March 2014 Profile: Clara Jeter
by Moe White
True Passion: Older people and helping others in need.
Support Network: My children—they’re always there for me.
Biggest Indulgence:
My grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Happiest Time in Her Life: When I’m doing things for others.
Favorite Authors for Motivation and Spirituality: T.D. Jakes, Maya Angelou, Joyce Meyers, Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as biographies and memoirs (“I love people’s life stories.”)
Tenets of life: If I start something I like to finish it. I like to get involved in different things, to keep my mind open to new things.
For all she does in Asheville, Clara Jeter is very modest. Her mother first recognized and encouraged that quality, as well as many others that guide her life. “She taught me to listen and not talk as much,” she says. “You miss stuff when you’re talking all the time and don’t listen. Be able to listen, and then you can seize the moment.” This humility and personality trait has served her well throughout her life, allowing her to make a difference in her community and the lives of others.
Clara was born on Bartlett Street when the street still ran all the way across Blanton St., and her family moved to Stumptown in the early 1950s. “It was a community where everyone looked after the children, looked after each other. That old saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ that’s what we lived.” Since 1985 she and her husband, Kenneth Jeter, have lived in a split-level house just a few blocks from her childhood home.
As a young girl Clara helped her uncle as a dispatcher for his well-known Darity Cab Company on Eagle Street, and a strong work ethic has stayed with her throughout her life. So when the Federal government began establishing such programs as Model Cities, she trained in the New Careers program—her first plane trip was to New York City as a New Careers representative. Soon Clara went to work at the Housing Authority, where she stayed for almost a decade.
In the early 1980s Asheville-Buncombe Community Christian Ministry representatives visited her church. “They needed volunteers, and I went there to volunteer. It was on Broadway, in this old building. We served the homeless, we gave out clothing, bags of food, financial assistance.” The Ministry had at most 100 or 150 volunteers at the time.
Two years later Clara became director, taking on the responsibility of recruiting doctors and nurses to participate. Fifteen years later, when she retired, there were 500 volunteers. People respond to Clara.
“A lot of people find it easy to talk with me,” she says, “because I’m just myself, I don’t try to be anybody else. It’s a gift,” she acknowledges, “a wonderful gift to have. I thank God for that because He’s the one that instilled that in me.”
Though Clara “retired” from the Crisis Ministry in 1998, she was soon back at work, running ABCCM’s mammography program. Even now, after retiring again, she still volunteers regularly once or twice a week.
Clara’s ambition from childhood was to become a nurse, though things turned out otherwise. She took classes at Blanton’s Business College and at A-B Tech. Instead, she has nursed the entire community—a different outcome that God planned for her.
She went through Leadership Asheville, served on boards and committees including the League of Women Voters, Community Relations Council, and currently is a board member of Community Action Opportunities and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Association. She’s a member of the Stephens-Lee Alumni Association and of St. John Baptist Church in Arden. She served with the Hill Street Baptist Church “Deal-of-a-Meal Ministry,” feeding the homeless, and continues to work with the Soup Kitchen at ABCCM—and has been honored with the Martin Luther King, Jr. Service Award.
Why so much volunteer work? “It’s important to be involved a lot in community so I can keep abreast of what’s going on. I used to work with voter registration drives; I like to vote, and I like to help people be able to vote.” Clara Jeter likes serving others.
Her mother was her most influential role model. “She taught us to read because she knew how important it was. She was mild, meek, but she had wisdom. That wisdom got passed on to my children.”
And happily for all of Asheville, it is being passed on to the rest of us as well.
