Bio Profile: Walter Clark

I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. My family was heavily invested in the Church of God In Christ Pentecostal movement. It was not uncommon for me and my 5 siblings to be at church 3 days per week. Church certainly was a beneficial distraction for me living in the ghetto, affectionately referred to as the 'hood'. My elementary education took place in the Cleveland public school system. After completing the 9^th grade, my guidance counselor hooked me up with the A Better Chance, aka, ABC, scholarship program. 

My first exposure to Williams College was during the summer of 1968 where the ABC program introduced scholarship recipients to the rigors of prep school academics.  During that summer program, recipients like me got matched with participating prep schools. 

I got picked by Phillips Andover Academy. I did surprisingly very well during my first year, which ended up being my last year at Andover, for I was kicked out without due process and for something I should have known better not to do, with my church upbringing.  But what would you expect from a 15-year-old far away from home for the first time in his life? Maybe it was the way I got kicked out and my good grades that A Better Chance gave me a Second Chance and got me placed with Vermont Academy; another participating prep school.

I graduated from Vermont Academy second in my class and not before I applied early decision to Williams College.  I chose Williams because I sensed it was a good school and figured that because it was tucked away in a valley far away from big cities, I would not have to worry about being distracted from my studies.  For that reason, Columbia was out of the question for it was right smack in one the biggest cities of the world.  This was the school that my ABC sponsor in Cleveland wanted me to apply to and he figured I was a shoe-in.  To tell you the truth, I really didn’t do much research on colleges.  So, with my Williams selection, I truly lucked out as it turns out, when I was ultimately accepted for admission.  And just so you know, after that summer program, Williams had me at hello!  Didn’t really know from the start how great a school it was and is!

After completing my first year of medical school, that summer I ventured back to Williams to argue for my liberal arts degree. I was a ‘soft chemistry’ major and maybe that was the reason I had to argue my case with none other than the great Professor Charles Compton (deceased 1/5/2008); a Princeton graduate with a Ph.D in chemistry from Yale and during World War II worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. After the war, Professor Compton joined the chemistry faculty at Williams College, becoming a professor and then chairman of the chemistry department and the Ebenezer Fitch Professor in 1957. He was also secretary of the faculty. I must have had a gift of gab because I was successful in getting the paper.  Or maybe he just had mercy on me. This mercy relieved me of my college drop-out distinction.

I was the first in my entire family bloodline, both sides, to complete high school and higher education. Many of my folks migrated from the Mississippi Delta region and many remained there. In 1978, I received my MD degree from Howard.

My postgraduate medical training took place at Mt. Sinai Hospital of Cleveland and the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama.   Between 1979 and 1988 in Mobile, Alabama, I served both in the National Health Services Corps as a general medical officer and as a general internist at a federally qualified community health center in Mobile, Alabama (Franklin Memorial Primary Health Care Center). In 1988, I achieved board-certification in Internal Medicine. 

I returned to Cleveland, Ohio in 1988, and joined the medical staff of Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services, Inc. (NEON), a network of federally qualified community health centers (FQHC).   From 1994 to 2012, I served as the Medical Director of NEON.   We cared for more than 50,000 indigent residents that called NEON their medical home.