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MASSARO: With family, work or Rotary Club, Cliff Grasmick has never wavered

By Gary Massaro, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 18, 2008 at 9:47 p.m.

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When Cliff Grasmick commits to something, he'll go out of his way to make it work.

Grasmick, 82, is coming up on 53 years of perfect attendance with the Lakewood Rotary Club. In Rotary, if you miss a meeting, you have to make it up at another club to get credit.

"Sometimes you have to go to extreme measures to make up the meeting," Grasmick said.

Once, he and his wife, Elaine, went to Casper to help a son do some remodeling. So Grasmick missed the meeting in Lakewood. He also missed a makeup meeting in Casper.

"The nearest club was in Sheridan - 150 miles away," Grasmick said.

So he drove to Sheridan.

Grasmick was born in Milwaukee. But when he was 2, his folks moved to Sugar City, east of Pueblo in the Arkansas River Valley. After graduating from high school in 1943, he came to Denver to go to college. He finished his first semester at the University of Denver. Then the Army drafted him and put him in combat engineers.

He served in Europe. In 1946, he returned to Denver to finish college.

While in school, he applied for and was hired as a part-time bookkeeper for a lumber company.

His family had settled in Lakewood, where Grasmick lived. He'd take the old Inter-Urban line to and from school.

At church, he met the former Elaine Kannenberg. They got together after hitting it off at singles' get-togethers.

Grasmick went to school nights to get his MBA from DU, which he received in 1957.

The owners of the lumber company were both Rotarians. They'd invited Grasmick to occasional gatherings. And he decided to join.

"I just saw some of the things Rotary was involved in - not only Rotary-wide but worldwide," he said.

One of his first local projects was to pitch in to build a playground for children at Ridge Home in Wheat Ridge.

Another member said the kids were blind and needed a safe playground.

There's still some good to be done, he said. And that's why he sticks with Rotary.

After 14 years in the lumber business, he joined the purchasing department for Jefferson County Public Schools. He eventually moved on to manage the district credit union.

When he retired after 25 years with Jeffco schools, he said he gave up 256 days of accumulated sick leave.

"I had the flu once and took off two or three days," he said. "I was pretty healthy . . . or went to work feeling sickly."

He and Elaine have raised three children. They have five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Rotary isn't the only thing Grasmick is committed to.

"My wife and I, just last Thursday, celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary," he said.

massarog@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5271