Goodbye, Dr. Clark

Robert D. Clark died on June 28, 2005 at the age of 95. Dr. Clark (1910-2005), pictured at left in front of Johnson Hall, was a noted scholar and educator, and served as president of the University of Oregon from 1969-1975. He led the university successfully through the unrest and social change inspired by the Vietnam War, and was dedicated to student rights and to curricular innovation. He was known for his ability to listen to protesters and to use his authority to initiate effective change. He was a highly respected leader as well as a scholar.

His career at UO began in 1943 as a professor of speech, moving into progressively important administrative positions from 1947. Clark left UO to serve as president of San Jose State 1964-1969, during a turbulent period of racial strife, strikes, and student unrest that prepared him to lead the University of Oregon as its eleventh president. Among his publications are biographies of two UO scholars, The Odyssey of Thomas Condon and Ralph Huestis, and Rain follows the Plow, a noted work about homesteading in his home state of Nebraska.

In 2004 Special Collections and University Archives began a partnership with the Honors College that utilized the papers of Dr. Clark to provide undergraduates with primary source materials fostering original research. Under the direction of Dr. Suzanne Clark, Dr. Clark's daughter, and Dr. David Frank, the "University in Peace and War" class explored themes of social change, balancing conflicting sources of information from newspaper articles, memoranda, letters, and other original documents. Dr. Clark, and University Historian Heather Briston, were privileged to attend presentations of the students' final projects. The class was a highly successful experiment that has become a model for inspiring undergraduate research and engaging instruction programs with the rich collections in Special Collections and University Archives. Dr. Clark's papers are included in our digital library and many of the student research papers are available on-line in Scholars' Bank.

Special Collections and University Archives staff have been privileged to assist Dr. Clark in his research over the years. He was always elegantly attired and meticulously courteous, a gentleman and a scholar, an icon of the University, and we will miss him.