Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 25, 1992 TAG: 9201250112
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Long
PRIDE AND PRAYERS
Milton Clark can't remember exactly what his son, Gary, did in that high school football game so long ago. But he does remember how he felt about it."He made a play, and it hit me upside the head - he can play, he can play," says Clark, 64.
Gary Clark, the pride of Dublin, has shown the world that he can play. After starring at Pulaski County High School and James Madison University, he has gone on to become a Pro Bowl selection, a John Madden favorite and a member-in-good-standing, with Ricky Sanders and Art Monk, of the Washington Redskins' Posse of fleet, glue-fingered receivers.
On Sunday, Clark, 29, and his teammates will contend with the Buffalo Bills at Super Bowl XXVI at the Metrodome in Minnesota. It will be his second Super Bowl appearance. He picked up a champion's ring when the Redskins crushed the Denver Broncos 42-10 in Super Bowl XXII in San Diego.
His parents, Milton and Mabel Clark, will be there. Milton will add his voice to the ear-piercing screams of the crowd. Mabel, if tradition holds, will spend tense moments praying in the women's restroom.
Gary Clark is famous enough that certain aspects of his life are common knowledge. He is tough, the network commentators say. He shows no fear when he runs pass routes across the middle, where large, irascible linebackers lie in wait.
He hates to lose, they say. When the Redskins play poorly, he steams up and down the sidelines, exhorting his teammates so much that his head coach, Joe Gibbs, has asked him to cool it.
He is successful. His football contract pays him $750,000 this season and will pay $850,000 the next. He has a large brick home in Centreville in Fairfax County, part ownership of Champions, a restaurant at Tysons Corner, and ownership of the Gary Clark Sports Center operated by his parents in Dublin.
These are facts from the public domain. His family and friends can tell you the inside story.
Tough? "Tough and stubborn," his father says.
"Very bossy," says his sister, Shelia.
Hates to lose? "You can't be a good athlete if you can get beat and then laugh about it after the game," his father says. When the Redskins lose at RFK Stadium, "I go down after the game and get his bag, and that's all the conversation till the next day. He just don't want to talk."
Clark has pride, says Troy Hampton, 39, who has known him for years. "We had a lot of guys up here who could play ball but didn't have that drive to hit the books and go to college. A lot of them are walking the streets now, disappointed."
Anthony Young, Clark's best friend, grew up next door to him on Baskerville Street, where the kids called themselves the Hounds.
"Whatever happens, we're always there for each other," says Young, a machine operator at the Federal Mogul plant in Blacksburg. In October, Young injured his hip in an auto accident and spent five days in the hospital. Gary Clark, superstar, called him every day.
Clark's parents proudly say that he has given them a home, a van, a couple of cars and a motor home. Plus, he bought a house for his grandparents. And then there is the store, full of Redskins and Gary Clark shirts, posters and the like.
Running the store "gives us something to do," Milton Clark says, with a laugh. It doesn't make big money, something Gary is well aware of. "He says he's going to close it every year, but he never does."
Years ago, Milton Clark was head of the county's NAACP chapter. He teaches Sunday school at the Pentecostal Holiness church in Pulaski. Gary is the youngest of the Clarks' four children.
"I tried to teach my kids to take the word `can't' out of their vocabulary," he says. "I told them to work hard and do their best. You never know, so try."
Joel Hicks, the football coach at Pulaski County High School, is most impressed by the improvement Gary Clark has shown every season. He reminds Hicks of a tough basketball player from West Virginia named Jerry West.
Like West, Clark, at 5 feet 9, 170 pounds, is small compared to the men he plays against. Like West, he plays hurt. And, of course, he wins.
"Am I surprised?" asks Milton Clark, his eyebrows rising. "Surprised? You'd have to be - 170 pounds! I'm not surprised he made the pros. I'm surprised how well he's played."
When Gary Clark was a child, he called himself The Pro.
Milton Clark worked at the Coleman Furniture factory in Pulaski, made loans and collections for a finance company and painted houses and did other jobs to get by.
Mabel Clark spent 16 years as a teacher's aide in the Pulaski County schools.
Life is easier now. But the Clarks say their pride in their son's football achievements is matched by their pride in his summertime Why Say No sports camps in Roanoke, Hillsville and Washington.
The camps provide equal measures of athletic instruction and self-esteem lessons, with strong emphasis on avoiding drug use. Rep. Joseph Kennedy II (D-Mass.) has agreed to co-chair the camps this year.
The Clarks know their son's fame and fortune comes at a mental and physical price. His mother is always relieved when the season ends, because "it's dangerous out there."
They worry that others might think they've changed because of their son's success. He hasn't changed, they say, and neither have they.
"I don't feel important, big," says Mabel Clark. "I'm just me. I wear blue jeans. I'm tired. I'm just a mother."
Just a mother with a son at the center of the sports universe.
"We never know how it's going to end," she says. "It's good now, but it could end any time, and we're sensible enough to know that."
Meanwhile, her husband says, "We thank a lot of people that have prayed for the success of Gary. The Lord has been good to Gary Clark."
Keywords:
PROFILE