This will be the second summer Olympics without my Pawpaw here. Most people don’t measure loss in the number of Olympics that have passed since their loved ones have gone, but then again, most people aren’t the granddaughter of an Olympian.
Growing up, more than being my ice breaker, get-to-know you, fun fact— my grandfather was a pole vaulter in the 1960 Rome Olympics, his experience was an immersive example of generational story telling and developing family culture.
Not only did my grandfather pole vault at the Olympic level, but my dad and uncles vaulted through college, and my cousins, sister, and I dabbled in the sport to varying degrees ourselves.1 While other kids did cannonballs into swimming pools, our Pawpaw showed us how to pole vault into his. He taught swimming lessons for over forty years and instead of pool noodles, he pulled classes full of kicking kids around the water holding onto duct taped wrapped Fiberglass poles.
Pawpaw and Meme’s front yard was incomplete without an old vaulting mat or some kind of contraption hanging from the tree designed to teach you to hoist your body up and over the bar in just the right way. While these devices were mainly used by the many kids he trained free of charge, that didn’t stop him from roping us into the fun. At face value, this kind of practice was hardly motivating to us kids, or to Dave Clark, so everything became a competition. Who could clear the highest height? Who required the least amount of tries? Who could climb the highest on the rope?
The face-offs didn’t stop with pole vaulting, though. My grandfather was an athlete through and through and his competitive spirit knew no bounds. But for as much of a dark horse as he was, he was even more of a joker, so his contests were always rooted jest and love. Our favorite, and the one that will live in Clark family history forevermore, was the money grab.
Each Christmas he would bring out a large plastic mixing bowl filled with coins. The first year he introduced this game, we began with the bowl covered with a kitchen towel, all of us cousins circled up with our hands hovering around the top. He instructed us to dive our hands into the bowl on his count as soon as he removed the towel to grab as big of a handful of coins as we could. He told us we would do a few practice rounds and then The Real Thing. Once we got the hang of the game, he went back to the kitchen to prepare the bowl for The Real Thing. On his return, we all gathered excitedly. I was probably 13 or so at the time and two fistfuls of coins would go a long way in procuring a new American Eagle graphic tee. I sized up my competition, knowing I had the advantage of being the oldest by at least four years. When he counted down and removed the towel, I dove in as quickly as I could, willing my hands to take up as much real estate in the bowl as possible, only instead of my fingers being met with the cold hard metal of quarters and nickels, I stared in disgust as they oozed with the cold wet slime of ketchup and mustard.
I’ll never know for sure, but if I had to guess, aside from making it to the Olympics, this moment was probably his greatest accomplishment2. We never saw it coming and our naiveté brought him endless joy. My dad and uncles recounted how he played the same prank on them when they were kids and he had been waiting all these years for us to be just the right age for him to strike again. After everyone but the cousins had a good laugh, he told us this really was The Real Thing. A little more untrusting, our hands poised to strike once more, only this time when he removed the towel, we all hesitated a beat before diving in.
Over the years this game evolved from grabbing money in a bowl all together, to each having our own turn going after the change, to eventually him and my grandmother quite literally throwing coins at us while my cousins and I3 dove over each other on the wooden floor of their living room, fighting over our bounty. We would then scurry off to our separate corners of the house to add up our loot. After we totaled our prizes, Pawpaw would announce the winner and add our totals to his list, which he kept on the side of the refrigerator all year long. Our highest takeaways reached into the seventy dollar range, which was totally worth the one time humiliation of having ketchup and mustard dripping from our hands.
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Aside from infusing his recreational spirit into all areas of life, my grandfather loved to incorporate and share his sports paraphernalia in anyway he could. Pawpaw and Meme’s house was an homage to his accomplishments and to his sport. Their walls were adorned with black and white and sepia toned photos of him in short shorts sailing over bars, while his pole stood erect in the air because he vaulted before the advent of Fiberglass poles. Their stairwell was plastered with plaques, awards, and framed magazines touting his accomplishments.
Following the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, their dining room became a shrine to the torch after he was among the few honored athletes chosen to carry the Olympic torch through Dallas on its way to Atlanta and in return, received his own to live in his home. I was five years old when this took place and only have vague memories of standing on the side of the road with signs, cheering him on as he ran past. But I very clearly remember my mom reiterating what a big deal it was that he was getting to participate in this event and that we were going to watch. This was my first memory of my Pawpaw not being like a regular grandpa.
