Love, War and a Parade: Get to Know Grand Marshal Clarence Bark

Talking to Clarence Bark, this year’s Montgomery Fest Parade’s Grand Marshal, is like stepping back in time 60 years. Bark’s tales are firmly mid-Twentieth Century.

I sat down with Bark and his wife, Jeanette, in their Montgomery home last week—just two days before Sunday's parade—and Bark still wasn’t sure what a Grand Marshal was supposed to do, but he was ready to wing it.

Bark, 87, has been winging it for most of his life. Straight out of high school at age 18, he couldn’t find a job, so he went into the the Navy Reserves.

“In 1941, there was no work. That’s why I joined the Navy,” said Bark, who turns 88 on August 25.

Bark served in the Navy from July 1941 to September 1946, during World War II. He first served on the USS Bennington (a WWII aircraft carrier) until the surrender at Tokyo Bay in 1945, and then he joined the USS Lexington, another aircraft carrier.

Bark was in the Pacific Ocean almost five years, he said. In the fall of 1946, he received honorable discharge from the Navy and returned to Sandwich, Ill. where he was born and raised.

He quickly took a job as a brickman at “the Q,” or the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. It was a memorable day when his superiors sent a Zephyr train to fetch him in order to give him the news that he couldn’t work for the railroad any longer on account of his “bum knee.” It was a safety issue, he said.

Bark’s knee didn’t stop him from working in construction however, so he got a job as a “hod carrier”: he would carry bricks using tongs for the bricklayers. It was as a day laborer in 1949 that he met Jeanette. They crossed paths at a local establishment when he was working on the new local telephone building in Sandwich.

The two had a lot to talk about, since she had just returned from a road trip to Alaska and back, and he had traveled the world in his Navy days, Jeanette said. They started dating and in 1951, Bark quit construction and went to work at Thor Power Tool in Aurora, where Jeanette worked.

Bark almost went back to the Navy after he lost the job at Burlington, but he stayed for her.

It was when they were dating that they drove the then-gravel road, as Jeanette remembers, that is now Broadway Avenue in Montgomery and spotted where their future house should be built. Not too long after, Bark spotted a “for sale” sign posted on a tree in the lot, and soon they were the proud owners of a corner plot of land across from the Fox River in Kane County. And in the mid-1950s, it cost them $1,200.

They spent the next few years working at Thor Power Tool and building their dream house on the lot after work and on weekends.

They remember nights of holding a flashlight to lay down bricks for the screened in back porch. In 1958, the house was finished and they officially tied the knot.

Jeanette said she wanted to travel so the couple took every opportunity over the next several years to travel.

“We traveled all over,” said Bark, who was grateful for their good jobs and kind bosses. Bark later worked as a machinist at Armour-Dial in Aurora. “We’ve been all over the country,” he said.

The couple traveled in their motor home with their two Pomeranian dogs for many years. They owned a home in Sedona, Ariz. in the late 1980s.

Bark’s last memorable journey was aboard an Honor Flight Chicago plane, when he and other WWII veterans went to see the WWII memorial in Washington D.C. in June 2008. Bark described the flight as a wonderful experience. At first, Bark thought he wasn’t interested in the Honor Flight program that flies veterans to the memorial at no cost to them.

“I had had my fill of war,” he said.

But after Jeanette encouraged him, Bark went ahead with the day long trip and said it was “a day of honor.”

“It was a tear jerker,” said Jeanette, who surprised him along with other family members when he got off the plane in Chicago.

The Barks don’t travel any longer, but Clarence, who retired from Dial in 1989, keeps busy with his role in Montgomery’s Plan Commission. He was appointed to the commission by Mayor Wayne Wells in 1979. He credits his long time neighbor Herschel Luckinbill for the opportunity.

Serving on the commission has been very rewarding, Bark said. He has overseen numerous projects throughout the years, but many recent ones are the most memorable such as the new Village Hall and the development at Route 30 and Orchard Road.

“It’s been an honor to serve on them all these years,” he said. Bark, who is the longest serving plan commissioner, served as commission chairman for a while in the 1980s, and then stepped down so someone younger could learn the role.

Out of all of Bark’s decisions in life, the only one he’d change is the year he retired. He says he should have retired earlier at age 62, so he and Jeanette could have traveled more.

“This little lady is my life,” he said pointing to Jeanette.