George Thomas “Bud” Hembree, Sr. 72, of Travelers Rest, SC, passed on at 6:24 a.m. on Tues., Dec. 19, 2023 at Greenville Memorial Hospital.
A retired construction worker and U.S. Army veteran (motor pool) with tours in Germany and Vietnam, George attended Trinity Church of God (Pastor Steve Tolbert) and formerly attended Faith Temple Church (Pastor Raymond Burrows).
Born in Greenville County, SC, George was the son of the late George Houston Hembree, Sr. (1913-1980) and the late Elmer Burgess Hembree (1926-1999). He was predeceased by a sister, Carolyn Hembree Stroud. Surviving are George’s children (George Jr. and Angela), his younger brother, Ansel William Hembree (Sharon), and the youngest of his siblings, Sadie Diane Hembree Simmons. Funeral services were held at 1:00 p.m., Fri., Dec. 22, at the Howze Mortuary Chapel after the family received friends. Burial followed in the Faith Temple, Taylors, SC, cemetery. Pastors Tolbert and Burrows and George’s cousin, Charles Hembree, 69, spoke.
George and his younger sister, Sadie, lived in Sadie’s Travelers Rest home. She recalls saying to George on Mon., Dec. 4, “John-Boy, I’m gonna call it a night. I’m gonna hang it up. I’ll see you in the morning.” George said, “OK, Elizabeth. I’ll see you in the morning.”
George and Sadie watched reruns of “The Waltons,” a drama series about a rural Virginia family during the Great Depression and World War II. John “John-Boy” Walton Jr. was oldest of the 7 siblings. Elizabeth was the youngest. “The show’s end sequence featured the family saying goodnight to one another. ‘Goodnight, John-Boy’ was one of the most common catchphrases of the 1970s,” sources say.
The next morning, Tues., Dec. 5, around 9:00 a.m., Sadie found George lying behind his recliner where he had fallen minutes earlier. He could not speak. She called the Tigerville Fire Department. At Greenville Memorial Hospital, a doctor told her George’s carotid artery burst, causing blood clots in his brain. George already had stage 3 lung cancer and had taken 4 chemo treatments. He died on Dec. 19.
George’s brother William, 70, said, “Still got George’s deer-stand down in the woods where we hunted. I’ve lived 5 to 10 miles of him most of our lives.”
George created many walking sticks, jewelry boxes, etc. from wood he gathered from walks in the forest. He gave most of his work to friends. He often said, “The Lord has been good to me.” He sometimes told of times he could have died, if the Lord had not looked after him.
George liked the bluegrass song “Life’s Railway to Heaven.” During his eulogy, Pastor Tolbert referred to that song and said about George, “He’s finally pulled into Union Station.”
Before the Funeral
George Hembree’s trim body lay in his black U.S. Army windbreaker. His black Vietnam Veteran ball cap with embroidered, round Vietnam Veteran insignia lay near his gray-white, full crop of hair. His left hand held a Bible. An American flag half-draped his coffin.
Folk came to pay respects. Four of George’s cousins lingered near his casket: Charles Hembree (age 69, who would speak later at the funeral; Charle’s father and George’s father were brothers), Mildred Westmoreland, Brenda Roberts, and Polly Moore. Other relatives, including George’s brother, William, and William’s wife, Sharon, stood or sat in the large Howze Mortuary parlor in Travelers Rest, SC. Sadie Simmons, George and William’s sister, talked with mourners. Sadie and George they lived together, and their brother-sister bond appeared strong.
William, 70, said that when there were family conflicts among the Hembrees, he “took the slack out of their plow lines.” He said he sometimes felt “like the big brother” in the family.
Ministers Speak at George’s Funeral
At 1:00 p.m., men from the Howze Mortuary staff escorted George’s closed American-flag-draped coffin down the middle aisle of the mortuary chapel as George’s extended family followed. Friends stood as the family filled pews on the left-front side of the chapel, the side directly facing the pulpit. A large piano stood on the chapel’s right side. The chapel middle was reserved for coffins.
Pastor Steve Tolbert of Trinity Church of God led the service. A thin, gray-white-haired man wearing a gray sport coat and dark trousers, Tolbert spoke from the chapel pulpit. George and Sadie had attended his Greenville, SC, church for over a year, he said.
“George was a giver; he loved to make things, but today he is a receiver. He’s in the Lord’s presence,” Tolbert said.
Pastor Burrows Speaks
Pastor Raymond D. Burrows (pictured), of Faith Temple Church, wearing a dark suit, spoke. George and Sadie attended Faith Temple for many years prior to attending Trinity Church of God. Burrows called the gathering “a celebration service” and used Psalm 23 as his text.
“‘The Lord is my Shepherd.’ Jesus declared himself a shepherd,” Burrows said. “George came to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus. George had this rather unusual ability to make walking sticks or pool sticks… He was generous. I don’t know of him charging anybody for them.”
Burrows read, “He restoreth my soul.”
“This happens really on an eternal scale. He [George] is now in the presence of the Lord,” Burrows said. “There is so much here applicable to Brother George. He took pleasure in his service for the Lord. ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me.’ George said there were times when he should not have lived. He said, ‘God has been good to me.’ We know that all is well with our dear Brother George.”
“I’ll Fly Away”
A recorded bluegrass rendition of “I’ll Fly Away” played. Words from that song floated through the chapel — “Some glad morning, when this life is o’er, I’ll fly away; to a land on God’s celestial shore, I’ll fly away… Like a bird from prison bars have flown, I’ll fly away… .”
Pastor Tolbert, referring to Christ’s return, said, “When Gabriel toots, we’re gonna scoot!”
He said we often say things such as “She lost her husband,” but that the departed is not really lost, they are just on a “different plain.”
