By Gary Lee Stuber
Donna Salsbury is living the dream. “I’ve always wanted to do this,” she says of the Clay Family Support Center she recently opened on Main Street in Clay across from the New Judicial Annex in the old NAPA Parts building. The building was also previously operated as the Clay Small Market, selling fresh produce and meats before opening the kitchen for daily diners. Donna and her assistant Cindy Mullins are using the building to help strengthen Clay County Families. They have a number of programs going on at once.
“Our recent Clay County Baby Shower was a success we gave at least 50 families one big item like a car seat or bassinette. Then they got a laundry basket of necessary baby item, bottles, formula, diapers. Things like that.” She shines when describing the helpful status of the organization she orchestrated from a $250,000 federal grant. “We held an extravaganza, carnival style, up at Maysel Park and got more than 250 families to engage. Instead of an egg hunt the children did carnival style games and got prizes in plastic eggs. We got some sponsors like Smith Funeral Home to furnish hot dogs and we covered the rest.”
It’s a little ironic that Donna is operating out of the old NAPA Building. Donna probably knows more about car parts than any employee that ever worked in this building. You see, Donna and husband Jerry built the Salsberry Salvage business out on Tripplet Ridge 27 years ago.
“Jerry said he didn’t want to work the rest of his life as a coal miner. I asked, what do you want to do? He said car parts, and I asked, ‘You want to open a NAPA?’ He laughed and said no. Used parts. Salvage. I said you mean a junk yard. He said, don’t call it junk.”
She agreed to the dream if she could do it though computer access. It cost them $10,000 to do it that way, back when such systems were new. “We were the first to have parts reference by computer in West Virginia.” She said she would do that 25 years, she’s over the limit now, “I opened the salvage parts in in my dining room.” She still operates that business nights and weekends. Jerry, after his heart bypass, was forced to retire.
Donna comes from good stock out at Bird Hollow in Lizemores. Her mother was Doris Price Bird and her father was Charles E. Bird, and Donna was one of four surviving children. She graduated Clay County High School in 1982 and worked briefly in Charleston before marrying Jerry. “I guess I wanted to help out young Clay County families because I know what it was to struggle. In the 1970’s ragging inflation, economy in recession. You couldn’t even buy a coal mining job.”
The memory of her struggles would leave her with a desire to help others in a very vulnerable stage in life. “Young families today are different than when I was young. People are perpetually moving. When I was growing up, people rarely moved. They were surrounded by resources: parents, grandparents, family, and friends. Now, there are families in Clay that have come from other places and they don’t even know a soul here. They are cut off from family resources.”
That is where Donna excels. She has programs or even ambitious ideas for almost everything family. They operate a food pantry, will soon offer cooking classes. They have Zumba and yoga to get young parents out of the homes for a little break from kids. They have play areas and even afterschool tutoring for children. But the proudest thing she is accomplishing is that she is becoming a “hub.”
She says, “There are lots of organizations out there doing a lot of stuff. And I try to get involved so that we can pool resources, people, experiences, and items to make every organizations efforts: double.” She has been effective at being a hub. As it makes all the other organizations shine too.
Donna has been in the news recently, not just for opening the Family Support Center, but because what she did for her father. He was the 99-year-old who will graduate with the 2024 Clay County Senior Class, along with his biological great-granddaughter, Ashdon. Donna adopted Ashdon after her son Jeremy died of an overdose on his brother Justin’s birthday, and she has done a great job raising her. Ashdon will turn 17 a week before she graduates. She was double promoted because of her grades and knowledge. She wants to work in medicine, but nothing involving needles, so she decided that she wants to learn how to administer sonograms. She has a very great future ahead of her and an early start at that.
Donna’s other son, Justin, works for the federal government in Philadelphia and has given her two more grandsons, Ivan and Alex, who are still in grade school and don’t get to visit Mamaw as often as she would like.
In the meantime, Donna is helping to strengthen other Clay County families and perhaps inspiring young mothers to one day carry on a legacy she is creating. The location is new, and Donna and Cindy are doing what they can to use the available design and space to create a family-oriented facility. And while shelves are still being built and old freezers and stoves from the last tenant are yet to be removed, the facility work continues as they can. And Clay County families have a new resource that they can count on.
