Historian’s memo as current as today’s headlines

I always think of Thomas D. Clark in the spring.

Perhaps it’s because, soon after I returned to Lexington in the spring of 1998, I asked Kentucky’s historian laureate to speak to the Herald-Leader staff. He stood and lectured for nearly an hour without notes, putting Kentucky’s array of issues, controversies and quirks into the context of history’s great sweep.

It was an impressive performance, especially for a man about to turn 95.

While cleaning out files recently, I found a 15-page autobiographical memo Clark sent so I could introduce him properly that day. Hammered out on his manual typewriter, it was filled with typos and seemed to be missing a page or two. Mostly it was his exposition of Kentucky problems that need to be fixed.

It was classic Clark. He didn’t study history to bask in the glow of a romanticized past. Rather, he saw history as the recipe for who we are and as a guide to the future that could help us learn from the mistakes of the past.

After Clark retired from a long and distinguished teaching career, he became even more active and outspoken. He drove himself around the state, speaking to legislative committees and garden clubs alike — anyone who was willing to listen. And he never pulled punches. Herald-Leader reporter Andy Mead wrote my favorite description of Clark, calling him “a sort of unofficial state grandfather - but not the kind who spoils you.”

Clark didn’t let up until his death on June 28, 2005 — 16 days short of his 102nd birthday.

Perhaps I also think of Clark this time of year because spring is a time of renewal, a time to sort through old things and get serious about the future.

This is an especially good day to read Clark’s observations, as the General Assembly heads home from Frankfort, having left so many of Kentucky’s needs unmet.

Here are some excerpts:

“I thoroughly abhor the political corruption which has so often stained the democratic process in Kentucky’s history. Every vote “bought”, every private driveway paved at public expense, every mean and selfish act of a public school board, failure of the courts and criminal act by a public official has soiled Kentucky’s image and diluted its integrity. One has only to examine the electoral statistics of past elections to see how much Kentuckians lack faith in their governing process.

“There has ever run through Kentucky history the not-so-subtle impact of provincialism. Often this has been a costly thing. Communities have been set against communities, there have been failures in the creation and operation of regional institutions …

“On the broader statewide scale, sectionalism has often generated a shortsightedness which has kept many Kentucky public institutions in a state of mediocrity, or has involved a wasteful use of limited financial and other resources. …

“It is highly frustrating to see Kentuckians fail to live up to the potentials of their land and place. They have at once a passion for the past and too often have revealed a shortsighted indifference to their potentials. Too often they have been slow if not actually resistant to changes, changes which are exerted largely by local native inertia, and, paradoxically, by outside forces which may too often have been of an exploitative nature.

“Never at any moment have Kentuckians been fully alerted to the fact its human population is as much a resource as are the land and its forests and mineral resources, all demanding effective processing. …

“It is painful to see the very bosom of the state desecrated with trash in myriad forms, to see sloven domestic premises, pollution of streams, erosion of the hills and ravenous log and lumber exploiters rob that forest twenty years ahead of profitable harvest time. …

“ … democracy in Kentucky is stained often by weak-kneed political opportunists who failed to discuss intelligently and openly the major issues of the moment, often preferring to make personal and scurrilous attacks on opponents rather than tackling devitalizing problems. Too often the Kentucky gubernatorial administrations and legislators have failed their constituents by not exerting forthright and honest political leadership.

“Every time the General Assembly adjourns without having resolved basic and nagging problems, it leaves behind a body politic suffering a chronic condition of public cynicism.”

To download a PDF copy of Clark’s whole memo — wisdom, typos and all — click here.

Thomas D. Clark at his typewriter, 1998. Above, in front of the governor’s mansion in Frankfort, 2002. Photos/Charles Bertram