Author: By Kera Ritter, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, April 4, 1999

Page: 1

Section: City Weekly

After children have grown and moved away from home, it is rare for parents to still remember the names of their preschool teachers, unless one of them was Mary Robinson Clarke.

For 35 years, Clarke worked with students and parents, mostly in the old Columbia Point housing development, teaching the students and providing support for their families through Head Start.

When she retired not long ago, she was honored by Action for Boston Community Development, which runs Head Start programs, with the Outstanding Employee Award.

Many former students and their parents remember her well. Betty Quarles, for example, said Clarke prepared her daughter and other children for the rigors of public school and also was their friend.

"She's a down-to-earth person and someone you could go and talk to if you had a problem," said Quarles, who has known Clarke since 1965 and whose grandchild is now in the class. "If you had to go in and talk to her about your child, she'd listen. A lot of the public school teachers don't."

Clarke has always been active in her community, trying to improve the quality of life for her children and neighbors.

"My dad always said, `You'd better help someone else because if not, you're just taking up space and you're better off dead,' " she said. "And I surely don't want to be that."

Her foray into Head Start, a nationwide education program for low-income children ages 3 to 5, began when a parent from the neighborhood asked her to fill in for the Head Start cook who was taking a month off for surgery. When the cook returned, Clarke filled in for a teacher's assistant on extended sick leave. When the assistant came back, an administrator asked Clarke if she wanted to take courses for certification at Wheelock College.

Clarke took classes and kept working as an assistant. With her certification, she became a teacher.

"I loved the work," she said. "You watch the kids grow and see that they really need and want to be in school. It wasn't just some place for them to go."

Born in Middleton, Ohio, Clarke, 64, was the oldest of nine children. At 15, she went to Kentucky, lied about her age, and married a construction worker nine years her senior.

"My mother nearly had a bird," she said.

Even though Clarke and her now late husband, Theodore, quickly started a family, she still finished high school.

"I needed it for myself," she said. "A lot of women make a mistake by relying on a man. A man can go out to buy cigarettes and keep right on going, but I don't care because I have mine."

Clarke's husband moved to Boston around 1953 to be near his mother in Maine, but Clarke stayed behind because she was pregnant. A few months later, she and their six children joined him, and the young family settled in the Columbia Point housing development in Dorchester, now Harbor Point.

"I didn't like Boston when I first moved here," she said. "It was a large city and I had come from a small place where you say hello to your neighbor and walk through their yard. Boston was a concrete jungle."

Still, she wanted to be involved. She became a Girl Scout troop leader and organized a girls baseball team.

"I never let my children do anything I didn't check out first," she said.

This included school. Clarke said she would observe classes her children were about to attend and prepare them at home. Only three of her children went to kindergarten, but they all knew their numbers, alphabet, and how to write their name before they started school. Clarke also told her children that clowning around in class was not acceptable.

"I drilled it into their heads," she said. "I had eight children and only went to school twice, once when my daughter climbed a tree during a fire drill and didn't want to get down, and the other time when my two sons had a fight."

The daughter's infraction earned her two months of grounding; the boys received 3 1/2 months.

Once all eight children were in school, Clarke began working at Head Start. She quickly became an advocate of the program, passing out fliers in church and informing new neighbors about the opportunity.

Clarke said Head Start's comprehensive approach to education helped build the community. Parents are assigned a family service advocate to assess their needs when they register their children. Mental health services, general education classes, and social services for housing, job training, and other services are available.

"The teachers were part of each child's family," she said. "If there was something the family needed, you made sure they received it. Not because it was mandatory, but because you wanted to do it. And it certainly wasn't for the money because there wasn't much pay."

Even with the responsibility of raising her own family and involvement with her student's families, Clarke found time to travel to the South to register black voters in the late 1960s.

"It was something I had to do," she said. "I figure if I'm voting up here, why can't they vote down there?"

Her decision was also influenced by her experience in the South, when she was instructed by her mother-in-law to sit in the back of the bus.

"I told my dad, `I have all these children. What if they want to go down South to see relatives?' " she said. "I don't want to sit here and worry if my black children are going to come home."

Clarke's father supported her decision and her husband agreed to watch the children, with a bit of help from their neighbors.

"When I went down there, they said they were going to pray for me because I was going to get killed," she said. "I said, `Fine, if I gotta go, I gotta go.' "

Three days after arriving in Selma, Clarke and other volunteers were arrested for refusing to leave a lunch counter. They were released three days later and continued their work, registering several dozen voters during their trip.

"I was inspired by the people down there," she said. "At night, the Ku Klux Klan would riot and set fields on fire and a lot of elderly people were afraid. But even with all the heartache and fear and poverty, they were still struggling to make things better."

Clarke resumed her hectic schedule when she returned to Boston. The children grew up and some went to college, to work, or into the armed forces. She spent 25 years at the Columbia Point Head Start center and then went to the Dorchester office to be a family service supervisor and later director. Three years later, she moved to the South End branch and started a program to enroll homeless children living in shelters.

Her co-workers admired her energy, enthusiasm, and effect on the children.

"You were always up around Mary," said Leslie Owens, an admistrative assistant at the South End office. "She brought the old-fashionedness and was good with the kids. She was the only one who got the whole Miss Mary Clarke; no one else did. We got a first name."

Clarke's former students also remember not only her classroom work, but her relationship with their families.

Janice Quarles, 21, attended Head Start in Columbia Point and recently went on a bus trip to Atlantic City with Clarke.

"When I was in school, I looked at her like another adult, one of my mother's friends," she said. "I was embarrassed she used to be my teacher, and now I'm going gambling with her, but she's a lot of fun."

These days, Clarke divides her time between her son, a Vietnam veteran recently diagnosed with throat cancer, and the Roxbury apartment she shares with a daughter. Most of her children still live in Massachusetts and visit frequently.

She said she plans to stay busy by working to increase prescription coverage for the elderly and affordable housing.

"I'm about to do some things because people are not acting right," she said. "I'm getting ready to march on somebody."

RITTER;03/09 CAWLEY;04/02,11:14 CICLARK04