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_____________________________________________________
Tributes to
F. Clark Howell
1925-2007
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(alphabetical)
We have lost one of the fathers of Paleoanthropology. His scientific and personal character cannot be replaced and, in this way, this is a terrible lost for our science. We need tutorial people like him, with clear ideas and a long term vision. Fortunatelly, he left an enormous heritage, both in terms of publications and persons.
-Jordi Agusti
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With deep regret, we have learnt the passing away of Prof. Howell. We, all the members of Yarimburgaz Team/Istanbul liked and respected him very much. We offer our sincerest condolences to Howell family. Guven Arsebuk and Yarımburgaz Excavation Team – Istanbul /Turkey
-Guven Arsebuk - Yarimburgaz Team
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It is with great shock and sadness that I learned of Prof. Howell passing away. I send my sincere condolences to family and close friends of Prof. Howell. I know Prof. Howell as a good-natured and helpful person and one who has dedicated his life for the development of paleoanthropolgy. We will miss him greatly and certainly there will be a gap in the expertise. May he rest in peace.
-Mesfin Asnake
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May the long-time sun • Shine upon you • All love surround you • And the pure light within • Guide your way on
-Lucinda Ruth Backwell
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I just learned of Clark's passing this morning by way of the New York Times. As a student of his at the University of Chicago, I encountered an intellect and eloquence, uncommon even in the hallowed halls of academia. Three years ago when he visited Rutgers, I had the opportunity to renew our acquaintance -- an occasion I still recall with fondness. Clark served as an enduring inspiration to many of us as we pursued our chosen life paths.
-Joseph Blumberg
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It was during the Omo expedition in the 1970’s that I met Clark. I was an unknown French Ph’sD student and he generously invited me to join his multidisciplinary team. These years remain amongst the most stimulating and encouraging of my professional life. It was not only the excitement of working in the Wild Africa, Clark made these months fruitful, enjoyable and rich in exchange and knowledge, trying to solve the mystery of Human Origin. For him, doing Science was working hard, getting new evidences, new facts. I have tried always to remember that lesson. The months spent in the field during several years, under his leadership, remain a unique scientific experience that largely influenced and determined my career at CNRS. Later, we met several times, during meetings and friendly circumstances in France or at Berkeley, rare moment of great pleasure, such as too briefly during the palaeo-anthropology meeting in Tempe. The memory and the message of Clark will always be present with us. A picture of him 1972, thinking nearby the Omo river, as an expression of my debt of gratitude and affectionate thoughts to his wife Betty.
-Raymonde Bonnefille
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It is great sadness that I learned of Prof. Howell passing away. I had the luck to meet him on during the 1988 and 1989 Yarimburgaz Cave Excavations (Turkey). I shall remember him always with respect. I send my sincere condolences to family. May he rest in peace.
-Ahmet Boratav
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It was with great sadness that I learned of Clark’s death this afternoon. Although Clark was on my Ph.D. committee, few people know how influential he was in shaping my academic and personal life. I owe him an eternal debt of gratitude for always having faith in me.
-Steven Brandt
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As a young scholar, attending my first international meeting, I first met Clark in Frankfurt in 1991. At this, and a subsequent meeting in London, Clark went out of his way to be supportive and encouraging. Made a tremendous impression on me at the time, gave me the gift of confidence, and taught me the value of a few kind words. I will always be grateful.
-Peter Brown
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Clark Howell was, of course, one of the principal architects of paleoanthropology, as we know the field today. In addition to being a premier scholar, Clark was an exemplar mentor who fulfilled his responsibilities with charm, warmth, and timeliness. I was fortunate to include him on my graduate committee at the University if Chicago, where I benefited enormously from his wisdom and his high standards for professionalism. My sincere condolences to his wife Betty and other members of his family.
-Jane Buikstra
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Clark Howell was a fine friend, taking time out years ago to review our manuscript in a related field. We spent many fine hours in discussions around the new journals and books in the famous Bioscience and Natural Resources library at UC Berkeley. His presence will be greatly missed.
