[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 57 (Monday, April 26, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4210-S4211]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRIBUTE TO GIL CLARK

 Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to 
my dear friend Gil Clark. I have admired and respected Gil as a friend 
and coach for many, many years. My thoughts and prayers go out to him 
and his family today, as Gil continues a brave fight against liver 
cancer.
  Gil and I go way back. I met Gil in the 1950's, when he was my little 
league baseball coach in Louisville. Gil began coaching with the 
Beechmont Youth Program at its inception in 1955, and served faithfully 
as president of the program for more than 35 years.
  Gil always taught our little league team that the most important 
thing about sports was that you practice hard and play your best, not 
necessarily that you win. He loved baseball without qualification, and 
all of us on the team could tell. His enthusiasm for the game was 
infectious, and his desire to teach us lessons about life through 
sports was inspiring. Gil wanted our team of aspiring players to 
understand that in life, you're not always going to win--but you should 
always perform to the very best of your ability. Gil certainly made a 
lasting impression on my life, and I'm sure that in his many years as a 
coach he has positively influenced the lives of numerous other young 
people as well.
  Gil committed himself to teaching and coaching young people at 
Beechmont, and worked on the administration of the Louisville/Jefferson 
County Metro Parks service for many years. Gil practiced what he 
preached to those around him, and showed runners year after year that 
perseverance and spirit could get the job done.
  In 1974, Gil was asked by Louisville's mayor to take on the challenge 
of directing the ``Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon.'' Gil 
organized many races during his tenure with Metro Parks, but he 
especially enjoyed putting on the miniMarathon each year. Gil took the 
mayor's challenge seriously, built the race to its present glory, and 
is now known in Kentucky as the ``father of the miniMarathon.''
  Gil, thank you for working with me and coaching me as a young little 
leaguer at Beechmont, and thank you for your dedication to so many 
other young people throughout the years. I am certain that your service 
to the Louisville/Jefferson County community is appreciated by all, and 
I am amazed at your continued commitment to others even in your time of 
illness. May God continue to bless you, and give you strength in your 
valiant fight.
  Mr. President, please include a copy of a Louisville Courier-Journal 
article from Sunday, April 25, 1999 recognizing Gil Clark's 
accomplishments.

[[Page S4211]]

               [From the Courier-Journal, Apr. 25, 1999]

                     There's Always Been Gil Clark

                             (By Jim Adams)

