Taking stock at the end of the year often leads to looking farther back than the previous 12 months. For the OOR program, the path runs back 32 years, to 1972.

At the OOR main office there is a box with what could be called “family” memorabilia: black and white photos of people involved in the program’s earliest days; construction project pictures; newspaper clippings; grant proposals asking for modest amounts to keep a tiny program running for just one more year; letters of support for the accomplishments of a small group of inmates and staff working in the community.

Mission Established

These pieces of history track the progress of a program that has developed and changed and yet remained the same. In 1972 at SCI Greensburg (then SRCF Greensburg) staff, inmates and community volunteers
formed the Committee for Community Awareness to work on meeting needs of the inmates and the community. That mission, inmate need for job training and community need for low cost
construction services, lives on in the work of the agency today.

In fact, this remains the mission: inmate training through
community service, resulting in reduced recidivism.

It is fitting that a suggestion from an inmate sparked the early development. Bill Rehak, an inmate member of the committee and an accomplished carpenter, wanted to provide home improvement services for older impoverished persons. An article in the box of memories describes his persistence:: “He never quit about his idea,” said Joe Rollins, a corrections counselor at the time and head of the CCA. “Every time I turned around there he was, asking me about it.”

When Rollins got the go-ahead from then Superintendent Thomas Fulcomer, a pilot project called “Repair on Wheels” was started with a $2000 grant from the Westmoreland County Office of Economic Opportunity.

Meanwhile, in the nearby community of Dunbar, Father Vincent J. Rocco, a parish priest, had been asked to leave his parochial assignment and become a resource person for Concerned of Pennsylvania, Inc., an ecumenical committee involved in job training, housing, community development and volunteer efforts.

“We’re running the program for two reasons,” Father Rocco said later in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, the first reason being that the inmates learning a skill would help them get a job. The second was helping people-- “poor people, old people, people who need any break they can get to make ends meet.”

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