-Jack Chamberlain
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Clark Howell was an inspiration to all paleoanthropologists--it was he who made the term what it is today, an integrative holistic science combining data, method and theory from human paleontology, Paleolithic archaeology and the geological context for these, as well as the broader underpinnings of evolutionary biology, paleontology, primatology and other disciplines. My own career intersected Clark's on many occasions, but never for long enough or frequently enough. As a physics major in college, I switched to paleoanthropology following a course with WW Howells and the influence of the "Early Man" volume. After a first meeting at the American Museum of Natural History in the mid 1960s, I visited him in Chicago in 1968 to look at his new fossil monkeys from Omo, and he was (as always) generous with his time, showing me the human remains as well and allowing me to photograph them all. I was incredibly lucky to have been selected by him to participate in the 1975 Paleoanthropology Delegation to the People's Republic of China as the "vertebrate paleontologist" of the team--given the narrow scope of my own knowledge, I assume this was just a ploy to bring an additional human paleontologist, in the way that Bill Howells was classified as the "human biologist" of the group. In 1981, my family and I spent a few days visiting Ambrona, where Clark and Les Freeman had returned for several seasons. Clark had by then joined the advisory committee for the Ancestors exhibtion, where he helped to convince the AMNH administration to support that project. Clark participated actively in the 1984 Ancestors workshop and symposium, leading the session on Neanderthals and other Late Pleistocene fossils. When he was unable to write up the introduction to this part of the book, I stepped in to summarize the discussions, but never to "replace" him. In 1989, we both attended the conference and excursion organized by Eugène Bonifay and Bernard Vandermeersch to discuss the earliest evidence for human occupation of Europe. Each participant in turn would present their finds and then approach Clark for his assessment of their putative ancient artifacts. Our contacts since then were sporadic but gratifying. Clark would call or eventually email at intervals to ask for some abstruse AMNH publication. He was very supportive of my work at Senèze with Claude Guérin and Martine Faure, agreeing that this could help understand not only the sequence of European mammal faunas but also the taphonomic effect of human activity. I saw Clark's new lab space in late 2004 during a workshop on Cercopithecidae sponsored by the RHOI project he led with Tim White. The last time I saw Clark was at the July 2006 Bonn celebration of the 150th anniversary of the finding of the Neander Valley fossils. He gave one of the inaugural lectures and another talk, participated in discussion panels and was a center of well-deserved attention. It was great to see him shining among his peers and the many worshipful junior colleagues. Only a few months later, I heard that his health had declined swiftly. Now, a month after his death, I have still not fully internalized the loss. It is truly the end of an era.
-Eric Delson
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I met Clarck Howell for the first time in Nice meeting at the begining of my PhD on Laetoli rodents (1982! if my memory is fine). I found in him a great interest in my small mammals ,especially rodents that interested him. Then he receive me in his Berkeley's lab in 1985 and I found somebody open to discussions and ready to take time for his students. We never meet again but exchanged letters and mails and I know that he was following my work and articles and asked for my news each time he was coming to France. He also encourages taphonomy and new theories . All anthropology but also palaeontology and Evolution world will miss him !
-Christiane Denys
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I am very sorry to learn that Professor Howell passed away. I first met him in 1996 in Beijing during the first meeting of International Technique Committee for the Peking Man Project in which he was a member and he was very favorable for the project. Although I can no longer meet him in person, but he will live in my mind for ever.
-Wei Dong
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I'm very saddened to learn of Clark's passing. Clark Howell was a BIG influence on my life and perspectives on what human evolution meant. I was a undergraduate student of the Berkeley collective (Sherry Washburn, Desmond Clark, Clark Howell, Phyllis Dolhinow, Vince Sarich, and Glynn Isaac) and worked as an undergraduate in Clark's labs. He was my supervisor for my thesis on African Primate Paleobiogeography. I'm sure Clark was aware that he had a huge influence on the field...through his own work, and that of his students and his colleagues. I remember attending the Wenner-Gren Symposium in his honor about ten years ago and could sense that he was proud of the breadth of his influence, and the accomplishments of his former students (and later his peers). Something quite big from an Iowa farm boy who only went to college because of the GI Bill! Just a side note: I have two copies of his famous Time-Life "Early Man". The first is a treasured copy acquired in Ghana when I was a teenager while my family were expats...and it was what compelled me to ask my Dad to go to East Africa on safari rather than back to the US on home leave. That copy was obtained when it was originally published 1966! I later met Louis and Mary Leakey, and Richard...who was just a few years older than I and uninterested at that point in following what his Dad was involved in. We practically used the book as a tour guide visiting not only Olduvai, but Olorgesailie, Lake Nakuru, etc. Of course getting to Omo was an impossibility at that time...but I could dream! The second copy I obtained from a schoolteacher friend in Indonesia. It was a coverless discard from the remote school library of Payakumboh town in Sumatra (BTW near where the recent earthquake struck and the town where Dubois first started to look for fossil man)...this had been translated into Indonesian! I take that book back with me every time that I return to Indonesia...both to improve my Indonesian language abilities, but also to show the local people exactly what we do as Anthropologists! So Clark's reach goes even into tiny Sumatran villages and is the subject of debate and wonderment still. Jerry
-Jerry Drawhorn
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Clark was an inspiring and supportive influence to me during my graduate years in archaeology at UC Berkeley. While my other professors were pressuring me to take my oral qualifying exams early, Clark understood and supported my wish to read and study archaeology longer and more deeply, before launching myself into a dissertation project. He was invariably helpful, often behind the scenes, as I began my professional career. Since I was technically not one of his graduate students, this was a special mark of the generosity that characterized so much of his dealings with students. We can only hope to emulate those qualities ourselves, so that his scholarly legacy lives on. Salve atque vale, magister meus.
