ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 17, 1996 TAG: 9605170074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
TOTAL ACTION AGAINST POVERTY plans to honor one Roanoker for service that goes back to the 1920s.
G. Frank Clement is one of Roanoke's old guard - a business and community leader who's been as generous with his time as he has with his resources.
Bulky envelopes of newspaper clippings document his service to community, education and human services projects such as the Salvation Army Family Center and Center in the Square.
When Total Action Against Poverty's board of directors was looking for someone this year to head its first major gifts campaign - an effort to raise $150,000 to replace lost federal and state dollars - they turned to the 88-year-old Clement.
"He accepted," said Steve Musselwhite, board vice-chairman. "But he said 'Only on a day-to-day basis. At my age, that's all I can promise'.''
Musselwhite said it frightens him to think of Roanoke without the kind of power base that Clement - retired president and chairman of Shenandoah Life Insurance Co. - represents.
"The bad thing about it is, I'm not sure where the second team is," Musselwhite said. "The first team is getting older, but their influence is still being felt in our valley. We owe a great debt of gratitude to them."
This evening in a banquet at the Jefferson Center TAP will present Clement with its 1996 Noel C. Taylor Humanitarian Award. The award - the agency's fifth - recognizes "leadership in the promotion of unity in the community and opportunity for all."
Clement's civic-mindedness goes back to the 1920s. He conducted a fund-raising campaign for the old "community chest fund", a precursor of the United Way.
He sat - still sits - on so many boards, commissions and councils that space does not permit a complete listing.
William Hubard, a friend of Clement's for more than 20 years, said Clement has long been at the forefront of worthy causes whether they were popular or not.
In the 1960s Clement lead a committee of six blacks and six whites on a quiet mission of desegregation in Roanoke. Teams of two - one black and one white - called on lunch counters, movie houses and major corporations to sell the idea of racial integration.
Clement said Roanoke has changed substantially - but slowly - since then.
In 1983, he resigned his membership from Roanoke's exclusive Shenandoah Club after two well-known Jewish businessmen were denied membership. The club then had no Jewish or black members.
"It's a matter of getting people uneducated, I guess," he said. "It's hard to get people untangled from what they grew up with as kids. They have resistance to it. It's being overcome but not as fast as a lot of people would like to see it."
Clement filled the remaining six months of Hubard's term on Roanoke City Council in 1980. Hubard had stepped down to join the Virginia Commission on Local Government.
Clement said he received pay for his brief term but gave it to charity. He said he believed then, as he does today, that council members should serve without pay.
"You know, if you live long enough, stay out of mischief, you can do a lot of things that you ought to be doing."
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON Staff G. Frank Clement is scheduled toby CNBreceive the 1996 Noel C. Taylor Humanitarian Award tonight. color.