North Irwin Pepsi delivery man loved his job, people
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Clifford Lee Bressler loved his job as a delivery man for Pepsi Co., serving grocery store owners with soft drinks from the company’s warehouse in the Pittsburgh suburb of McKees Rocks.
“He loved people,” and loved going to the “mom and pop” grocery stores, where he would become friends with the owners, said his wife, Doris Jane Sadler Bressler.
He was so well-liked that when he missed work because of an injury, she received calls from his customers offering to provide her with food, if needed, she recalled.
“If you did not like Cliff, you did not like yourself,” his wife said.
Clifford Lee Bressler of North Irwin died Sunday, July 28, 2019, at his home. He had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease the past few years. He was 81.
Mr. Bressler was born May 10, 1938, in Wilkins Township, a son of the late George Luther and Zelma Mae Benshoff Bressler.
He met his future wife when they were in eighth grade growing up in Wilmerding and dated while at Westinghouse Memorial High School in Wilmerding, Bressler said. The couple married in 1962.
Even before he graduated from high school, Mr. Bressler landed a job as a helper for a truck driver at Mission Orange, a bottling company based in Wilmerding, his wife said.
When that company closed after several years, he got a job at Pepsi after being unemployed for just one day, she said. He retired in 1998.
He was a member of First United Methodist Church in Irwin, where he joined a group of other men in doing maintenance work and repairs at the church. At First United Methodist, he worked with the Methodist men on “work day” each week.
He loved to play darts in the Men’s Dart Ball League, a church group with competitions in churches around the area, including in Greensburg, Sutersville and Penn Township, his wife said.
Mr. Bressler was a helper in the kitchen at the North Huntingdon AARP Chapter 3221 meetings each month at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in North Huntingdon. Both had been active in the AARP chapter for several years, she said.
The couple loved to go camping and camped in every state except Hawaii, she said. They were members of a camping group that called themselves the Irwin Strawpumpers.
He loved travel in general.
“I think he was born with wheels,” his wife said.
For many years, until 2014, they would spend winters near Tampa, Fla., she said.
“I had a wonderful 57 years of marriage,” she said said.
Surviving are one son, Terry Bressler and his wife, Kim, of North Huntingdon; three grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; a brother and a sister.
Friends will be received from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday at Ott Funeral Home Inc., 805 Pennsylvania Ave., Irwin, where a funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. Monday in the funeral home chapel. Memorial donations may be made to Heartland Hospice Memorial Fund, 750 Holiday Drive, Suite 110 No. 9, Pittsburgh, PA 15220; or Alzheimer’s Association, 1100 Liberty Ave., Suite E201, Pittsburgh, PA 15222.