-Diane Gifford-Gonzalez
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Death is final, but is it? Clark you were so alive to all of us – your colleagues, your students, your friends and most of all your family. As one of your students I say to people who only knew you from your name on publications, your name on an office door, you were so charismatic but that really doesn’t describe you. It was the way you engaged us – your spirit, your compassion, your understanding, your encouragement. Many others will be able to articulate your accomplishments, your illustrious career. Many accolades will be written or said about you – what you did when you were alive and what you will be remembered for. No one has achieved as much or contributed more in every way in the field of human origins. To me it was as much your humanity, your humility – you cared for us. So Clark, your spirit will live on – the light in your eyes, your manner, your intellect – for those of us who were fortunate to know you, never to be forgotten. We loved you.
-Jack Harris
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Clark encouraged his students in subtle but lasting ways. He would get to lab very early in the morning, survey the papers on our desks, and make little tick marks next to references that he did not yet have in his massive library. It was his way of endorsing our wide-ranging interests. It was also his way of getting us to make extra copies for him... Clark's desire for knowledge and support of your interests never waned. It was pure, without the pretense so easy for a man so admired, idolized and lionized. Conversations with him always made you feel privileged. He read everything. He wrote back.
-Walter Hartwig
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I was lucky to have been an undergraduate anthropology major at Berkeley in the early 1980s. I was extremely fortunate to have taken a number of courses with Professor Howell. He consistently demonstrated the breadth of his knowledge about human evolution, as well as many other topics. I was at the time, and still am, amazed by his scholarship. I have had the privilege of teaching introductory biological anthropology at Berkeley this semester, and I can only hope that the tribute I gave Clark in Wheeler Auditorium did justice to his accomplishments.
-Sandra Hollimon
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From the first time I opened "The Early Man", Clark has been an admired model and a source of inspiration, later becoming a mentor and a friend. More than anyone else in the field he influenced my career. Clark always made me believe that my goals were achievable and the months I spent with him in Berkeley truly changed my life in many aspects. Clark first conceived what is today the field of "paleoanthropology", and our work just extends his vision. In 2004, he was the first scholar to come and visit the department of Human Evolution in Leipzig, and once more, in these then-empty labs, his presence and his confidence were the strongest encouragement. I miss Clark deeply, yet know that he will be always with us.
-Jean-Jacques Hublin
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The management and the members of the Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana, Rome, Italy, have learned, with great sorrow, the death of Professor F. Clark Howell. For many decades he has been an unforgettable dear friend of our Institute. Sometime he has been present personally, to give us scientific advice and encouragement toward research. We will keep his memory with deep regret. Aldo G. Segre Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana Piazza Mincio 2 00198, Roma, Italy.
-Istituto Ist.Italiano di Paleontologia Umana
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A great loss to paleoanthropology, but Clark left behind a legacy that will endure. He was one of the major architects of paleoanthopology and his articulation of the transdisciplinary approach is the standard today. I am proud to say I was one of his students at the University of Chicago and thankful for all the opportunities he offered me as a grad student. My sincerest condolences to his wife Betty, son Brian and daughter Jennifer.
-Don Johanson
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It is with great sadness - but with the utmost admiration - that I leave this testimonial on the passing of a fine scholar and a fine human being. From the first graduate seminar I took with Clark - while still an undergraduate - I knew that I was in the presence of an encyclopedic mind and a warm, generous spirit. Although my doctoral work was under Sarich and my primary focus genetics, Clark was always the kind of person who not only was interested in all aspects of our field, but was knowledgeable and conversant in areas far beyond paleoanthropolgy. He was a true Renaissance man, and one of the least ego-driven academic icons I have ever known. In a sub-field riven by interpersonal conflict, Clark was measured and - dare I say it - statesman-like. It is truly the end of an era, and I shall miss him. Go with Darwin, Clark...
-Jonathan Karpf
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I became an Africanist rather than a Near Eastern specialist when Clark Howell received funding for fieldwork at Isimila, in then Tanganyika. I have never regretted that happy 'historical accident', resulting in my being his first Ph.d. student. Above and beyond his own field research, Clark was THE great facilitator: he was instrumental in arousing North American interests in both African archaeology and human evolution in the 1950's and 60's. Clark networked with everyone, amateurs, students and professionals, and he shared his networks. With the backing of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, there were workshops and seminars that led to interactions between European, Africanist and North American researchers. Clark believed that progress was achieved by co-operation and communication, not by cutthroat competition-obviously a lesson that did not always rub-off. He was a master synthesizer of large bodies of diverse information, recognizing no disciplinary boundaries to research. He championed multidisciplinary projects, and interdisciplinary student training. One can only say that he left his area of earthly endeavors much greater than he found it.
-Maxine R. Kleindienst
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It was with great sadness that I learned of Prof. C. Howell death, a man who offered a lot to Palaeontology. I had the luck to meet him on 1976 during his visit to my laboratory in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki to see the Petralona skull. At that time I was beginning my PhD thesis and he gave me important information and help me to get contact with several colleagues in Europe working in related subjects. After that we were in contact untill now. I was waiting him to visit Thessaloniki last October but unfortunately he could not come after his health problems. I shall remember him always with respect and love.
-George Koufos
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Clark was a special person who influenced me greatly in my formative years and indeed ever since. He was a friend, a colleague, and an example. Clark first came into my life when I was a teenager - he used to visit my parents Louis and Mary at their home and that they thought highly of him impressed me greatly as most of their friends were much older than Clark was at that time. Clark established a model for the interdisciplinary research teams with his lead role in the 1967 International Omo River expedition. His unwillingness to take sides, his openness, his warmth and tact were valuable examples of how science shold be managed in respect to team building and cooperation. We all owe him a great deal. Clark will be sorely missed by all of us here in Nairobi and his knowledge and experience will be missed by our professions. The best we do to honour his life is to get on with the job, find new fossils to answer old and new questions and redouble our efforts to encourage young scientists to follow his path. Richard Leakey
-Richard Leakey
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I never had the good fortune to study with Clark Howell, but I was always grateful whenever I had the chance to interact with him. He was always kind, wise, knowledgeable and encouraging. He was a great scholar, and I will miss him.
-Dan Lieberman
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It is with deep sadness and regret to hear of Professor Howell's passing. I was extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to know and work with him. When I arrived at UC Berkeley in the late 1980s to teach in the Anthropology Department, Clark helped me greatly in providing advice and guidance in my teaching and research. He was particularly helpful when I became involved in the reorganization of the Archaeological Research Facility. I shall always be grateful for his kindness and support. We will all miss him greatly.
-Kent Lightfoot
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My colleagues and I here in Beijing are very sad to hear Professor Clark Howell passed away. Professor Howell visited our institute several times and set good relationship with many colleagues here. I met Clark last July in Bonn and we had a very long talk. I feel he is a very nice person. We will miss him.
-Wu Liu
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I met Professor Clark Howell for the first time only about ten years ago. I remember it was in Granada, Spain, and that we spent an entire lunch speaking about his old Italian colleague and friend Alberto (Alberto Carlo Blanc) and about their common way to look at paleoanthropology as holistic approach to the past. It was one of the occasions in my life in which I clearly perceived to have had the privilege to interact with a fundamental pillar for the recent history of our discipline. Now that I’m stricken by the sad news that he passed away, I would like to express all my sincere condolences to his family and, particularly, to his wife Betty who was sharing with us that memorable (for me) lunch in Granada.
