Jack and Andrea Clevesy left their home this morning for North Carolina. Jack resigned his position with the RIchard G. Snyder YMCA after serving for 30 months as its CEO. Jack appeared on the WTYM morning show yesterday to say his goodbyes to a community that he came to love.
It won’t be the incredible aquatic center or a huge room full of gym equipment that Jack Clevesy will remember about the Richard G. Snyder YMCA. He will remember the people.
“This community is downright awesome!” Clevesy said. He appeared yesterday on the WTYM morning show “David & Friends” to say goodbye to the community whose outpouring of love captivated his heart.
Jack came two-and-a-half years ago to become the Chief Executive Officer of the RGS YMCA. He left his Kittanning home this morning with Andrea, his wife of 37 years, to continue their journey. For the moment, he will collect his thoughts walking along the beach of his North Carolina home. But when there is a YMCA in need of leadership, Jack said he will pack his bags and be off on his next adventure.
“We’re going to go down there and suck up some sand and sun for a week or so. Then, I’m going to get right back at it. I don’t know what’s in store. I want to get down there and do some volunteer work, but I can’t rule out that I’ll be in the next moving truck headed somewhere because it’s just what I do.”
Anyone who spoke with Jack longer than 30 seconds knew his accent wasn’t from Western Pennsylvania. The New England brogue was his defining speech.
“I grew up in a place called Bradford, Massachusetts and started my early Y career there at about 3 years old. My mom and dad would drop us kids off there and we learned how to swim there. When I got out of the Marine Corp., I actually boxed out of the YMCA there for about 7 years competitively, which has taught me a lot.”
Jack’s interest in the YMCA activities captured his attention as a young man and into adulthood.
“I actually initiated a few triathlon programs at the Haver YMCA in Massachusetts, and then many races that we ran. I was a Strength and Conditioning Coach when I started college. But my first appointment with the Y was in Raleigh, NC, at a Y that was extremely dysfunctional. It rained harder on the inside than it did on the outside. And they brought me in because they had lost about 7,000 people. We didn’t necessarily get back that amount of people, but we got back quite a few. From there, they built a brand new Y on the site and that really just started my whole Y career. From there, I moved on and became an Assistant Executive Director at a couple of different Ys across the country. Then, I became an Operation’s Director, a Chief Operations Officer, and then a Vice-President in various spots and then hence got the opportunity to come here to Kittanning.”
The Clevesy’s stand in their garage just prior to loading their vehicles for the journey to North Carolina. They held back tears as they said goodbye one more time.
Jack said he never set out to be a CEO, but rather set himself to be a high-developing leader within the Y organization.
“The Bible says faith without works is dead. And so there’s nothing that you do in your life without purpose that materializes.”
With that determination, Jack came to Kittanning at a time when the RGS YMCA needed leadership.
“This community turned this YMCA around much faster than anybody could’ve expected. It usually takes about 5-6 years to do what we did in less than a year and a half. Because of this great community, you guys allowed me to do my job and we got there. As a matter of fact, we were looked at by Y USA, which is the parent corporation underneath the 2800 YMCAs across the United States and the world. There are some key metrics they call key financial benchmarks and they’re all asset based. There were 10 metrics and they were all in the red. There’s an opportunity to have them in the yellow, which means they’re in transition, but green is what you want to see. I can sit here with all authenticity and tell you today and tell you that all those metrics are green and they were all red when we first got together. So this community really rallied around itself.”
Jack had breakfast with the RGS YMCA Board and Staff recently. He gave them his parting thought.
“Number one: Love each other. Nothing gets better than doing this kind of work when everybody loves each other. Number two: Don’t get comfortable. If you get comfortable, you’re not going to be ready. I attribute that to the Taliban that probably does not take fighting off on Christmas Day. So, we’ve got to fight. We’ve got to fight every single day. Get involved, don’t stop and definitely don’t take no for an answer. There is no easy way. And those are the things that stand on and will continue to stand on.”
Jack said he knew it was the right time to come to Kittanning, and now it’s the right time to leave.
“One of the things that I focus on – is that there’s an expiration date to everything that we do. If you want your life to stay vibrant and you want to focus on the Lord, you’ve got to know what time it is and what you’ve done.”
As Andrea and Jack gathered up the last box, they fought back tears.
“As I ease on down the road, I just want to thank this whole community for how well they’ve embraced me these last few weeks, but really more so my wife,” he said.
The full interview from yesterday’s WTYM morning show is below: