Christian Layman volunteer Wayne Clemens, 85, wins volunteer of the year award
For 15 years, Wayne Clemens has loaded trucks full of clothes and furniture, preparing to deliver the donated items to charities as far as West Virginia and Kentucky.
The 85-year-old Hempfield resident has been a staple at Greensburg’s Christian Layman store, making deliveries, maintaining trucks and keeping them up-to-date on inspections. Clemens was recently named volunteer of the year for his work at the thrift store by the Pennsylvania Association of School Retirees.
“It’s very rewarding, as I get to give back to the community,” the retired Jeannette teacher said. “I feel I’ve had a good life. I like to give back.”
The nonprofit on East Pittsburgh Street offers clothing, furniture, home goods, books and children’s toys at discounted prices, or for free to those who qualify.
The organization has a food pantry, Beds for Children program, emergency food and a veteran’s program — one of Clemens’ favorite programs that gives homeless veterans the basics, including food, a microwave and a coffee pot.
A Korean War veteran, Clemens spent 19 months in the country, working as a cartographer in the Army Corps of Engineers. While he never saw combat, he was part of a team that would locate and mark live landmines that had been placed during previous battles.
“My job, with my troop, was to go around and establish those and mark them and put them on maps where they were, so they could then put something around them so guys wouldn’t walk on them,” he said.
After Clemens returned home from the war, he decided to follow a passion for teaching. He spent years teaching at Greensburg Salem and Jeannette school districts after receiving degrees in geology and secondary education from Waynesburg University, and a master’s in elementary education from the University of Pittsburgh.
It wasn’t until years later, after he had retired from teaching and stopped working at the Westmoreland County Food Bank, that Clemens put to the test the skills his dad taught him growing up.
Clemens would often help his father, who worked in the trucking business, driving with him to small area coal towns that were hit hard during the Great Depression.
“You didn’t have food banks, they didn’t have charities like this and a lot of people went hungry. I have friends who grew up in the (coal) towns like Crabtree … all these little coal mining towns,” he said. “Well, they lived in company houses, and the company owned the houses, they owned the grocery store, they owned everything. So these people were poor.”
After starting at Christian Layman, Clemens used the skills learned during that time to maintain the truck fleet — which he grew from one vehicle to nine.
In his role, he picks up donations and takes them to charities in Uniontown and Markleysburg, a borough in Fayette County, and on long hauls to other states.
“Basically, my function is I have to take care of all the regulations,” he said. “That’s the federal DOT and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. We have to file reports and have numbers assigned to us or we can’t operate the fleet in Pennsylvania or out-of-state.
“So I go through with all those regulations and file those periodically, and then I take care of the licensing and inspection of all our vehicles and take the trucks to the various places.”
While he said he never had a knack for volunteering growing up, Clemens said he finds his role rewarding — adding he never expected the volunteer of the year award.
“It’s rewarding for me, and it keeps me out of trouble in my old age, I guess,” he said.
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