Chattanooga civic leader Al Chapman honored for decades spent helping young people

Al Chapman speaks in 2015 about programs that help students at Brainerd High School.
Al Chapman speaks in 2015 about programs that help students at Brainerd High School.

A host of nonprofit groups, civic leaders and Chattanooga officials on Tuesday celebrated the life of a man who spent nearly 40 years in social service helping young people stay safe and finish school.

"Whatever it took to keep a kid on the right road, that's what Al Chapman was willing to do," Kenneth "Super T" Simpson said.

photo Al Chapman speaks in 2015 about programs that help students at Brainerd High School.

That included paying money to keep the lights on in a child's home and making sure they had school supplies and uniforms, he said.

Simpson and co- organizers Chris and Susan Maclellan joined an expected 500 people at Tucker Baptist Church as they applauded Chapman's passion for helping children. The invitation-only event was called, "Celebrating a legacy of service: honoring Alton Chapman Sr."

"It's intuitive to honor him because of the work and dedication that he has had throughout the years," Simpson said. "He's faced with cancer so we don't know how long we'll have him. We want to give him flowers while he's here."

Chapman, the 62-year-old co-founder and president of the Front Porch Alliance, relinquished some responsibilities earlier this year after learning he had a tumor on his spine.

Former Merrill Lynch adviser Oliver Richmond is Front Porch Alliance's interim executive director.

The organization is a faith-based nonprofit that addresses local needs concerning families and youth using other nonprofits, businesses and churches.

Chapman started and supported a number of programs to help youth. Few people know of his deeds because he works behind the scenes, said Doug Daugherty, project manager at the Maclellan Foundation.

Because of Chapman's fundraising ability, nonprofit groups hire thousands of youth each summer to cut grass and beautify the community through summer work programs, Daugherty said.

About five years ago Chapman worked with Rev. Rozario Slack to implement a program called "The World Needs A Father" in Chattanooga. The result has been some 500 fathers working in inner-city schools as mentors, Daugherty said.

Former Community Foundation head Pete Cooper said he admired Chapman because he spoke the truth when it wasn't popular. Sometimes he told people in boardrooms what they needed to hear, even though it wasn't pleasant, Cooper said.

Chapman was the first black chairman of the Community Foundation, he said.

Richmond said nonprofit groups that did work in the community but got no funding from other sources got support from Chapman through the Front Porch Alliance.

Scott Maclellan, Front Porch Alliance board chairman, called Chapman a catalyst and a convener who started collaborations among nonprofits, communities and churches.

"He was our ambassador and our eyes and ears on the street to know where and what was needed in the Chattanooga inner-city communities," he said.

Chapman said he has to help others because so many people helped him.

He said the late Scotty Probasco, a Dartmouth College graduate, helped put him through college at Dartmouth and then hired him at American National Bank when he graduated.

Chapman mentioned U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who worked with him in the 1980s to bring churches such as Lookout Mountain Presbyterian, Alton Park Bible and New City Fellowship together to repair homes for elderly people on weekends. The churches eventually formed the Adopt-A-Block program, which was a precursor to getting Habitat for Humanity and Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise in Chattanooga, Chapman said.

He named Cooper and the Lyndhurst Foundation as his mentors and trainers, but said his influence has been his family.

"My signature mark is my father, who taught us to work, and my mother, who taught us to give and she made sure we were in church," he laughed. "She never saw a church service she didn't like. So she kept us in there, and the ones of us who went turned out pretty decent."

Contact staff writer Yolanda Putman at yputman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.

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