Dr. Mark Clark
Profile -- (Winter 2001-2002 Newsletter)
As a 16-year-old high school junior growing up in Bernardsville,
New Jersey, Mark Clark had three passions in life: philosophy,
music, and sports. He never imagined that in some 25 years
he'd be able to pursue all those passions together as a tutor
at Thomas Aquinas College.
It was an unexpected detour in his road through life that
caused the delay. Midway through his junior year, Clark's
father had a heart attack that radically altered the family's
circumstances. Gone were his dreams of playing basketball
at an Ivy-League address, while studying philosophy and music.
His father, who eventually recovered, wanted him to pursue
"something practical" so he might one day be in
a position to help the family. So Clark attended the University
of Florida where he studied economics, graduated Phi Beta
Kappa, and was nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship. Pretty
practical.
He thought he'd be more practical yet if he obtained a law
degree. So he applied to, and was accepted by Duke University
Law School on a full-tuition merit scholarship. Very practical.
But the love of wisdom still bubbled up in his soul. One of
his classmates, whose godfather was theologian Jacques Maritain,
persuaded Clark to take an undergraduate course at Duke on
medieval philosophy so he could read Maritain's books.
Clark took the course and gained a mentor for life, Professor
Ed Mahoney. Mahoney recognized in Clark a student hungry for
real education. He directed Clark to become proficient in
Latin and to pursue philosophy, especially Aristotelian philosophy.
But practicalities still loomed. He had to practice law.
On graduation from law school, he joined a large firm in Atlanta,
where he tried to settle into life as a corporate lawyer.
He found it unsatisfying. "I figured out I was the only
guy in the firm who couldn't wait to get home to read Homer,
Aeschylus, and Plato." Mahoney kept him well-supplied
with reading lists, which Clark continued to exhaust through
self-study.
And then came a break. After helping his youngest brother
secure a good job in finance, Clark realized he was free to
pursue his own interests. He left the practice of law in spite
of acquiring a potentially lucrative expertise in the emerging
area of intellectual property law. But the question now was
whether to return to the books or to pursue a musical career.
He had fallen in love with classical music during his freshman
year in high school while singing Bach. He was so smitten,
he gave all his rock-n-roll albums to his brothers. He performed
as a soloist throughout high school, college, and even in
law school with the Duke Chapel Choir, and continued singing
professionally in area churches after his move to Atlanta.
When the Metropolitan Opera came to town, he auditioned with
a conductor and received an encouraging referral - to the
best voice instructor the conductor knew in the southeast,
a tenor teaching at Winthrop College in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Clark was inspired. He drove to Winthrop College, met the
president, and said he needed a job so he could study under
the instructor. He was made the College's attorney. Over the
next year, he practiced a little law, gave guest lectures
from time-to-time on St. Augustine's philosophy and theology,
but mostly worked on his voice. And then he got another break.
During a driving rain, he offered a ride home to an elderly
gentleman from France. In gratitude, the stranger offered
to teach him French. After a few weeks of French lessons,
the man asked Clark how he could help his singing career.
Clark was astounded when the man revealed his aristocratic
connections - he was secretary and confidante to Prince Rainier
of Monaco.
At his prompting, Clark traveled to Monaco, acquired sponsors,
and then spent the next couple of years traveling back and
forth between Europe and the States establishing himself as
a professional singer. He performed in regional opera, workshops,
oratorio, and development programs in venues stretching from
Baden-Baden to Seattle.
But he soon cooled on life as a professional singer. "I
knew that to do it full-time would lead to a one-dimensional
life," something he had struggled to avoid. Even throughout
this musical interlude of his life, he had persisted in working
through the reading lists that Mahoney would continue to send
him. Now, having tested a life in music, he decided he'd rather
pursue books full-time.
He moved to Morristown, New Jersey near one of his brothers
and landed a job at a prep school teaching Latin and ancient
history. (One of his fellow teachers was Jeff Bond, who would
one day come to teach at Thomas Aquinas College, too.) For
three years he had it all - books, sports, and music - as
he taught, coached, sang, and continued self-study under his
mentor, Mahoney, who had since become an ordained priest.
Seeing Clark's commitment to philosophy, Fr. Mahoney urged
him to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University where
he could study intellectual history. So he did.
While there, he came across a volume on the sermons of John
Cardinal Henry Newman. It was a life-changing event. He went
to confession for the first time in years, began attending
daily Mass, and found regular spiritual direction. "For
the first time in my life, I began earnestly to live in conformity
with the Catholic faith of my youth." His studies now
fused with his faith, Clark listened attentively when his
friend, Columbia professor David Morgan, recommended that
he would be a good fit at Thomas Aquinas College.
n 1992, he finished his coursework and began work on his
dissertation, a process rendered long and arduous owing to
the need to learn paleography, the Latin short-hand of medieval
texts. He went to Boston College's Institute for Medieval
Philosophy and Theology to study under one of Mahoney's good
friends, Stephen Brown, one of the world's foremost paleographers.
Clark made several trips to France, poring over eleventh-
and twelfth-century manuscripts and conducting research for
his dissertation: a study of the method of Peter Comestor
(d. circa 1178). Peter who?
"Peter Comestor was the Dean of the Cathedral at Notre
Dame who published a medieval 'best-seller,' Historia scholastica
- the first book to cross-over from elite to popular culture.
It combined the old and the new theology in a unique study
format. St. Albert and St. Thomas knew and quoted from it;
Dante put Comestor in the Circle of the Sun with Sts. Anselm
and Bonaventure.
"His was among the most copied books of medieval times
- and yet, to date, no one really has understood it. My work
has been to explain his book and thus to help scholars better
understand the mind of the Middle Ages. Surprisingly little
has been fleshed out."
While in Boston, Clark got his "biggest break,"
as he puts it - "bumping into a beautiful redhead after
Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception." That
redhead was Bernardine Connelly, a 1987 Yale graduate working
in Boston as an author and screenwriter. Her children's video,
Follow The Drinking Gourd, about the Underground Railroad,
was produced by Rabbit Ears Productions and turned into a
Simon Schuster book of the same name. Clark thus met a writer
who added the best chapter in his life. They married almost
nine months later.
After he finished his dissertation research, he and Bernardine
moved to Rhode Island, where Mark took a job teaching at the
Portsmouth Abbey School. Nearby in Still River, Massachusetts
was St. Benedict Abbey, where two of Bernardine's brothers
were priests and monks. So also was Fr. Andrew Koch (class
of '85), who soon joined the chorus of Clark's friends who
commended him to teaching at Thomas Aquinas College.
When he met President Tom Dillon at Fr. Koch's 1998 ordination
and learned more about the prospects of teaching at the College,
Clark needed no more convincing. "From that moment it
was my heart's desire to join as a tutor."
This summer, he moved the family west - he and Bernardine
have three small children John Henry Myles ("Jack"),
Teresa Miriam ("Tess"), and Peter Xavier - and he
happily joined the faculty. He currently teaches freshman
mathematics (Euclid), sophomore Latin, and is auditing sophomore
philosophy as he works toward his May dissertation deadline.
On his own initiative, he has started Latin and German clubs
on campus.
But for Clark, it is not all books. He sings with the choir
and plays ball with the students. His three passions, amply
met.
"My lawyer friends are jealous," he says. They
should be.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2002
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