HANCOCK
Robert Phippen Clark, the son of Francis and Elizabeth Phippen of Hancock, was born in Bangor on June 2, 1933, and died in the Sacred Heart Hospital in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., on March 29, 2018. On his final night in life he was taken out to dinner and watched the Red Sox–Tampa game and enjoyed a glass of wine.
In his growing-up years, he worked in Hancock on his Clarke grandparents’ dairy farm and on Hancock Point in the summers with his caretaking relatives. He attended the Mount Desert Ferry School and the old Hancock Corner School. He loved sports, hunting and fishing, and being in the Boy Scouts, where he ultimately received the top rank of Eagle Scout. He spent two happy summers at Camp Roosevelt in East Eddington and later spent another summer there as an employee. He was also on the Hancock town baseball team. Because there were several other Roberts in the Clark/Clarke family, he was given the nickname of “Bobba” and at school he was called “Phip.”
He graduated from Ellsworth High School in 1950, where for four years he played football, baseball and basketball and ran track. He was a member of the Varsity Club and elected by his classmates “The Best Looking Boy of 1950”. His favorite movie star was Jerry Lewis, whom he liked to imitate.
Always a lover of airplanes, he had a huge collection of the old Wing cigarette cards that featured worldwide fighter planes. In his bedroom, he made model planes that he hung from his ceiling. In 1951, he joined the Air Force; and he and his pal Kenny Stratton drove across the U.S. to San Francisco, where they left for the Korean War. Before that, Bob was married to Betty Saulier in New Hampshire. While he was gone, his son Gary was born.
Returning from the war, he came home to a divorce and orders to report to Patrick Air Base in Cocoa Beach, Fla., where he met his second wife, Janet Cox. In 1957, they visited Maine before flying to Germany for three years where his daughter Sandra was born. While in Germany, he organized and Air Force softball team that toured Europe. Returning to the U.S. in 1960, he was stationed in Wyoming for his final and 10th year in the service. Moving to Florida, he got a job with the McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Co., for whom he worked in both Florida and California. With the transformation of old Cape Canaveral into Cape Kennedy, Bob found himself working in the space program and on the Apollo Project.
In 1978, he moved his family back to Maine, where he worked on Hancock Point and at the Jordan River Country Club in Trenton before becoming an assistant manager to “Crazy Gill” at The White Birches in Hancock. He also coached and umpired for the DeMeyer Field softball games in Ellsworth.
He was predeceased by his parents; and many aunts, uncles and cousins. He is survived by his brother Sanford Phippen of Hancock, his good friend Carol Mangels of Brooklin, his second wife, Janet Carlin of Georgia, and his children: Gary Spaulding, Sandra Clark, Robert Clark Jr., Julie Clarke and Mike Clark. Also his grandchildren: Jason Ball, Crystal Armstrong, TJ and Courtney Wheeler, Amanda Turner, Robert Clark III, Mikey Clark, and Jeremy Clark. Bob’s great-grandchildren include Lilly Ball, Brittany Moulton, Nicky Colson; Alexis, Ashland and Emma Clark; Abby, Jocelyn, Reagan, and Rose Turner; Aaliyah and Landon Colson and Michael Gary Clark.
There will be a funeral and military service in Ellsworth and at Hancock’s Riverside Cemetery to be announced in the fall.