Second chances

Nathan Springer believes in second chances.

He knows that he’s had a few, and some of them changed his life.

Springer, who will retire in January as chief of the Portland Police Department, didn’t plan on a career in law enforcement.

He didn’t set out to be a cop.

In fact, for a good chunk of his early years he had no idea where he was going.

“I was kind of the underdog growing up,” he said in a recent interview.

Part of that underdog status showed up whenever he opened his mouth. 

“I had a real bad speech impediment,” he said. “They always said I talked faster than the words could cover. … Jay-Randolph (Developmental Services), I remember going there.”

He was still struggling in kindergarten and was subjected to his share of bullying.

“That was because I couldn’t talk,” he said.

Growing up on the Jay side of the Jay-Blackford county line in what was once the Godfroy Reserve of the Miami Indians — “Right next to twin bridges” — Springer went to first grade at Pennville Elementary School.

And got a second chance.

“My first grade teacher took a real interest in me,” he recalled.

So did a Jay Schools speech therapist.

And while Springer still acknowledges the impediment today, he has put that hurdle behind him.

More hurdles lay ahead.

When he was in seventh grade, his parents divorced. He and his mother and his younger brother, Jason, moved to Pennville.

School was OK, but it couldn’t keep him out of occasional trouble.

“When you’re a kid, you’re a kid. We all make mistakes,” he said. “There were times, when I could have been in a lot of trouble.”

At Jay County High School, he wasn’t focused on academics.

“In high school, it was welding — shop — that’s basically what I wanted to do,” he said.

But he had another potential second chance.

Spurred by his childhood speech difficulties, he enrolled in Reppert School of Auctioneering in Decatur while he was still at JCHS, graduating with his auctioneer’s license in 1992. A year later, he graduated from Jay County High School.

There was still no clear sense of direction.

When his girlfriend, Wendy Coby, graduated in 1994, it wasn’t long before they moved in together. They married in 1998, but as a young guy with no real path ahead of him Springer was adrift.

He remembers a wedding reception when he was in his 20s. He’d been drinking and was in one of those situations where it’s easy to make bad decisions, the kinds of decisions that can ruin your life.

Instead, an older woman at the reception saw what was happening. She took him under her wing and shepherded him through the event, keeping him on the right track.  

The next morning, Springer woke up — hung over — with a realization: “There must be something to this guy called Jesus.”

Yet another second chance.

He and Wendy had been attending church, but now it had greater importance.

For a while, they were attending Hickory Grove Church of the Brethren on Sundays and Cornerstone Baptist Church in Portland on Wednesdays. Today, they’re members of Hickory Grove.

Still, a career path was elusive.

“I was working at the drop forge (Portland Forge) and got laid off,” Springer said. 

Looking for work, he applied to be a police reserve and part-time dispatcher for the Portland Police Department. He didn’t think of it as a career change — he was hoping to be called back to work at the Forge — but it was.

Then-chief Bart Darby encouraged him to become a full-time officer.

And the second chances started adding up.

Springer was hired in November 2000 as an officer and graduated from Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in summer 2001.

Over the next 20 years, he would rise in rank and eventually lead the department as chief himself in February 2014.

Along the way, he took over the D.A.R.E. program in 2002, continued the “Building Bridges” event between law enforcement and developmentally disabled adults that began in 2014, launched the “Shop with a Badge” Christmas program for kids and also took charge of the Citizens Academy begun by then-chief Bob Sours.

As chief, he also implemented GPS tracking on all Portland police vehicles and body cameras for Portland officers.

“Officers didn’t like those at first,” he said, but they now agree that both are in their best interests professionally.

Somehow, along the way, he also found time to serve with the Pennville Elementary Parent Teacher Organization, coach youth baseball and help launch a Cub Scout program in Pennville.

He’s also a captain of the IU Health Jay Police Department.

He and his wife Wendy —“My wife is fantastic,” he said — have also raised two kids, Madison, 16, and Isaac, who will be 14 next month.

“A lot of good people gave me second chances, so I’ve tried to do the same,” Springer said. “I did some stupid stuff (as a kid) but I wasn’t judged for it.”

He knows those second chances have made the difference in his life.

Today, his brother Jason is still behind bars.

“He was smarter than me,” Springer said. “But it was the typical story. He got in with the wrong crowd and that was followed by addiction. … He’s struggled with it his whole adult life. … His choice was cocaine and after he got out of prison, it was meth.”

Jason has bounced in and out of incarceration for nearly a decade.

For now, Springer is focused on retirement and whatever comes after that.

“I feel better about this department than I ever have,” he said. “It’s got a bright future. It will be in good hands. … You’d be amazed by the training these officers are going through.”

For his part, Springer has gotten his license as an insurance agent and plans in retirement to start working with his longtime friend Mike Masters at Masters Insurance in Dunkirk.

Consider that yet another second chance.