The youth who find their way to the Comprehensive Juvenile Services Western Arkansas Youth Shelter arrive in all shapes, sizes, and backstories. They are the headstrong kids from “good” families who bristle under house rules and street-smart kids from “bad” homes who can’t take it anymore. They are all different, these kids, yet all fundamentally the same – hungry, hurt, searching.
They aren’t lost in the physical sense but adrift all the same, hoping to fix a heading toward whatever comes next while avoiding the rocks that lurk just beneath life’s surface. For these, the WAYS shelter is a lighthouse, and for the past nine years the keeper of the beam has been Clay Roper.
Since 2013, Clay has been the face of the shelter and of the Fort Smith Emergency Children’s Shelter for more than a decade before that. He was a natural for doing the work many people couldn’t fathom doing, serving with unyielding love and endless patience the kids who passed through, connecting where they would let him, treating all with respect and doing whatever was within his means to help.
His work was his mission and his mission was his life, which probably explains how he found the strength to work right up to the last month before his five-year battle with cancer ended on June 1.
“He loved what he did,” says Clay’s wife Tammy. “I’d say he had a gift. He really had a gift and a calling for it. Because of how he was able to interact, and I always joke about this, he was the child whisperer. He had the gift of de-escalation. He knew how to be calm.”
“He had a real love for the kids. He had such a heart for them,” said Janice Justice, executive director of Comprehensive Juvenile Services. “He was so empathetic to the kids; they normally struggle with a lot of issues in their lives, and he just loved them all so much. He loved working in the shelter. He loved the idea that we were able to give them a place to stay.”
Clay Roper was born December 29, 1972, in Fort Smith and was immediately gifted with someone to take care of in his twin brother Paul, who followed him into the world. His sense of responsibility for others would be amplified in his youth according to his older sister, Autumn Minnick.
“I think probably the driving factor in Clay ending up in the profession he did is our dad died when Paul and Clay were eleven and I was fourteen,” she says. “We were really fortunate to have a mom and grandparents who stepped in, but there were so many other people who kind of came into our lives like family, lots of coaches and teachers. I think the impact that had on all of our lives, on Clay and Paul in particular, just made a big difference.
“He was very good, I think, at being sympathetic and imagining what our lives might have been like if those people weren’t there for us. He kind of saw himself as being the person who would step in and help when kids were in bad circumstances.”
Clay gravitated toward sports in a big way; playing whatever was in season. Starting with tee ball and pee wee basketball at what is now Jeffrey Boys and Girls Club, he played quarterback on the Kimmons Junior High squad and distinguished himself as a two-sport athlete in basketball and baseball for Fort Smith Northside. A member of the inaugural Grizzlies baseball team, he and his teammates even brought home the conference championship in 1990.
Sports also fed into his mentor mentality; as an adult he volunteered to coach youth baseball teams from American Legion to the Mountainburg High School squad. His rooting interest in the Razorbacks, Dallas Cowboys and New York Mets burned as brightly as his spirit until the end of his life.
Seventeen years ago Clay formed a family of his own, marrying Tammy who was working with the state as a children and family services worker. She brought with her two daughters, Chauntel and Dachelle, just in time for the teenage years during which Tammy saw the diplomacy skills that made her husband so good at his job.
“He was the only male in our family, and he was always de-escalating things,” she says with a laugh. “He always had the right words to say, and he just knew how to keep you calm. He tried to have empathy and put himself in their place at all times. The girls loved him; they called him Claydy instead of calling him Daddy.”
There was never any doubt the love Clay had for his family – including his mother Sheila, who he looked after and who he’d call every night to say, “Goodnight” – but his was not a typical 9-to-5 job, and the family knew it. Tammy recalled many nights when family time came to an abrupt end as he excused himself to go tend to a kid in need.
“Coming from that professional background, I knew going in about the hours, being on-call,” Tammy says. “He would be on-call with his staff or maybe pick up a shift if someone called in sick or if the kids were not on their best behavior. It was a give and take for both of us.”
Clay’s steady influence was not only felt by the kids he cared for but the entire organization. His actions shaped the kind of environment he wanted the shelter to provide and gave a ready example of how to interact and care in ways that spoke much louder than words.
“He changed the culture at our shelter, and he improved the way that we deal with children when they misbehaved,” Janice says. “The fact that he always gave second chances taught the staff a lot. A child’s behavior might have been a result of parents who didn’t call that day or didn’t show up for a visit or whatever. He helped the staff to see that in an empathetic way, that they didn’t know what the kid had been through.”
Clay battled cancer with customary drive, not letting it get the best of him as he did his daily duties or stumped to raise money for a new shelter in Mulberry. Once again, people took notice and in the wake of his passing, donations in his name have poured in to help finish the project. And, during his memorial service, the organization also expressed to the family just how much he’d meant, with the surprise announcement that the forthcoming shelter would bear his name.
“It was fantastic,” Autumn said of the gesture. “Having something tangible like that makes a big difference. It feels significant to us.”
It’s difficult to sum up the impact Clay had in his life and career, so much so even his family and closest friends and colleagues struggle to find suitable words. Instead, they point to a video he made for work a while back, where he was asked to describe his philosophy toward his work and the kids he was born to serve.
“One of the most tragic things you see is a kid that has lost hope, that doesn’t think anybody cares about them,” he says. “That is so hard for a kid to get through. And what I want our kids to know is, OK, you’re at a shelter now, but this is a minute point in your life. You’ve got seventy, eighty years of your life left to live. Do not let your circumstance determine what your future is going to be.
“Our kids are normal kids; they just need a chance. They just need somebody to push them along the way.”
Help finish the Clay Roper Emergency Shelter! Visit Comprehensive Juvenile Services at cjsinc.org and click “Keepin’ it Cool for Clay” to make your donation.
