton's parents!”

It was clearest indication that God's calling on Evelyn and her parents had come full circle. “Even the greatest skeptic can hardly believe it is mere coincidence,” Evelyn said. “Her gift affected her life, my life, and the lives of many others who have heard our story.”

More about Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton:

www.strattonforsupremecourt.com

www.ecsahlberg.com

www.youtube.com/justicestratton

Sources: “A Particular Course of Action” by Evelyn Lundberg Stratton in Alliance Life, December 2006, and “Asian Upbringing Influenced Stratton” by Laura A. Bischoff in Dayton Daily News, January 13, 2003.