G. Reynolds Clark Gets Lifetime Achievement Award From Westinghouse SURE

Pitt alumnus Maury Fey (ENGR ’65) recalled a recent conversation he had over lunch with G. Reynolds (“Renny”) Clark, Pitt’s vice chancellor for community initiatives and chief of staff for Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg

Earlier this year, Clark and his wife, Linda, had moved to Summerset at Frick Park from Franklin Park, where Clark had served as a firefighter, fire chief, and mayor. “All the time that he lived in Franklin Park, when the fire whistles would go off, Renny would run. Now he’s in the Summerset neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and he said, ‘You know, every time I hear those sirens across the river in Homestead, I get a heart tug,’” Fey remarked.

“That epitomizes a volunteer,” Fey said, adding that it goes to the heart of why Westinghouse SURE (Service Uniting Retired Employees) selected Clark to receive the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award for 2009.

The award was presented to Clark, retired chair of the Westinghouse Foundation, during the retiree volunteer organization’s June 10 annual meeting. Westinghouse SURE’s mission is to mobilize Westinghouse Electric Corporation retirees in Southwestern Pennsylvania for volunteer service to benefit the community as well as other Westinghouse retirees. Now in its 20th year, Westinghouse SURE’s 900 supporting members invested more than 60,000 hours of volunteer service to their neighbors in 43 community service activities during the past year. SURE volunteers and their spouses worked side by side, benefiting children, the elderly, and the infirm, as well as helping to raise funds funds for, and provide guidance to, other charities. In addition, they mentored entrepreneurs and managers of nonprofit organizations, worked in food banks, stood as honor guards at war veterans’ funerals, assisted at flu clinics, and provided computers for seniors.

“Renny was the original supporter of SURE when we started 20 years ago. If anyone epitomizes the reasons that we give that award, it’s Renny. We give it for long-term service to the community,” said Fey, a director emeritus and past president of Westinghouse SURE who retired from Westinghouse in 1992.

Clark joined Pitt in 2000 after a 34-year career with Westinghouse Electric Corporation, where, in addition to having chaired the Westinghouse Foundation, he served as executive director of the company’s staff services functions, among other roles. A 1965 graduate of Geneva College, Clark serves on his alma mater’s board of trustees. In 1990, he received the Distinguished Service Award from that college’s Alumni Association and cochaired the school’s recent $25 million capital campaign. Clark also serves on the advisory boards of Salvation Army of Southwestern Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Regional Asset District and sits on the boards of a number of civic and cultural organizations, among them, Family House, the Greater Pittsburgh Council-Boy Scouts of America, the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, the Regional Industrial Development Corporation, Pittsburgh Gateways, and the United Way of Allegheny County. He also chairs the Oakland Task Force and is vice chair of the Pittsburgh Public Service Fund, the local consortium of not-for-profit organizations and institutions that is currently providing special funding to the City of Pittsburgh.