Years ago, his friends had urged Clark to run for County Prosecutor. Perhaps he should have. Tough, fair, hard-working, compassionate, well-liked and well respected, he’d have made a good one. Like Truman, he might have even gone higher.

But he never did like politics, never really entertained the idea. Instead, he stepped into precisely the wrong job at just the wrong time.

But no need for regrets. Clark has few. As he says, and as everyone who knows him repeats, he “always tried to do what he thought was right.” And if he looks a little weary from the experience, he still has the respect of his family and friends, job security for as long as he chooses, and a 12 handicap to boot. Not bad for a 72 year-old guy.

And although the magnet school plan proved something of a failure--”God, they wasted a lot of money,” says Judge Scott Wright--it was not a tragedy. The real tragedy--for democracy’s sake--would have been its success.

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