       Gil Clark stood on a slope beside Iroquois Park at 7:59:50 
     a.m. yesterday (runners never round off their minutes) and 
     beheld what he had built: A wide river of 6,500 runners was 
     standing in place, looking up at him.
       ``Ten,'' he said into the microphone.
       ``Nine,'' he said, firm of voice.
       ``Eight,'' he said. He waived a starting pistol above the 
     pith helmet he was wearing, the trademark headpiece some 
     might think is stitched to his scalp.
       This moment could last no more than 10 seconds, of course, 
     but it was a sight that caused the hearts of some of 
     Louisville's serious road runners to soar yesterday at the 
     start of the 26th Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon.
       That's because the 78-year-old Clark--director of the 13.1-
     mile race since its inauguration on a Monday morning in 
     1974--was diagnosed with liver cancer last fall. Just a month 
     ago, he lay unconscious in a hospital for five days; at 
     death's door.
       A stream of runners appeared at his bedside last month to 
     say their personal farewells to the man who almost everyone 
     acknowledges has done more than anyone else for road racing 
     in Louisville.
       He didn't invent the pre-Derby race--a politician did 
     that--but Clark took it, built it, shaped it and nurtured it, 
     and so a lot of people call him the father of the 
     miniMarathon. The way the runners talk about him, he actually 
     seems more like its favorite uncle.
       ``He's the one that made running in Louisville,'' said Jack 
     La Plante, who has run in more than 20 miniMarathons and who 
     stopped to grin for a picture with Clark yesterday morning. 
     ``He put the city on the map, as far as runners go,'' La 
     Plante said right before running the race gain.
       ``He's it,'' said Stan Clark, long one of the leading 
     runners in the miniMarathon, who is not related to Gil Clark. 
     At last month's City Run, Gil Clark's absence was a huge 
     hole, Stan Clark said. ``He's always present; he's always 
     there. There's always been Gil Clark.
       Mary Anne Lyons, the leading female runner in the 
     miniMarathon in recent years, tells this story: An 
     acquaintance told her that years ago, she had set the 
     miniMarathon as a personal goal and had trained long for it, 
     but then ran into an unyielding schedule conflict on race 
     day--a sister's wedding, Lyons thought it was.
       Grasping at straws, the woman--unsure why--called Clark to 
     explain her dilemma. Ever sympathetic, Clark listened, then 
     told the woman to go out and run the route on her own and 
     record her time, Lyons said--and that woman told her that her 
     name appeared on a listing of race finishers that year.
       The story captures the essence of what runners clearly feel 
     about Clark. ``He's for the middle and the back of the 
     pack,'' said Kathy Priddy, Clark's assistant for 18 years 
     when he was Metro Parks' manager for recreation services. 
     He's been an advocate of what's fair and decent.
       His view is at the very core of the miniMarathon itself, a 
     race open to everyone, where neighbors run against neighbors, 
     co-workers against co-workers.
       The miniMarathon has always known it could be flashier and 
     draw a different type of runner if it wanted to, but Clark 
     has never thought much of those impulses. ``I don't want to 
     be director of a race that gives away money,'' he said in a 
     telephone interview Friday. ``If we can't do it for the fun 
     of it, for the fitness of it, and for the camaraderie, then I 
     would want it to die.
       Clark was an unlikely road-race god on Feb. 4. 1974, when 
     he was hired for the park job at age 53 after a career in 
     sales. No one in his family has ever raced. Clark himself has 
     always been a baseball man; he played in high school in 
     Alton, Ill., and spent decades running the youth baseball 
     league in Louisville's Beechmont neighborhood.
       But within two days, he was transformed from baseball man 
     to running man. ``On the sixth day of February, the mayor 
     (Harvey Sloane) came to see me and told me we were going to 
     have a mini. I think he called it a half-marathon,'' Clark 
     said. ``I'll give them an audience,'' Clark said Sloane 
     declared--and indeed the finish, then at the Riverfront Plaza 
     and Belvedere, was generously attended by City Hall workers 
     liberated for the occasion.
       It was, Clark said, the first road race of its kind in 
     Kentucky.
       Businesses soon griped about work-day traffic tie-ups when 
     the first miniMarathons were run on Mondays; the religious 
     community wasn't happy when Sunday was considered as an 
     alternative. So Saturday got the miniMarathon by default.
       Today, Clark said, he believes Louisville has the only park 
     department in the nation that oversees 20 or more races in a 
     year--``for the good of the public,'' he added. ``We have 
     developed a lot of fine races in Louisville, Kentucky, and 
     I'm proud of that,'' he said.
       Priddy, Clark's assistant, said he actually retired and 
     moved to Florida in 1997 with his wife Lorene, Whom he always 
     called ``Mom.'' But she died in March of that same year, just 
     days after the move, and Clark canceled his retirement and 
     came back to the city where he'd lived since 1948. 
     ``Louisville was his life,'' Priddy said. ``He would have had 
     nothing in Florida.''
       Back in Louisville, he also continued to be involved with 
     the mini, although the Derby Festival had by then taken over 
     official management of the race.
       And he also had the unending appreciation of the running 
     community--a community that seems to doubt it would even 
     exist were it not for him. Runner Lyons, for example, who is 
     30, believes that if Metro Park's running program had not 
     been built, she might not be running today. Running in that 
     case would have required travel, she said, and she very well 
     might not have done it.
       Clark worked with the program he loved until late last 
     year. He said he did well after surgery for his liver cancer, 
     but early this year, ``for some reason I can't explain, it 
     all went berserk.''
       One of his two sons, Marvin Clark, said yesterday that in 
     late March, it truly appeared that his father would die. 
     Doctors held out little hope, then no hope, and prayers were 
     said for a peaceful exit.
       Then, Gil Clark began moving--first a leg, then he opened 
     an eye, and soon he spoke. Marvin and his father both said a 
     doctor wrote on his chart these two words: ``Devine 
     intervention.''
       ``God's got something else for me to do, I guess,'' Clark 
     said Friday. ``I might see another Vencor (the road race that 
     precedes the miniMarathon), but if He lets me live to 
     tomorrow night, I will be most grateful.''
       Aside from whatever God has in mind for Clark, the Derby 
     Festival had some ideas, too. Yesterday, it wanted him to 
     fire the starting pistol for he mini-Marathon.
       Friends Tandy Patrick and Jim Woosley, a Louisville police 
     officer, picked Clark up at his son's home in eastern 
     Jefferson County in Patrick's Camaro convertible--with the 
     top down and the heater on.
       Clark wore a white-and-purple jogging suite and his 
     multicolored pith helmet--he doesn't remember who gave the 
     helmet to him, and by now it's been through so many races it 
     appears entirely held together by duct tape and paint. He was 
     bundled in a blanket and scarf in the front seat of the 
     Camaro. But this was the way he wanted it, so he could wave 
     at the runners.
       To travel the 25 feet from the Camaro to the starter's 
     stage, Clark used a wheelchair, but stood strong when Mayor 
     Dave Armstrong gave him a glass plaque, the Derby Festival's 
     Lifetime Achievement Award.
       And then the countdown to another race began.

                          ____________________