-Giorgio Manzi
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As most of the people working in Human Evolution, I have a big admiration for Prof. Clark Howell and a big debt with him. I have to say in a personal level that, since I met him on the International Conference at Orce (Spain) on 1995, I was impressed by his knowledge and ideas, and after that he helped me a lot on my research but also on my personal life. He visited us last year in Tarragona for a workshop on climate change, faunal turnovers and human dispersals, and for the presentation of our new Institute. As ever, we learned a lot from him. We will follow your way to increase our knowledge on human origins. Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro and all the team of the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, Tarragona, Spain (IPHES)
-Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro
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Like everybody else, we in Tanzania are deeply shocked and sadenned at news of the passing away of Prof. Clark Howell. He will be missed by the whole world of Palaeoanthropologists and other scientists. On behalf of my colleagues in Tanzania who may not have heard the news, I wish to send my condolences to the bereaved family. May his soul rest in peace.
-Fidelis T. Masao
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With the untimely death of Professor Francis Clark Howell, we have lost one of the most important contributors to the field of paleoanthropology. I am an artist/naturalist specializing in paleontology, and I first met and collaborated with Clark in 1964 when he authored the popular tome for Time/Life "Early Man". In the course of developing the layouts for the chapter on australopithecines which I was to illustrate, Clark opened up a whole new focus of subject matter for me, and illustrating paleoanthropology has been my passion ever since. I was particularly impressed with his knowledge of seemingly unrelated fields of study, which he was able to synthesize for a comprehensive analysis of his subjects. Working with this brilliant man was a privilege and an inspiration, and I know my sentiments are shared by innumerable collegues and students. A man's contribution is not limited to his own considerable achievements, but extends to those whom he gave the impetus to excel in their respective careers. Clark Howell was such a man as this.
-Jay Matternes
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Even gauged by the other eminent anthropology professors at Berkeley from the 1970s-1990s, F. Clark Howell was an unusually knowledgeable and generous person. Few, if any, people possessed Howell's encyclopedic knowledge of paleoanthropology, including Paleolithic archaeology, hominid palaeontology, and vertebrate paleontology. I was his student for a long time, as an undergraduate (in the late 1970s-early 1980s) and for my Ph.D (mid 1980s-mid 1990s). Back then, we students idolized our professors (especially Glynn Ll. Isaac, J. Desmond Clark, and F. Clark Howell) for their great accomplishments and the influential roles they played in developing the field of paleoanthropology. During the 1980s, Howell's students toiled late into the night in his laboratory on the ground floor of Kroeber Hall. We worked on a wide variety of subjects, including australopithecines (B. Asfaw, G. Suwa, P. Kyauka), fossil New World monkeys (W. Hartwig), human paleopathology (S. Anton, G. Richards), Chinese Homo erectus (D. Etler), and Miocene hominoids (me). F. Clark Howell was supportive of all of our work because he understood, better than anyone else, how paleoanthropological data from different sources integrates into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. I will miss Clark both personally for his many kindnesses and also professionally for his support of all people with a serious interest in the study of human evolutionary history (in its broadest sense).
-Monte McCrossin
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I had the privilege to meet Professor Howell in my visits to UC Berkeley in 2000 and 2001. He was extraordinarily kindly with me. We talked like old friends and in a few minutes he gave me a lot of knowledge. I will never forget his generosity and big smile when talking about bones. I will always be grateful for his advice. I send my sincere condolences to family and friends of Professor Howell.
-Abigail Meza
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As a recently graduated archaeologist I met Clark Howell, quite by chance, in Turkey in the late 1980s. It was a wondefully broad-ranging afternoon's conversation, and the sense of encouragement and support that he gave are with me still.
-Mark Nesbitt
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Clark Howell was Visiting Professor at Berkeley during 1964-65. Many undergraduates, myself included, took both of the two upper division courses he offered. The Spring semester course, Old World Prehistory, showcased his strengths as an organizer, someone who made good things happen by putting the right people together in common cause. On the books, the course was team-taught by Howell and Desmond Clark. Played out in the classroom, it was so much more than that: great lectures by the two leads, with guest performances by Sherry Washburn, Richard Klein and the Bordes, Francois and Denise de Sonneville. The big themes of the time all on display – the multi-disciplinary approach to prehistory, the beginning of serious interest among Paleolithic specialists in hunter-gatherer ecology, and the emergence of what was the called the New Archaeology. It was without doubt the best single course I took as undergrad, and there was Howell right at the center of it. He will indeed be missed.
