GEICO Alumni Showcase: Clarence Grier
Former Campbell men's basketball player
Clarence Grier, a two-time All-Big South honore and the league's player of the Year in 1986-87, was recently profiled by the
Roanoke Times after being named Deputy City Manager of the city of Roanoke.
Clarence Grier played at a Salem amusement park as a boy.
Just over the line, in Roanoke, he landed the first desk job and met his wife as part of his life’s journey that took Grier to the doorstep of the NBA and then into accounting and government work.
Now, he’s returned to Roanoke, where “a lot of my milestones happened,” said Grier, the city’s new deputy manager.
The former No. 2 manager of Guilford County, North Carolina, was hired to become take the same spot with the city of Roanoke. Incumbent Deputy City Manager Sherman Stovall will soon end 10 years in top leadership and depart for retirement, city officials said.
Grier, 55, was born and raised in Greensboro. As young as 9, he recalls, he visited Salem and went to Lakeside, the well-remembered amusement park that closed during the 1980s.
Grier holds a bachelor’s degree from Campbell University in North Carolina in business administration.
Grier said his life goals when young were to “go to the NBA and be a CPA.”
While at Campbell University, he was a star basketball player. Grier went on to become the first Big South player drafted by an NBA team. He was chosen by the Houston Rockets and went to Texas but didn’t make the team, he said. Grier, who was 6-foot-7, instead played for three months for the Quad City Thunder in Illinois in the Continental Basketball Association.
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