When I was in fourth grade, Pawpaw came to my school to give a talk about his experience as an Olympian and brought relics like his warm up wind breaker, number, and of course, the torch. When he called me up to the front of the auditorium to help show my classmates his treasures, I felt like a celebrity, despite having seen these objects countless times. Hearing him tell these stories never got old. The man had a way of making ordinary experiences extraordinary and extraordinary experiences arresting.
In 2016, Luke and I wanted to throw ourselves an Olympic themed birthday party and spent an afternoon listening to him recount some of his favorite memories as he generously lent out his memorabilia for us to display at our party. His contributions gave our shindig an authenticity even Mary Kate and Ashley could have only dreamed of at their iconic Olympic party the year before (IYKYK). He never once worried something would happen to these priceless artifacts, just knowing they were bringing other people joy, brought him joy.
This Olympic pride and love of sport could all be seen as pretentious, ostentatious, and egotistical, but Dave Clark was anything but. As the story goes, back in 1960, he cleared his opening height at the start of the event, when it began to rain and the pole vaulters had to break until the weather cleared up. When they were permitted to resume vaulting, the athletes were granted a few practice rounds to warm back up, and that’s when my grandfather dislocated his shoulder and was unable to finish the rest of the meet.
I remember the first time I heard the ending to this story as a child, I was floored. Not because he had hidden this fact, but because he didn’t let it define him. By the way he recounted his experience and effused about his love for the Olympics and pole vaulting, I always assumed he had medaled. As someone who has always operated under the unspoken motto, “if I can’t be the best, why do it at all?”, his exuberance simply did not match his experience in my mind. But that is who my Pawpaw was— magnanimous, larger-than-life, exceptional. He didn’t let his injury define his Olympic experience, he was honored to have had the chance to compete, and went on to champion the games, even serving on the board to one day bring them to Dallas.
This is my second Olympics without him here, but my first as a mother. At almost three year’s old, my daughter isn’t quite old enough to grasp what this all means—we’re having some friends over for the opening ceremonies tonight and she keeps confusing the Olympics for the eclipse. But I want her to know, at least in some small way, the significance of these games because they point to the significance of him.
At his funeral, I stood up and spoke while experiencing what would be the first of many chemical pregnancies. I ended my speech by lamenting;
“I’m afraid to stop talking because I’m afraid of the finality I’ll feel when I stop talking about him. But I know that I will never stop talking about my Pawpaw. While I’m so sad my kids will never know him, they will know him through the stories I’ll tell. He will be woven into the fabric of our lives. The legacy he left will be carried on for generations to come and that is the greatest gift he could’ve ever left us— a life well lived”
If I learned anything from my Pawpaw’s well-lived life, I learned the power of story and the power of perspective. While it pains me he never had the chance to meet my daughter, the Olympics are a reminder that the stories I tell her will weave him into the fabric of her life. Experiences, like watching this tradition which is so meaningful to our family, play out in front of her eyes and infusing some of his light hearted jest into our days, will give texture to who he was. And reminding myself of the Dave Clark perspective— to keep at my thing4, whatever it is, despite getting hurt, will keep his legacy alive in all of our hearts.
2003 7th grade district champion and Keller Middle School girls’ record holder, at your service.
Actually, I think his greatest accomplishment was around this same time when him and my grandmother took me on a cruise and we stopped at a port in Mexico. We kept seeing iguanas and he assured me they weren’t real, probably just statues, and encouraged me to go over and try to pet one. Tired of his pestering and still very gullible, I went over and reached my hand out and when the giant lizard darted away, I about had a heart attack from fear and he about had one from laughing so hard. Towards the end of his life when his memory was failing, this is one of the stories that stuck with him and I would laugh along with him as he would recount it over and over, laughing as hard as he did the first time it happened. I’d pet 100 iguanas to hear that laugh again.
I participated in this tradition until I was a grown, married woman with a career, much to the chagrin of my cousins. My argument was now I needed the money more than ever, I had bills to pay! And probably still graphic tees to buy…
If I’m honest, right now, writing is the thing I’ve been avoiding lately because I haven’t felt like I can do it perfectly.
Lately
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