Roger B. Clark

Roger Clark BA ’66 has enjoyed reading an advance copy of Woman, Captain, Rebel: The Extraordinary True Story of a Daring Icelandic Sea Captain, by his late wife’s daughter, Margaret Willson. Margaret briefly taught a gender studies class at L&C some years ago. Ahead of some recently proposed local rebate incentives, he converted his home to “all electric” by replacing a gas heater with a heat pump system feeding into the existing ducts.

Roger Clark BA ’66 says he has been “aging in place and doing lots of gardening.” His cat died at age 17, easing housekeeping. He assisted choir members in an all-day pipe washing at Puget Sound Pipe Organ to help refurbish the organ of St. Paul’s Church in Bellingham, Washington. On May 24, 2021, he sang with an interfaith choir to help send off the Lummi House of Tears totem pole, carved from a 400-foot red cedar. It was delivered to Washington, D.C., and gifted to the Biden administration. The pole, which honors the rights of indigenous people and their sacred lands and waters, will be featured at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. His granddaughter, Kelsey Willson, led the Wake Forest University team to its first-place win in the $500,000 NASA Vascular Tissue Challenge. Their team’s artificial liver cells may be part of an experiment on the International Space Station.”

Roger Clark BA ’66 retired from Oregon Fruit Products in 1999. He and his wife, Betsy Willson, moved from Lake Oswego, Oregon, to Bellingham, Washington. Betsy and Roger had a wonderful 38 years together before she died in 2013. Clark’s passion has always been singing. He performs with the Whatcom Chorale, Bellingham Chamber Chorale, Bellingham Festival of Music Chorus, and Pacific Northwest Opera Chorus. In 2018, he sang in the operas Turandot and La Bohème. In 2017, he went on a fascinating tour of Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands, where he observed a pair of “skypointing” blue-footed boobies and other wonders.