Chris Collins
During his lunch break, Donell Hill has both feet planted in the parking lot outside First Congregational United Church of Christ. But his thoughts, he says, are “up there,” on the church’s two imposing towers overlooking University Avenue.
“My first steeple was in Chicago; that was a slate steeple that was 300 feet tall,” he says proudly. “Once I got up there, man, I was gone.”
For almost eight years, Hill, 42, has worked as a steeplejack for Inspired Heights, a Rockford, Ill., company that specializes in church steeple repairs. And for parts of the past two years, he’s worked with a crew in Madison, scraping and repainting the railings, façade and towers of First Congregational, one block north of Camp Randall.
A recovering alcoholic, Hill credits Tony Stratton, the bushy-bearded owner of Inspired Heights, for helping him find a stable life.
“I was a runner, never staying put,” Hill says of his past. He landed this job without knowing how to read a tape measure or use a nail gun. Now he’s a supervisor training others how to rig the ropes and ladders needed to reach perilous heights.
Stratton, a third-generation steeplejack who retains the Boston accent from his youth, says he often hires recovering addicts or ex-cons through his connections to a recovery home run by Victory Outreach church in Rockford, or through his work as a volunteer chaplain at his local county jail. His employees range from 18 to over 50 years old.
His for-profit company bids for work across the country, and he trains his staff based on what each job requires. That could mean painting, fabricating metal or decking a steeply pitched roof. It’s hard work, he says, and some quit after a few weeks. Others, like Hill, stay for years.
“What I tell them is, ‘I’ll give you one thing, and that’s a job. Everything else you earn.’”
Workers start at $9 an hour to do basic jobs like sweeping up paint chips, but they start earning raises in a few weeks, Stratton says. He points to several crew members at the First Congregational site making $14 an hour. It’s not much, but he says the on-the-job training boosts their confidence and future job prospects.
“They’re doing work not many people can do,” he says.
The company wears its Christianity on its sleeve, and while there’s no religious litmus test for workers, they begin each day with up to an hour of Bible study or talking about “life lessons” like having a good attitude or supporting each other, Stratton says.
“There’s a verse in the Bible that says ‘Be transformed by the renewing of your mind,’” he says. “So that means if you want to be different, you gotta think different.”
He invites me to privately interview any of his workers. A half-dozen introduce themselves one by one, shaking my hand.
Darius Bell, a 43-year-old Rockford native, got this job three months ago after being laid off from another. Between the eight- to 10-hour shifts, the morning meetings and the commute — the crew travels together in company trucks — he’s away from home up to 15 hours a day. But the crew is “like a family,” and the work is fun, he says. That morning, he’d pulled his first shift atop the church’s tallest tower.
“Inspiring, a little scary,” is how he describes it, “like jumping out of an airplane for the first time.”
Hill has a wife and four kids, and on Aug. 1, his co-workers helped his family move from an apartment to their new home.
“I’m blessed,” he says. “Just being a friend or a brother to someone, that’s what we do here.”