Along with its status as a county seat and home to a state university, Clarion Borough can lay claim to being, as Pam Selker Rak described it, a nice little town.
That’s her overarching memory of growing up there, about a hundred miles from her current home in Peters Township, amid a series of tree-lined streets laid out in a grid near the river for which the borough is named.
Author Pam Selker Rak says of illustrator Susan Vincent: “She brings the whole story to life visually, to appeal to children.”
Fond recollections of her hometown, though, have given way to stark realities.
“They’re struggling,” she said. “Let’s not sugarcoat it.”
In 2010, Clarion’s Owens-Illinois glass plant, one of the region’s major employers, closed after 105 years. Today, Clarion University of Pennsylvania faces an uncertain future following its merger with two other schools in the State System of Higher Education.
“I just really feel like communities need people to step up and try to make an impact,” Rak said.
For her part, she is donating net proceeds from the children’s books she writes to benefit institutions in the area she knew so well in her youth, starting with the Clarion Free Library.
“That’s basically where I spent my childhood, and that’s where I learned my love of reading and writing,” she said.
Next on the list is Jefferson-Clarion Head Start Inc., the administrative entity for child and family development programs in the two central-northwestern Pennsylvania counties.
“This is a perfect fit for them, because of one their goals over the next few years is actually getting books into children’s hands that they can own,” Rak said. “Through their experience and teaching, they’ve learned that when kids have their own books, they have a deeper commitment to them. Their chances of becoming lifelong readers and learners really go up.”
She also is working with Head Start teachers on lesson plans that correspond with the books and tie into the state’s learning standards for early childhood: scientific thinking, language and literacy, learning through creative play, health and wellness, and social studies and cultural learning.
“We are excited to offer these books and their curricula to our teachers,” said Pam Johnson, the nonprofit’s executive director. “I know they’ll love the books and the activities that have been created around them, and I know our children will love them, too, and learn a lot from each one. They are relatable, enjoyable and engaging, which will make them highly effective learning tools.”
A goal beyond Head Start is to secure funding from a foundation or corporation to provide all children in Clarion and Jefferson counties with copies of the two books that Rak has published so far, with an initial target of 700.
Pam Selker Rak signs copies of her first children’s book, “Sassafras Tea.”
The titles are “Sassafras Tea” and “Christmas Treedition,” and writing them – two more books also are in the works for next year – represents a relatively new pursuit for the author, who owns a marketing company called CommuniTech LLC.
“When we were in quarantine last year, work had pretty much ground to a halt for me. So it gave me a lot of time to kind of get creative,” she recalled. “I just started writing a bunch of little story-poems about my youth, growing up in Clarion, little traditions I had with my dad and my mom and kids in my neighborhood.”
With the encouragement of family members, Rak decided to put the stories into book form.
“It’s not something I was interested in doing to make a buck,” she said. “It was a creative outlet, a little fun project.”
Meanwhile, her experience with completing Leadership Pittsburgh, an educational program for senior-level leaders, inspired her to channel the proceeds into worthy causes.
“I cannot speak highly enough of that program,” Rak said. “It really did change my life in so many different ways. It made me think about community from such a different perspective.
“I’ve always been focused on my business and growing the business,” she continued, “but I never really connected the dots on how I could bring that kind of leadership into the community and kind of make an impact there.”
She decided to start with Clarion because of her personal connection, and also because she recognizes some of the disadvantages in rural areas compared with larger cities and their suburbs.
“Let’s face it. They aren’t the same,” she said. “And trying to make an extra effort to level the playing field a little bit is really important.”
Staff writer Harry Funk, a professional journalist for three-plus decades, has been on the staff of The Almanac since 2015. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master of business administration, both from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
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