Kenneth A. Clark 1938-2013

This blog has been fairly quiet lately, as my dad passed away on March 25^th at age 75.  He had some health issues for sure but nothing to indicate that he’d die in his sleep from a cardiac event.  In fact, by all accounts he’d been feeling pretty good lately after having back surgery to help alleviate the nagging pain he had to put up with for years.

Truth be told, we didn’t have a lot in common when it came to politics, religion, recreation, and perhaps most things.  Nobody’s fault.  That’s just the way it was.  But once I decided several years ago to focus on the things we did have a common interest in, such as what makes a good chile relleno or what’s wrong with the Seattle Seahawks and not talk about all the other stuff, things got a whole lot better.  As the saying goes, it’s not how you start but rather how you finish.

His service was the other day at the Latter Day Saints church where he was a member.  Everything went as well as could be expected from my viewpoint.  Well, almost.  One of the church officials was on the program to give a eulogy about my dad.  Honestly, most of it seemed to be less about my dad and more of an infomercial for the LDS church.  But I suppose that's just a cog in the wheel of the promotional machine in these modern times.

I was in awe of the number of people who I met for the first time that talked about how my dad touched their lives in so many different ways.  It made me happy that he was surrounded by such people until the very end.  I was glad to have connected with family from Utah, most of whom I haven’t seen for many years.  Ironically, it often takes an event such as this one to make that happen.

I was asked to speak at the service.  For history and posterity, here is the text that I wrote and somehow managed to get through at the podium:

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I have not met a lot of you.  I know that many of you are acquainted with my younger and better-looking brother, Scot, who is here in the front with his family.  And of course you all know my stepmother Brenda Clark.  My name is Joe Clark, and I am Ken’s older son.

First I’d like to thank all of you for being here today.  We have a large gathering of family and friends here.  Many of you came all the way from the state of Utah to be here.  I think that my dad would have been impressed by this.

Kenneth Albert Clark was born on April 26, 1938 in San Bernadino, California, the third of seven children.  They didn’t have much in the way of possessions.  In fact if any of you have seen the movie or read the John Steinbeck novel “The Grapes of Wrath”, I’ve been told it was a lot like that.  If it’s true that every picture tells a story, then one of the photos on the back of today’s program that you have tells that story.  The family went from town to town, wherever his dad could find work.  He eventually found work at Geneva Steel Mill near Provo, Utah in 1952 where they settled.

After graduating high school, Ken joined the Coast Guard in 1958 and was stationed in Port Angeles and liked living in the area so much that he rarely left.   There was one notable time in which we did move, though.

In 1974, when I was thirteen years old, my dad was hired for a job which took the family to the island of Maui, in Hawaii.  He was the Project Engineer for a new sewer line that was being built.  Moving to Hawaii from Port Angeles for a year was quite a culture change and we had the opportunity to do some things we couldn’t do at home.  One of those things was scuba diving.  To become certified divers we had to take a course which included learning and demonstrating first aid techniques.  Naturally my dad and I were partners for this activity.  I have to tell you, there’s nothing quite like practicing mouth to mouth resuscitation with your dad on a sunny Hawaii beach when you’re a teenager.  But we got through that and went on to see some amazing things underwater while diving together.

There are many other such moments, including one that seemed to repeat itself at some family property we had in the seventies near the Bogachiel River.  My dad liked to go fishing there and would take my younger brother and his friend quite often.  Now, at the time my brother was at the age when he was a bit of a nuisance to have around when you’re trying to get some quality fishing time in.  Being the resourceful land surveyor that he was, he gave my brother and his friend each a dull machete and told them to run off into the woods and hack away at the brush and tall grass.  It worked.  Kept them busy for hours.  And I think that experience is what inspired my brother to go into land surveying, following our dad’s footsteps.

Many years ago, a teacher in college told me something that for some reason has stayed with me over the years.  He said that “hard work has a way of making luck go your way”.  Whenever I reflect on that quote, I think of my dad.  As I mentioned, he came from a childhood background that was challenging for him and his family, often living hand to mouth.  I have no doubt that those experiences as a young person were a motivating factor in his decision to create his own future, his own luck, through hard work.

He discovered land surveying and mapping; something he loved and was very good at.  He had his own businesses and grew them, providing many local jobs for his employees and their families to benefit from.  He was a success professionally and financially.

But he didn’t stop there.  He gave back to his community and his church that he loved so much, both with his resources, and more importantly his time.  Ken was a local Chairman for the United Way.  He was a chapter President of Rotary International.  And the Boys and Girls Club of Clallam County exists today, largely because of him.  When he reflected on his youth, he used to always say that he just wanted to “elevate himself to average”.  Well, by any measure, I would say that he met and exceeded that.

We shall all miss my dad, Kenneth Albert Clark, whether you’re family, friend or a business associate of his.  But we shall all also have memories of the man he was.  Those will last forever.