-James O'Connell
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I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of a man whom I held in the highest regard as a mentor, colleague, and friend. Clark was a member of my comprehensive exam committee at Berkeley in the late 1970s and supervised one of my field statements. I remain indebted to him on many levels and will do so for the remainder of my days...
-John Olsen
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We, as the excavation team of Yarımburgaz 1988-90 Istanbul-Turkey, remember our dear "Clark Hoca" with deep respect. We miss him very much, but surely remember him forever.
-Mihriban Ozbasaran Yarimburgaz Team
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I had the privilege and pleasure of knowing Clark for over 25 years at Berkeley, and the pleasure intensified during the last dozen years or so, when our offices came to be located across from each other. We would often meet in the parking lot on the way in, Clark with his briefcase and New York Times, and always a comment on the affairs of the day. If I got in before him he usually peeked in with a word or two when he arrived, and I would sometimes arrive late to find a tearout from Science or Nature under my door that he thought I or my students could use. He was always ready with an invitation to coffee, and we spent many productive hours on wide-ranging topics. Clark believed that no discoveries were of interest independent of their histories. And he knew a great many histories. Clark was generous with his wisdom. He gladly served on graduate student orals and dissertation committees, and readily accepted an invitation to sit in on a large graduate seminar I ran a few years ago that centered on Steve Gould’s book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. It was an incomparable experience to have a person of Clark’s stature and learning, who knew most of the principals who founded the Modern Synthesis, and who once shared an office with Julian Huxley. But it was always like that to talk with him. There was nobody in Clark’s class. He was an incomparable scholar, a gentleman, a diplomat and ambassador for his often-contentious field, someone who could smooth the waters and explain the issues patiently and reasonably. The regard in which he was held by foreign colleagues is matchless. By dint of his learning, regard for people, and his gentlemanly persona, he influenced a great many decisions and raised a great deal of support for good causes and good science. Few people will know about much of this, because Clark would never draw attention to his own deeds. Above all this loss, however, we’ve lost a terrific friend, a guy who took people as they were, no matter who they were, no matter who he was, and enjoyed all of them. These are the qualities of a true gentleman.
-Kevin Padian
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We remember the outstanding figure of Prof. C. Howell. A great loss for prehistoric studies whose guide we all miss for ever.
- Palma di Cesnola, A., P. Gambassini, A. Ronchitelli, P. Boscato, A. Moroni, S. Ricci, L. Longo and Ph; Dipart. Sc Amb UR Ecologia Preistorica Univ Siena Italy
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To this reporter Clark was a tireless, patient, wise, generous and invariably helpful tutor who gave freely of his time to this reporter whenever I asked for help to make sure that what I was writing was as accurate as possible. I'm well aware of what a towering figure he was in his field, whenever I visited him in his lab he was also a wonderful source of lore and an immense amount of just plain fun. I and those of science writing colleagues like John Wilford of the Times who had the privilege of knowing him will remember him always with affection and deep respect.
-David Perlman
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Professor Howell was kind not only to his students and fellow anthropologists, but also to me as a departmental typist (1982-1989). I remember him fondly. My condolences to his family and friends.
-Barbara Quigley
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Prof. Howell was one of the most profound influences on my career. When I was an undergraduate at Cal, he was both tolerant and encouraging when he didn't have to be. I have never met anyone before or since with such a broad knowledge and such a humble demeanour. He was the archetype of the scholar I'd like to be.
-Todd C. Rae
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After returning to Israel from Berkeley in the early 80s and still reeling from the experience of studying there, with Clark, I wrote to him as follows: “The time that I spent at Berkeley and in your lab was undoubtedly one of the highest points in my life. What I learned there has made a tremendous impact on me, both as an anthropologist and as a person. I will also be grateful for your patience, encouragement, and help…from those first overwhelming days seven years ago through the completion of my thesis last fall. …my dissertation would not have been realized were it not for your personal involvement in my studies.” Clark was not just any mentor. Every photo of him on this site shows his typical expression of attentiveness, interest, and eagerness to learn. Though I am now almost 10 years older than Clark was when we first met over 30 years ago, I still find myself constantly thinking about what he would say and whether he would approve. I loved Clark and miss him dearly.
-Yoel Rak
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