Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 9, 1993 TAG: 9312090318
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
\ THE day Jerry Clevenger opened his Samaritan Inn on the Roanoke City Market, he carried a coffee pot, a razor, a bottle of after-shave lotion and a healthy load of fear.
He wanted to start a Christian ministry to Roanoke's down-and-out. He wasn't sure that it would work, and its potential seemed even more dubious after the first hour, when someone stole the razor, and then the second, when someone drank the after-shave.
That was in 1977. Clevenger persisted, and only now is about to take his leave from the ministry, which moved to the 500 block of Salem Avenue Southwest nearly four years ago.
Clevenger, 65, will retire Jan. 1. He'll spend two or three weeks visiting his mother in Maryland. Then he will return to Roanoke and continue to help out at the inn, behind the scenes as well as on the scene.
``Age and birthdays have a way of adding up,'' he said one day last week. He has a touch of arthritis, and Norma, his wife, hasn't been well, either.
The inn won't be the same without Clevenger doing everything himself. There is some concern about whether it will continue to be at all.
Clevenger spent 17 years feeding, clothing and providing daytime shelter and spiritual guidance to people on the bottom of life: the homeless and the friendless, including many who were addicted to alcohol and drugs. Clevenger and his volunteers offered God's word as the way to a better life, and they saw some of their listeners take heed.
Clevenger used his van to gather food from grocery stores, the Second Harvest food bank and other sources; until the past year, he also cooked the food at home and took it to the inn to serve as a noontime meal. He never took a salary.
Now, because he is leaving, the inn has hired Gary Gunn as its lunchtime cook. Wayne Meadows is on the payroll and training to take Clevenger's place as manager. The board of directors, in place for about a year, has transformed the ministry into a tax-exempt, nonprofit enterprise, a process that brought the need for property insurance, liability insurance and other expenses. The inn is facing an operating budget of $45,000 to $50,000 in the year ahead, about $15,000 to $20,000 more than this year's, said Walter Wood, the board chairman.
Wood is pastor of New Life Temple Pentecostal Holiness Church, one of 15 churches providing help to the mission in different ways. He said donations of money are down by about $10,000 this year. Reserve funds have provided a bridge, but they, too, are limited.
``Unless we get an increase, we have enough reserve funds to operate four or five months,'' he said. He characterized himself as concerned but not worried, because the inn and its work are only now becoming known to many people, and because Clevenger will continue to solicit funds from businesses and other sources, including his weekly radio program.
Clevenger always has been the inn's biggest selling point. He conquered a drinking problem of his own before starting the ministry, which he initially maintained while working four days per week as a lighting salesman. He studied at the old Shenandoah Bible College, and he delivers a daily message to the crowd lined up for the hot meal.
On the market, the inn served an estimated 40,000 meals per year, or more than 100 per day. Now the total is closer to 200. It includes brown-bag lunches available for those unable or unwilling to make it to the former dance hall at noontime. The other day, visitors dined on turkey, salad, buttered potatoes and macaroni and cheese. Of course, there was no charge.
The Samaritan Inn fills a gap that other agencies, like the City Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army do not. It provides a warm place on cold days, as well as lunch. Even RAM House, which serves about 4,000 lunches per month, considers its program more comprehensive and its clients more prepared to work on improving their lives.
The Samaritan's visitors are by no means all alcoholics or drug addicts, but many have that history, and many are not ready or able to start the long climb back. Many never will be.
The inn's seven-member board also is striving to pay off the mortgage, which totals about $17,000, Wood said. It hopes to pay off one note of $2,500 by the end of the year. It hopes to erase the whole debt within the coming year.
Before it began its work, the board sent a member to discuss the inn with agencies serving similar needs. The member found that the inn was providing a valuable service. That has been the incentive to keep it alive.
``We know our problems here,'' said Clevenger, a dapper presence in a pink shirt, blue tie and gray pin-striped suit, with his hair neatly combed. ``They're alcohol and drug problems. So we do have a starting point.''
When Clevenger opened that first day, the City Market was ``like a little New York Bowery. Men were sitting in doorways passed out and drunk. When I opened up, merchants were glad to see me. The older generation saw me as a help to them.''
He and his clients were less welcome after the Market became rejuvenated. Complaints from merchants about men standing outside, blocking sidewalks and sometimes fighting or panhandling created a controversy.
Clevenger has always maintained that he is doing the community a favor by keeping the visitors, who are mostly men, off the streets. He lets them in when they're drunk, and on cold nights scours the city after-hours to be sure they're not sleeping outside. He has often paid for their motel rooms.
``He would go hungry himself before he'd see one of them go hungry,'' Wood said.
That spirit apparently will live on in Wayne Meadows, who gave up a job as a dozer operator and union president at a quarry to become the inn's manager. Wood said Meadows' take-home pay will be about $200 per week, far less than he was earning. Meadows, 44, said he agonized for two years before realizing that serving the most desperate was his mission in life.
The inn is not entirely dreary. Some of its visitors have jaunty nicknames, like Homeboy, Hobo and Ronald McDonald, and many of them converse, though many also stay to themselves. Many wear heavy coats obtained from the inn's clothes closet.
The work does seem a bit thankless, if not hopeless, though Clevenger insists that it is not, ``because those who get something to eat and keep them warm are always very grateful there are places like this to help them.'' The trophies of the world ``can't take the place of people,'' he said.
One of those people, Robert Irvan, heard Clevenger's story about the razor and after-shave and said that he was among the inn's very first visitors.
``Curiosity took me in there,'' Irvan, 57, said, ``and the first thing Jerry did was offer me a cup of coffee. I was a drunk ... . I said, `Man, I don't want no coffee. That stuff'll kill you.'''
Clevenger said his patience has gotten shorter in recent times, a result of his age, and that's another reason he will retire after 17 years.
``I've always counted it like dog years - seven to one,'' he said, with a laugh. ``It feels like I've been here over 100 years.''
``It's a hard, bona-fide ministry,'' Wood said, ``doing a legitimate job.''
\ Want to help? Send donations to the Samaritan Inn, P.O. Box 21551, Roanoke 24018.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB