Allan Appel Photo
Despite a long lineage in New Haven’s premier Irish-American fraternal organization, Will Clark declined to join the Knights of St. Patrick for 10 years, until they admitted women. Now Clark will don shining top hat and tails when he marches as an honoree of the Knights in this year’s Greater New Haven St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
The parade rolls out on March 11 this year. Clark and other honorees will receive their public acknowledgment a week earlier on March 3 at the annual parade ball.
Click here for a list of other activities including opportunities to release your inner leprechaun in the run-up to the parade.
Clark, who’s the chief operating officer of the Board of Education, is receiving the James J. Dinnan Award. According to Grand Marshal Kevin Smith, that award goes to a resident of Connecticut of Irish descent for “unselfish dedication and contribution to fellow Americans.” Recent past recipients of the award have included state Sen. Martin Looney.
Clark’s Irish roots go back five generations to the founders of the Knights of St. Patrick in 1878. When he received the news of his upcoming award, he was honored, happy, and humbled, he said.
Clark, along with Marshal Smith and past Knights President Jim McGovern, talked about this year’s plans the other day at the Knights clubhouse on upper State Street near the Hamden border. Its original building was on York Street downtown.
A cameo image of Clark’s great great-grandfather Bernard Clark, one of the founders, of the club, is part of a display by the door as you enter (pictured above). Beyond is a long rectangular club space full of memorabilia of the city’s rich Irish heritage, a pool table, and a nicely appointed shiny wooden bar.
Like other ethnic societies, the club was a gateway for one generation of immigrants that had established itself to help the next one.
“Over a meal you’d find the painter, doctor [or whomever you needed], and he’d give you a start,” Clark said of how the club worked to acclimate and assimilate new arrivals. It, of course, was originally male-dominated.
It was also a beehive of early Democratic Party politics. Clark said that his grandfather, Bernard’s son John, was a “ward co-chair in Goatville during the rough and tumble days.”
“I should have been the first fifth generation member” of the club, Clark said.
That was no automatic for Clark. While still in high school he went against his father’s wishes and refused to join because the Knights at the time refused to accept women.
Not joining didn’t mean he wouldn’t go in for a beer or socialize or participate in all aspects of the club and Irish life in New Haven.
He was bucking history: The Clarks and the Flynns, according to Kevin Smith, have the distinction of being the only extant New Haven families that stretch back five generations to the founders.
But Clark had drawn his line in the sand.
The Clarks & The Kennedys
Clark dates that refusal to about 1986 when the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy was the invited speaker for New Haven’s St. Patrick’s Day dinner.
Clark recalled that Kennedy, for his own reasons, had made a point about the Knights not admitting women.
(It was perhaps no coincidence that in the following year, 1989, St. Patrick’s Day Parade chose Kathleen Reilly as its first female grand marshal.)
Clark recalled that Kennedy refused to go through with the speech, which was slated for the Park Plaza (now Omni) Hotel downtown.
Kevin Smith sent the Independent this documentation from an Associated Press article on the matter that appeared in the Waterbury Republican on Feb. 27, 1987: “Last year [1986] Senator Edward Kennedy, D‑Mass., cancelled speaking at the dinner when he discovered women could not attend.”
The contretemps made the national papers.
“For us [Irish Catholics] the Kennedys are your political heroes. I was galvanized,” Clark remembered.
That also meant taking on his dad. “On the one hand he was proud of his son taking this position. On the other hand, it’s a sore spot: I was not taking my rightful position in local Irish history,” Clark recall.
And that opened the door for a Flynn to achieve the coveted distinction.
Honoree Clark and 2012 Grand Marshal Kevin A. Smith, who have known each other “since diapers.”
Roll the clock forward 10 more years. It is 1998, and times have changed. Then club President Jim McGovern led the way for the club to accept women.
“I’m the Abe Lincoln of this club,” McGovern said as he tended to 12 large, glistening corned beefs in the club’s kitchen, where they were being readied for Sunday’s traditional corned beef dinner fundraiser.
On the night of the historic vote in 1998, with the barrier removed between tradition and his son’s stance, the elder Clark couldn’t wait to enlist his son in membership.
“My dad paid $50” for the fee and certificate of membership, had it signed immediately, “and tracked me down,” Clark recalled.
His dad died a year later. “[It was] my first [St. Patrick’s Day] dinner in 1999 without my dad,” Clark said.
James J. Dinnan, whose memorial reward Clark is receiving, was a longtime executive organizer of the parade. He was also a New Haven school teacher.
Clark said his selection as this year’s honoree was based in part on his work as part of the city’s school-reform team.
“That fits nicely with Mr. Dinnan’s legacy,” he noted.
Of the selection, Kevin Smith said of Clark, “We hit a home run.”
Clark said he was also proud of “the things I do outside of work.” That has included (with his sister) re-invigorating Sunday school classes at St. Joseph’s Church on Edwards Street. He also helped restart the Eddie Sheehan Little League, which plays on a small field tucked behind the East Rock Global Magnet School site.
Clark recalled a boyhood “when there were nine Smiths and six Clarks” in the area around Humphrey and Orange. Kids just picked up and played ball. One of his own coaches in the Eddie Sheehan League when he was a kid was Rick Levin. Clark pronounced the now Yale president a terrific little league coach.
Each parade’s organizers rename Church and Chapel. This year it will be James Reardon Blvd. in honor of the recently deceased New Haven fire department captain.
So he and a handful of parents have restarted the league, now with four teams, mainly for little ones, but also with a “Sand Lot Saturday,” which means everyone just shows up and plays.
Like the old days. Clark, who has three young children, said with pride: “I’m bringing up the sixth generation.”
And women in the Knights today? Of the 350 members, about 40 are women, estimated Jim McGovern. Today “we can’t keep ‘em out of here. There’s a steady flow,” he said, lifting his eyes to the door.
“Once they all joined, they wondered, ‘Why should I do it?’ They just wanted to be allowed to join.”
Several of the guys sitting at the bar chimed in, in like fashion. One said that once women had been admitted, all the politicians stopped coming to the events.
That’s of course not quite true. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro has been an honoree at the parade, among others. And the guys were being served their beers by a female bartender.
The parade in New Haven, begun in 1842, is the sixth oldest parade in the country, according to Kevin Smith. The Knights are one of four sponsoring organizations. The others are the New Haven Gaelic Football and Hurling Club; the West Haven Irish-American Club, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
This year’s parade has a full run-up of fundraising events including a “great Guinness toast” on Feb. 17 and a “public safety muster,” or fundraising meal, on Feb. 23. On Feb. 25, you can also dress as a leprechaun, more or less, and join a pub crawl that begins at Anna Liffey’s at 3 p.m.