Tolbert said he called George “John” when he first met him, and that name sort of stuck because he still often referred to George as “John.”
“He loved to work with wood, loved to be in the woods, loved to hear leaves crunch under his feet. He loved the outdoors,” Referring to George’s condition after his stroke, Tolbert added, “George couldn’t talk, but he’d already made his calling and election sure… God brought George and Sadie to us [Trinity Church of God]. I called her ‘Sadie Mae.’”
Tolbert said the acronym for JOY is “Jesus Overflowing You.”
“I joke around,” Tolbert said. “I’m glad the Lord brought George into my life.”
Charles Hembree, George’s First Cousin, Speaks
“What a paradox life gives us,” Charles Hembree (pictured above) said, explaining that in a few days, we would celebrate the birth of Jesus, yet we were “burying a loved one.”
Charles said he and many others called George by the nickname “Bud” and that George called him “Curly.” He called out other nicknames in the family such as “Boo” and “Flit.”
“We’ve got some ‘handles,’ don’t we?” Charles said. Commenting that George paid his way to a movie when they were young (Charles is 3 years younger than George), Charles said, “That boy was generous.” He recalled the first Moped George got. “Me, being younger than them [of the three: George, William, and Charles], they got me in trouble.” He recalled that they would get inside truck tires and roll the tires — “Talk about dangerous!” he said.
“I loved him with all my heart,” Charles said about George. “At times, he was a brother I never had — so was William. My heart is sorrowful. He has now run his race.”
Charles said that, in ancient days, a murderer might be sentenced by the victim being strapped to the murderer’s back. The rotting corpse would infect the murderer who would die from disease.
“Our bodies are like that,” Charles said, speaking of physical decay taking place as we live.
He read Psalm 116:15: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
“Bud won’t have to worry about this life any more,” Charles said.
He read St. Paul’s statement: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
“He [Bud] beat us there,” Charles said, referring to heaven. He reminded all that “God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.”
“How is your heart today?” he asked. “Sam, Boo, Curly, Flit? How is your heart today?”
Charles prayed, thanking God that Bud was part of his life. “Father, give us all peace. Today… help us have the fortitude not to be depressed… Thank you for receiving Bud to your bosom.”
“In His Arms, I’m Not Afraid”
Playing his guitar, Pastor Steve Tolbert and Mrs. Joann Tolbert, his wife (pictured above), sang a song by Jim Eanes (Homer Robert Eanes Jr.) called “In His Arms, I’m Not Afraid.” Here are the words to that song’s first verse and chorus:
“When my eyes, shall close in death, / Fold my hands, upon my chest. / Sing for me, a pretty song / While I take, my journey home. (Chorus): Not afraid to bid this world goodbye. / Not afraid, to close my eyes and die. / For this courage I have prayed. / In His arms, I'm not afraid.”
Pastor Steve Tolbert Speaks
“Life is full of ‘suddenlys,’” Tolbert said. “Home at Last” was his message’s title.
“Hope is what the whole salvation experience is about,” Tolbert said, adding that Jesus became “a curse” hanging on a tree that we may hope to be with the Lord. “We shall be like him. Our hope began many years ago in the Garden of Gesemene… ‘Father, not my will but thine be done’… He was in flesh and blood, just like you are me. He prayed ‘if there was another way’ … but there was no other way… ‘Whosoever will’… Every one of us is a ‘whosoever will.’”
Tolbert read Titus 2:11: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.”
“Favor is ‘pleasure,’ but it’s also ‘mercy,’” Tolbert said. “You’ve never done so much, been so mean, that God won’t forgive. The sins of a man can be placed under the blood of the Lord Jesus.”
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).
“He’s coming back again,” Tolbert said. “He gave himself for us.”
“But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4).
Pastor Tolbert said his mother saved S&H Green Stamps, given by retailers when a shopper bought an item. Sperry & Hutchinson (S&H) began offering stamps to U.S. retailers in 1896. A person could exchange stamps for merchandise at what was called a “redemption store.”
“The Lord has redeemed us through his precious blood,” Tolbert said, adding that we’re in a mortal state but enter an eternal state. “Life brings us many groans. Life can be mean to you… cares of this life. We get down, burdened with his life.”
He talked about an “earnest,” a deposit. Christ gives us his Spirit as a witness, an earnest, a deposit, on what will be given in full.
“We walk by faith and not by sight,” Tolbert said. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
He gave an acronym for HOPE: H — Have, we can have hope; O — Only, we only find hope in the Lord; P — peace, his hope brings peace; E — Eternally, everlasting eternal peace in heaven.
“I’ve Never Been Sorry,” he said, naming a song title. “I’ve never been sorry that I trusted His Name.”
Pastor Tolbert prayed: “Thank you for that grace, Lord… it will present us faultless with exceeding joy. These are heavy times, but we look beyond these times, in Jesus’ name, amen.
Go Rest High
Singer Vince Gill’s recorded voice rang through the Howze speaker system as Gill sang “Go Rest High on That Mountain.” These are some words of that song: “Oh, how we cried the day you left us / We gathered 'round your grave to grieve / I wish I could see the angels' faces / When they hear your sweet voice sing / Go rest high on that mountain / Son, your work on earth is done / Go to heaven a shoutin’ / Love for the Father and the Son.'
All attendees rose, and the mortuary staff escorted the coffin to the left door of the chapel. The family exited, following the coffin, and many attendees drove to the Faith Temple cemetery. There the funeral tent stood, placed high on the hill beside the old church house.
Taps was played, and the American flag atop the coffin was folded by two soldiers. A sergeant presented the flag to Sadie, George’s sister, as she sat on the end of the first row of family. Pastor Tolbert said a few final words. Pastor Burrows prayed, and comfort was given. George’s body was laid to rest.
