Edward Mansfield Clark | leemaclellanfamily

Edward Mansfield Clark - Son in Law

Edward Mansfield Clark (1922 - 2014) was born in New York City, the son of Edwina Fitzgerald and Herbert August Mansfield. His mother essentially abandoned him when he was young, and he never knew his father; who was a rich, successful businessman until the stock market crash of 1929. He then committed suicide, allegedly due to the death of his fiancee, a woman nobody knew about.

Ed was adopted by the Ballard family: Ike Ballard, Julia Ballard, and their daughter Ethel. Ike built a home for his family in the tiny hamlet of Holmes, NY. Ethel later married a man named Floyd Miller. Ethel continued to live in that house for the rest of her life along with her mother, called "Auntie". It was Ethel and Auntie that raised my father and his half-brother Douglas, and it was Douglas's father Douglas Clark Sr. who eventually adapted my father and gave him the last name Clark.

Ed learned some early lessons there that I believe fueled a determination to succeed. He saw that the other boys in high school would get their girlfriends pregnant, drop out of school, and go to work in the local plant. That was not going to be him. He also never bought a car, instead riding back and forth to work on a Columbia Victory bike painted all black, with no chrome. I believe his passion for cars later in life grew out of this period.

With money raised by working at the local grocery store, and the photos he took and developed for other people, Ed was able to scrape together enough money to attend college. He decided to attend the University of Illinois and study engineering. While he was there he saved his meager funds by eating his meals off a small Coleman stove, and eating cheaply. Years later I asked him why he didn't eat peanut butter, one of my favorite foods, and he stated simply that he ate too much of it at college.

Buddha as an Naval Air Cadet in 1944.jpg

Ed Clark as a Naval Air Cadet in 1943.

WW II interrupted my father's education at this point. He enlisted in the Naval Air Corp as a cadet in 1942, hoping to become a pilot like his half-brother Doug. After one and one/half years of training he reached the final test. He made it through to the point where he had to land his plane successfully three times. He was successful until he bumbled the third and final try. Unfortunately the Navy didn't need more pilots at that point in the war, so that was the end of his pilot training. (After the war he did get his pilot's license).

My father returned to enlisted status, and was stationed at the Chicago Naval Training station. There one woman officer learned of his record and college studies, and encouraged him to apply for Officer Training School. When my father graduated as an Ensign the war was gradually winding down. He spent the rest of the war in training schools and fortunately never saw combat.

With the war ended my father used the GI bill to fulfill his dream of graduating from college. He told me that he was impressed by a book written by a Swarthmore College professor, and so he picked Swarthmore. Swarthmore is the same school his granddaughter Laura Clark would later attend.

Again he had limited funds, so he worked two jobs: running the college laundry, and serving meals to the students who were richer and could live in a fraternity house.

It was at Swarthmore that he met my mother, Janet MacLellan. They fell in love, but waited until my mother graduated in 1948, one year before my father. They lived in a small apartment in the town of Swarthmore until my father graduated in 1949. I was born in November 1949.

My father told me an important lesson he learned from the Navy: sailors did not take the best care of public property, but they did take care of property they individually owned. So he decided to focus on a career that helped people hold onto their own private property. From that he decided to be a life insurance salesman, an occupation in which he grew and thrived for the rest of his life. After the war he worked in the Group Insurance department at Connecticut General, based in Hartford, CT. In 1961 he joined a small firm in Springfield MA named Palmer Goodell and Keeney. He basically built up their life insurance business, eventually heading a team of two other professionals.

It was near the end of his career with Palmer Goodell and Keeney that he demonstrated the depth of his integrity. The firm had hired a power hungry managing director that my father grew to distrust. He was vindicated years later when it was learned that this director was in fact skimming company funds for his own personal gain. My father suspected as much when he saw that the man had bought an expensive motor boat.

So he was 58, an age at which many people his age were thinking of retirement, when he left Palmer Goodell and Keeney to start his own firm, Edward M. Clark and Associates in 1980. He took some important clients with him like the Friendly Ice Cream company, which became one of his largest and most profitable clients.

My father's integrity, professionalism, and dedication to service led to prominent roles and awards in the Springfield area. Here are just a few examples:

President of the Springfield Kiwanis club, a national association of business people who help small businesses grow, and dedicate time and money to their community.
President of the central Massachusetts area food bank. He was proud of his role in bringing in a dedicated manager who grew the food bank into a larger organization better suited to meeting the growing needs of the population. (He was excited when he first told me about this position: "Guess what? I'm the president of a bank!")
Founding member of the Springfield area Golden Apple awards. When he and others asked teachers what they most wanted from the community, they said it was recognition. So each year the most talented and dedicated teachers in the area were feted at a fancy dinner and awarded a Golden Apple statue and monetary award. My father helped that association grow to the point where attendance was several hundred people, and the local news covered the ceremony on TV. He did this both in the Springfield schools and later in Naples FL.
Recipient of Paul Harris fellowship in 1988 from the Rotary club.
Recipient of the esteemed William Pynchon award for his "lifelong support of programs and causes that benefit the Western Massachusetts area". William Pynchon was the founder of Springfield.

When my parents retired to Naples FL my father tutored for 11 years at the Poinciana school.

My father finally retired in 1992. After two years going back and forth between the Laurels community in Connecticut and Naples FL, my parents settled on a permanent residence in the Bath and Tennis Club of Naples, FL in 1995. They later moved to an assisted living facility called Bentley Village. My father lived there until his death in 2014.

While volunteering in the Naples school system, he noticed that the poorer students had no way of looking up words outside of the classroom. So he persuaded the Merriam Webster Company of Springfield to print a new, lightweight, inexpensive student dictionary at very low cost. Eventually over 12,000 of these dictionaries were distributed to students. He was called the "Dictionary Man". It was one of his proudest achievements.

My father believed deeply in the importance of exercise and keeping in shape. He loved tennis. Since he placed such an importance on learning, he was constantly taking tennis lessons, an habit that his friends would tease him about. He also loved biking, and combined it with his sense of service to earn money for charities on sponsored bike events.

Janet and Ed in retirement date unknown.

My parents in the Bentley Village retirement community. "I love this picture" was my mother's annotation.

My father in his tennis outfit running a tournament modelled after the Davis Cup championship. This took place at the Longmeadow Field Club, a swim and tennis club he and my mother co-founded.

My father loved long guided bike tours in Europe.