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OSCAR S. CLEMENTS. Such a young man as Oscar S. Clements, superintendent of the electrical department of the Springfield Gas and Electric Company, with offices in the Woodruff building, is a credit to any city or community, and his life forcibly illustrates what energy and consecutive effort can accomplish when directed and controlled by correct principles and high moral resolves. The qualities which have caused him to win in life's battle have no doubt been inherited from his worthy New England ancestors, and he himself hails from the far away Pine Tree state.
Mr. Clements was born in Bucksport, Maine, October 3, 1881. He is a son of Wesley P. and Dora I. (Mayo) Clements. The father was also born in the above named town and state, about the year 1853, his parents having located there in an early day. He there grew to manhood and was educated; he became a mining engineer and was an expert in his line. His untimely death occurred in 1883 at the early age of thirty years. The mother of our subject was born in Ellsworth, Maine, in the year 1858, and there grew to womanhood and was educated. She is now living at Saco, York county, her native state.
Oscar S. Clements was only two years of age when his father died. He grew to manhood in his native state and received his primary education in the public schools. Being of a mechanical turn of mind he decided to take up the gigantic study of Electricity, the real substance and possibilities of which no man seems to know, and in order to equip himself for this line of work he went to Boston, Massachusetts, and entered the Rallo Institute, and took the course in electrical engineering, in which he made rapid progress. After finishing his studies there he went to Lynn, Massachusetts, where he secured employment with the General Electrical Manufacturing Company, doing practical work in shop testing. During the earlier years of the building of the Panama Canal, he went to the Isthmus and was a government employee under Col. George Goethals, and had charge of the construction and operation of the power houses at Colon and Cristobal, doing his work in a highly acceptable manner leaving the Isthmus of Panama in 1908, he went to Eastport, Maine, as superintendent of the electric light company for one year, after which he did construction work for a while, then went on a long voyage to Kwanchenstz, Manchuria, in the northern part of China, where he built a steam-driven turbine generator power house, a complete plant, inside and outside, including a steam-heating plant. This job was for the Chinese government, and he did his work faithfully and most acceptably. He finished his work there and left China in 1911, and.returned to Lynn, Massachusetts, where he remained six months, then came to Springfield, Missouri, and on January 1, 1914, took charge of the electrical department of the Springfield Gas and Electric Company as superintendent, and during the short time that he has been here he has proven most conclusively that he is a master of his vocation, thorough and up-to-date in every respect. His long years of study and his practical experience, especially abroad, have equipped him for his life work in a most splendid manner, and, judging from his past record and the fact that he is only a young man, one must necessarily predict for him a brilliant and useful career in future years as an electrician.
Mr. Clements was married in August, 1907, to Myrtle A. St. Clair, who was born in Lubec, Maine, December 28, 1888, and there grew to womanhood and received a good education. To this union two children have been born, Beatrix T. Clements, who is attending school, and Paul W. Clements.
Politically Mr. Clements votes independently, and in religious matters is a Congregationalist. He is a young man of genial and pleasing manners, and at once impresses the stranger as an experienced and traveled man of the World.
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