Building up the home missions
For over 40 years, Ted Clear has donated time and materials to Glenmary projects
By Christine Grote

You might say that Ted Clear helped build Glenmary. Since 1968 he has personally worked on and provided materials and equipment for various Glenmary building projects across Mission Land, USA. Glenmary priests and brothers know there is one thing they can count on from Ted Clear—his generosity.

Lou and Ted Clear have been friends of Glenmary Father Wil Steinbacher and supporters of Glenmary since 1966. Photo/Christine Grote

Ted’s association with Glenmary began in 1966 with a phone call from Glenmary Father Wil Steinbacher. Father Wil was chaplain of a dorm at Loyola University in Chicago where Terry Clear, Ted and his wife Lou’s son, lived. Terry was hospitalized and Father Wil called Ted and Lou regularly to update them on his condition. “We were very grateful for that,” Ted says. Father Wil’s relationship with Ted and Lou, natives of Greater Cincinnati, grew into a friendship.

After Father Wil moved back to Cincinnati Ted and Lou helped him remodel the farmhouse on the property where Glenmary was preparing to move its Headquarters. There, Ted and Lou met Glenmary Brothers Paul Wilhelm, Terry O’Rourke, Larry Jochim and Joe Steen who were also working on the structure.

Ted helped with the trimming and drywall when the current Glenmary residence was built in Cincinnati in the early 1970s. He also found experienced contractors to train the Glenmary brothers in bricklaying, plumbing and electrical work.

Ted, then the owner of a wallboard business, either donated to Glenmary or sold—at a greatly reduced price—all the wallboard used in the residence according to Father Wil. Ted doesn’t remember that. “I was never one to keep track,” he says.

Ted’s business often produced leftover pieces of wallboard in different sizes. He says Brothers Paul and Terry “were the first two to come around” to gather the scrap wallboard pieces which they used as skirting on mobile homes in the mountains.

“Whenever Brothers Paul and Terry left Ted’s shop they had their truck full to the top,” Father Wil remembers.

When Brothers Paul and Terry started housing projects in Dahlonega, Ga., they needed a forklift. “Would you have one here?” they asked Ted. “We’re not going to use it a lot so we don’t need a real good one.” Ted gave them “Old Smokey.” The brothers weren’t sure how they were going to transport the forklift to Georgia, but they told Ted they had noticed a trailer for sale down the street from his shop. Ted bought the trailer for them.

This spring Ted is supplying the concrete wallboard for the exterior of the new church hall and offices being built at Glenmary’s St. Francis of Assisi mission in Aberdeen, Miss.

Ted’s daughter, Lisa Schaffer, says that one of the things her father has taught her is if you can build a house that is sustainable and durable, “it begins to change people’s lives.”

One of the ways he has done that is by developing ProTEC panels, innovative insulated wall panels that are used around the world to build better, more durable houses.

Why did Ted donate his time and so many other things to Glenmary for over 40 years? “Well, I don’t know,” he says. And then he chokes up and pauses a moment. “It was something I wanted to do. The Good Lord treated me well and I think I wanted to pay him back.”

Even so, Ted wishes working with Glenmary was something that he could do over. “I think I could do better,” he says, “but at the time we did the best we could.”

“He’s a generous man,” Father Wil says, “and when he sees something that needs to be done, he does it.”