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E LI Z A BE T H A N D

WI L L A R D CL A R K

Written by Catherine, Stuart,
and Wesley Clark, January 2018

Bill discussing the “Kemari scene from the Tale of Genji” with a group at the Clark Center for Japanese Art in 2009.
The screen is now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, acc. no.2013.29.12. Photo courtesy of the Clark family.

Dad, Willard G. (Bill) Clark, was born in the small farming Our parents began taking flights to Japan on military
town of Hanford, California in 1930. He grew up working planes. They both loved Japan and began collecting art
on his family’s dairy farm, and riding his horse, Paint, to a with what little they had. When his father became ill and
one-room schoolhouse. It was in here, in the third grade, passed away suddenly in 1958, Dad’s plans to see the
that he fell in love with Japan and became rapt with world were put on the shelf while he went home and
wanderlust. worked the small dairy farm. Mom said that when they
first started they earned $30 a month and all the milk they
Fast forward about 20 years and Bill Clark has graduated could drink.
from UC Davis and entered the US Navy as an officer
stationed at Barber’s Point Naval Base in the territory of
Hawaii. There, he worked as a radar officer and met and
married the love of his life, our Mom, Elizabeth (Libby)
Dugan, who was teaching school at the navy base after
graduating from college in Illinois.

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