Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 5, 1991 TAG: 9104050515
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT LENGTH: Medium
There was no gambling involved. Clements was assuring board members that his membership in the Navy Reserves wouldn't suddenly take him away from his pastoral duties.
"I told the board the reserves have never been called up and I don't see a chance of it happening," Clements, 43, recalled.
But early one morning in November, Clements and 50 other members of a Seabee unit based in Roanoke got on an airplane. Members of Reserve Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 23 were headed to Port Hueneme, Calif., and various duty posts in the South Pacific and Alaska.
The reservists had been called up after all - to replace regular Navy Seabees assigned to Operation Desert Shield, which turned into the Persian Gulf War.
On March 23, at 1:40 a.m., Petty Officer 2nd Class Clements flew back to Roanoke and to the church on Main Street in Rocky Mount.
He had been on Guam in the South Pacific for four months and had gone through a typhoon, two earthquakes and some deep-fried food that was "probably stuff they tell you to stay away from."
While he was on Guam, he helped repair two churches, but the chaplain of the outfit made it clear there was no room for another chaplain.
While he was gone, other ministers handled his job - preaching and hospital and home visits included - and Clements said he came home to a better situation than many reservists did.
The church didn't pay his base salary while he was gone. But it allowed his family - his wife, Charlene, and daughters, Rebecca, 13, and Allison, 11 - to continue to live in the parsonage.
The church also continued his medical insurance.
"A lot of guys over there" weren't sure "how they would find the situation" when they got back, he said.
On the first Sunday back, Clements didn't give a sermon but asked his substitute if he could serve as worship leader at the 11 a.m. service. "I got up there. I got a standing ovation," Clements said.
Clement's next sermon will be given April 14. It will not have a military theme or be based on his recent active duty. "I feel like every now and then I'll drop something in," he said, but the active service won't be stressed.
Clements was born in Lynchburg and once studied the use and management of heavy equipment. He graduated from Lynchburg College and then went to Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky.
His reserve career goes back 22 years, including two years on a destroyer.
It will end in 1992 under a program called "high year tenure," which means that Clements - who has held the same rank since 1974 - will have to go. "Basically, I'm getting kicked out," he said.
The Navy is telling him: "We don't need you anymore. We need some of these new kids," he said.
But the rare and sudden call-up of reservists would seem to make the entrance of the "new kids" a little doubtful.
Clements and the other sailors talked about that. "We just kept saying the reserve program is going to look a lot different," he said. But, the Navy "is telling us there are people waiting to get into the reserves."
Clements said he has no quarrel with the reserves. The $100 per month came in handy, and he agreed to possible active duty when he signed up.
Would he sign up again if he was not being mustered out next year? "I don't see why I wouldn't," Clements said. "I can say that because I don't have to do it, but I think I would."
Like other servicemen, Clements said he is not completely happy about this recent tour of duty.
"We felt like we were jerked around a lot," he said. There was trouble with pay and with food, he said, and those two troubles are never good for morale.
"We weren't as pleased with some of the people in charge as we might have been," he said.
Things are better now. Clements is home and he won't have to attend drill at the reserve center in Roanoke for three months.
by CNB