Meet the Man and Woman Volunteers of the Year

Tom Perkins, Clara Rose Thomas to be honored

By Ashley M. Casey

Associate Editor

Each year, the Baldwinsville Volunteer Center honors one man and one woman based on nominations from the community. And what better time to celebrate those that give back to their community than April? It’s National Volunteer Month.

For 2019, Clara Rose Thomas was named Woman Volunteer of the Year and Tom Perkins was named Man Volunteer of the Year.

While they will have to wait until the coronavirus pandemic has blown over to celebrate in person, as the annual award banquet has been canceled, Baldwinsville can still celebrate the Volunteers of the Year by reading about what drives them to give back to their community.

Tom Perkins

Causes/organizations: Baldwinsville Volunteer Fire Company, St. Mary’s Church

Nominated by: Sean Dunlap

The Baldwinsville Volunteer Fire Company has long been a part the fabric of Tom Perkins’ life.

“My father was assistant chief and chief of the fire department. My brother was in it, my uncles — it was just something that you did as a member of the family,” he recalled.

In 1962, Perkins joined the fire department himself. According to Sean Dunlap, who nominated Perkins for the BVC award, Perkins has collected several accolades over his decades-long career.

“He held all offices in the organization for 15 years as a chief officer. Eight of those years were as Chief of Department. Tom recently retired after having served five years as chief of the North West Fire District,” Dunlap wrote. “In 1975, he received his department’s Valor Award for the rescue of a fellow firefighter.”

Perkins has been a member of the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York since 1966 and is a past president of the Onondaga County Volunteer Firemen’s Association, past chair of the Lysander Public Safety Committee and past chair of the Onondaga County Fire Advisory Board. Perkins also was employed as the assistant supervisor of fire protection at Nine Mile Point Nuclear Facility for 10 years and fire marshal of the Upstate Medical University campus.

When he learned he had been selected as one of the Volunteers of the Year, Perkins said he felt “kind of humbled.”

“It’s tough to think that you’re honored for something that you like to do,” he said.

The hardest part of a career in emergency services, Perkins said, is dealing with death.

“We respond to all kinds of emergencies: car accidents, drownings. It’s always difficult dealing with that,” he said.

Much of a firefighter’s job is interacting with someone on their worst day.

“You’re helping people and you’re seeing them at the worst time in their life. When you’re responding to calls, it’s always their bad day that you’re trying to help them out,” he said.

What makes the job worth it is “the satisfaction in knowing that you’re making a difference, no matter how slight.”

“It’s been a pretty rewarding career. You try to bring a little comfort to people that are hurting,” Perkins said.

Over his decades of service, Perkins has seen many changes in the way firefighters operate. Gone are the days of lingering around the firehouse to socialize, as the demand for emergency medical services has increased. With contractors using cheaper materials, new construction homes burn more quickly than older homes.

“Change is almost daily in the way we do things,” Perkins said. “Building construction has taken a toll on the way we fight fires. When [new homes] are involved in a fire, it doesn’t take long for the house to collapse. There’s been several fires in the area that we’ve lost homes.”

While Baldwinsville is growing, Perkins said the area has maintained its tight-knit, small-town feel.

“It’s a very warm, friendly community,” he said. “I know a lot of the people, which sometimes helps when you’re responding to a call.”

Perkins is hoping more people will realize the importance of giving back to their community.

“Unfortunately, a lot of the organizations are hurting for volunteers,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s not that sense of volunteering anymore or if people are just too busy.”

Aside from his involvement with the Baldwinsville Volunteer Fire Company, Perkins has also volunteered at St. Mary’s Church as a eucharistic minister and a former member of the Parish Council.

“They give to you so you try to give back to them,” he said. “I think everybody needs a faith of some kind. I just think it’s an important part of life.”

Clara Rose Thomas

Causes/organizations: Baldwinsville Fourth Grade Colonial Festival, First United Methodist Church of Baldwinsville, 4-H, Witter Agricultural Museum

Nominated by: Tish Evans and Bonnie Kisselstein

When Clara Rose Thomas was in her 40s, she told her son, Bruce, what she wanted to do in her old age.

“In 1975 I said when I got old and gray and had nothing else to do, I wanted to learn to weave and spin,” Thomas said.

Bruce’s response?

“Well, you better start now.”

Now 91, Thomas has been weaving and spinning for over 40 years. The Baldwinsville native — she grew up on the Melvin Farm on the corner of Route 370 and Hayes Road — has a lengthy volunteer resume that includes co-founding the Baldwinsville Fourth Grade Colonial Festival, demonstrating weaving at the Witter Agricultural Museum at the New York State Fair, leading an active 4-H Club in the 1960s and ‘70s, and devoting her time to the First United Methodist Church of Baldwinsville.

“I still consider her my mentor even as decades have passed since she first started judging my progress in sewing,” Tish Evans wrote in her nomination of Thomas. “She is an outstanding lifelong contributor to our town and its people, and her impact has reached far beyond our village, throughout the county, state, and the world.”

Thomas has woven countless coverlets, scarves and baby blankets over the years, winning more than 50 blue ribbons at the State Fair.

“I belong to Syracuse Weavers Guild and I’ve taught quite a lot of people to weave,” she said. “At the last guild meeting there were 25 people and I think nine or 10 of them had been my students. It keeps me out of mischief.”

Thomas weaves thread into designs on notecards and sends them to loved ones as well as area seniors and residents of Syracuse Home.

“Somebody just called today and said they saved every one I’ve sent them,” she said.

Until his death in 2013, Clara Rose’s husband Walt was her partner in weaving. The Thomases filled their farmhouse with looms and honed their crafts. Walt made corn brooms and sold them at the State Fair. The couple began demonstrating their work for the students of Bonnie Kisselstein, then a fourth-grade teacher.

“When it started, we took the spinning wheels to Bonnie’s class at the Elizabeth Street School,” Clara Rose Thomas said.

Fourth-graders from Palmer Elementary School would walk over to watch the Thomases’ spinning and weaving demonstrations. Eventually, the Thomases invited other area crafters who specialize in the colonial arts and the affair moved to the Baldwinsville Central School District bus garage. The Baldwinsville Fourth Grade Colonial Festival was born.

“That was 38 years ago this year,” Kisselstein wrote in her nomination letter. “Up until the time that Walt died in 2013, they had only missed one year of demonstrating and teaching the children at the festival (and that was because they were demonstrating at a school event in Phoenix). Clara continued for a couple more years but at age [91] finds it too tiring to be on her feet all day.”

While Thomas is best known for her weaving, she said she is most proud of her involvement in 4-H.

“You don’t know what good you’ve done [until later],” she said. “A few years ago, I heard one of the girls that was in our 4-H club was the head of a law office.”

Thomas recalled that the woman got her start demonstrating how to make deviled eggs and that 4-H taught her public speaking, which certainly helped in her law career.

Of being named Woman Volunteer of the Year, Thomas said, “I thought there were people that have done a lot more for Baldwinsville.”

Without volunteers, she said, “we wouldn’t get very far — especially right now the way things are.”