Some say we become who we are due to 10 defining moments, seven critical choices and five pivotal people. Sometimes, they overlap.
As a Berea College student in the 1960s, Thomas “Tom” McClure ’66 had a life-defining moment when he read Dr. Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” An early pivotal person in his life was Perley Ayer, Berea professor of rural sociology, who made a profound and lasting impact on McClure’s life.
This impact evolved into a desire to help organizations create and support addiction prevention and recovery efforts. McClure drew on his young life, where family and friends had addiction issues. Later, he also struggled with abusing alcohol and prescription medications. Much later in life, he recognized his struggles in college resulted from undiagnosed ADHD and from taking questionable medications prescribed on an experimental basis by an outpatient clinic where he had gone for help.
McClure survived and, despite the damage, decided while still in college he wanted a life with meaning. He did not realize it then, but in 1972, in Atlanta, Georgia, he found that life through attending a variety of community-based self-help recovery organizations composed of people with similar interests. He received the help he needed to abstain completely from alcohol and drugs. Finally, with the help of others, he moved out of the darkness of active addiction into a sun-filled, productive life. In December 2024, McClure celebrated 53 years of freedom from the physical, mental and psychological constraints of addiction and a more fulfilling life with purpose, meaning and adventure beyond his wildest dreams.
McClure came from what would now be called a dysfunctional family. His early life revolved around people and problems associated with heavy drinking. In addition, he grew up in what was then called a sundown town—one that abounded with a history of racist attitudes and racial segregation. Thankfully, those attitudes no longer permeate that town, which has acknowledged and apologized for its historical dark period. McClure came from a hard-working family limited in its appreciation of higher education. McClure became the first in his immediate family to graduate from college.
After a year at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky, McClure transferred to Berea along with his alcohol dependence, which increasingly handicapped his studies. However, he found a new life on Berea’s campus. There he met friendly students, a supportive faculty and concerned administrators that, in many ways, provided the stable home, family and community life he had rarely experienced.
At Berea, I finally felt involved and secure—it was a home.
Tom McClure ’66
“At Berea, I finally felt involved and secure—it was a home,” McClure said.
He became involved in several campus activities and labor assignments, including working in the Guidance Office, leading campus tours and assisting in the president’s development office. Part of his job involved spending hours reading about Berea’s history, goals and the significant challenges arising from the College’s radical mission.
“I was not the typical high academic-performing Berea student,” McClure admitted. The labor program fascinated, engaged and rewarded him. He gained significant work experience and skills that served him well in his future career in community service, project development and management.
While at Berea, McClure had not caught a world vision of the multitudes facing economic and discrimination crises until classmate and friend, George Giffin ’66, persistently urged McClure to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Giffin’s enthusiasm was contagious, but the real motivator for McClure came when his friend, Roscoe, one of Berea’s Black students, was refused service at the local Coffee Cup Café.
McClure had no idea that services could be denied to someone simply because of race. Before he knew it, McClure was on his way with Giffin, fellow students and faculty to Selma, Alabama, where they marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to Montgomery in 1965.
“Until Selma, I had never experienced such fear, such hatred being directed at me,” McClure recalls. “The only comparable experience in my life came later with my involvement in a Bosnia post-war conflict resolution effort between white but opposing ethnic and religious groups.”
McClure’s newfound concern for the discriminated and politically unrepresented millions did not end with the civil rights march. While still a Berea College student, he participated extensively in Save the Children and Council of the Southern Mountains rural service and community development programs, such as Appalachian Volunteers.
These experiences became the linchpin for McClure’s 60-plus years in leadership training and development work in the South and Northeast and then encircling the globe. His international development and training work focused on post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, pre- and post-revolution Egypt and the Middle East, South Asia and East and Southern Africa. He provided training, funding and materials, and offered management support to evolving leaders of nonprofit, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) whose purpose was to further democracy and aid disadvantaged women, children and the disenfranchised.
He had found his life of purpose.
In addition to conducting workshops and consultations in post-Communist Europe and Russia, McClure used foundation and government grants for his extensive work in other Eastern European countries. In South Asia, McClure lived in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province where he administered medical and development projects funded by the U.S. Department of State and United Nations. He founded Save the Children Pakistan to meet the needs of children and families in those camps.
As a key advisor, McClure helped to create programs for the Salvation Army World Services Office (SAWSO), in Washington, D.C., which took him on missions to several pre- and post-colonial African countries including Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Soweto Township in South Africa. He developed training programs for evolving national leaders of the organization. McClure served in top field management positions for Save the Children (USA), America’s Development Foundation and the Salvation Army World Service Office. In Egypt, McClure obtained government funding to create Arabic NGO training videos, featuring Egyptian TV personalities, for community development orientation and training for more than 400 civil society leaders from 10 Middle Eastern countries.
Most notable among McClure’s achievements is founding Support Centers International (SCI) in 1990 in Westport, Connecticut. SCI encourages organizations and individuals to share information on addiction and recovery solutions. SCI established U.S. and international conferences to link addiction service providers and facilities with recovery specialists.
In 2018, SCI established and funded the Appalachian Gathering for Recovery Solutions in Corbin, Kentucky. Its growth was supported by Berea’s Appalachian Fund. Rev. Kent Gilbert, pastor of Union Church, is the president. McClure serves as the SCI volunteer director in Mexico.
McClure continues to work in community development providing volunteer management support to health and addiction treatment programs in Bosnia, Ukraine, Egypt, southeastern Kentucky and Jalisco, Mexico. He divides his time each year between Corbin, Kentucky, and Ajijic, Jalisco State, Mexico.
“In retrospect,” McClure said, “at age 84, I can say with great confidence that offering services for the common good, especially the disenfranchised, disadvantaged and abused brought meaning, purpose and enhancement to my life and still does.
“I am grateful to Berea College and my recovery,” he added, “for having provided me with the means, the model and, yes, the spirit to provide that service.”
