Author of IU's history passes away at 101

Thomas D. Clark, a notable professor, author and historian, passed away June 28, just weeks short of his 102nd birthday.\nClark, who came to IU in 1966 after serving as the chair of the history department at University of Kentucky, was responsible for compiling a 4-volume series chronicling the foundation and history of IU. In addition to bringing IU's history to life, Clark was known for writing over 20 books, many of which recorded the history of Kentucky. Clark not only wrote part of Kentucky's history; he also he saved it.\nWhen Governor Albert Chandler ordered the clean-up of the office of state records for Kentucky, two truckloads of state records were mistakenly thrown away to be used as scrap paper. Clark was called in the middle of the night by an aide and rushed to stop the trucks from hauling the documents away, thus preserving the state's records. \nDavid Hamilton, professor of history at University of Kentucky, said Clark's passion for history was about more than just documenting it. \n"He grew up in a time when the South was beginning its transformation, and he was trying to explain it and come to terms with it," he said. "He just developed this deep love for history. He read quite widely and loved to study human failure and human successes ... He understood that failure told you a lot about a man, a woman, a society or a culture. He was very perceptive about that." \nClark used this intuitive understanding of history and human nature to write an honest and engaging look at IU's founding. \n"I have spent all of my mature life in a University community as student, professor, and trustee," he wrote in the first volume. "I know full well that the formal and official record is often impressive in its failure to reveal the full story. The inside human aspect of a University often perishes with the death of men or with their softening and fading memories ... There survives in various sources enough color to give the history a rich and human tone." \nHamilton said he believes Clark's passion and rich color will survive in the memories of his students. \n"For all of the books he wrote, for all of the honors he received, the most gratifying part of his career was being in the classroom," he said. "He taught at 8 in the morning to packed classes, and he was a superb lecturer ... He gave them a sense of what it was like to live in the past, but also a sense of how history moved on. He didn't worship the past."\nFamily friend Dovree Greene said she will remember Clark not only as a teacher or a historian, but as an individual interested and involved in a little bit of everything, including a life-long love for trees and various types of wood. \n"The last time I saw him was at a benefit ... It was a very fancy party, and he had donated a walnut table. He made it for his daughter, Elizabeth, but she no longer needed it, so he donated it and it brought in $5,500," she said. "And it was just so spectacular. It was another little aspect of what he could do, donating this table and having it madly bid on."\nClark, who made his way into college by producing cotton on his father's farm, believed every citizen, whether a farmer or a teacher, has a duty to be involved in the community. \nFor students and faculty of IU, he said, this means understanding the university's past in order to preserve its future. \n"Fundamentally it seems important for every person having a voice in decision-making, professors and administrators, to have at hand a source of information describing the processes of past changes," he wrote in the final volume of IU's history. "A university in which people are uninformed about its past is one without spirit or a sense of its continuity; it is an institution set afloat on a sea of confusion and needless repetition of mistakes and outmoded experiences"