Isabel Matilda (Roberts) Clark (1913 - 1990)

Born 25 Jul 1913 in Stuart, Florida

Ancestors

Wife of John Bond Clark — married 3 May 1947 in Druid Hills Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, GA

Died 3 Nov 1990 at age 77 in Austell, Georgia

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Peter Roberts [send private message] and Dorothy Clark [send private message]

Biography

Isabel was born July 25, 1913 in Stuart, FL in the family home on the St. Lucie Waterway of the Indian River. She was the last of three children born to Dr. Charles Ernest Roberts, D.D.S. and Mattie Belle McQuarrie Roberts, the oldest of whom, Elizabeth, dying before Isabel was born.

Isabel, her brother Charlie (Charles Neil), and their parents lived in a three-generational home: Mattie's parents, Rev. Neil Phail McQuarrie and Rebecca Agnes Woodworth McQuarrie; Mattie's middle sister Edith May McQuarrie Wallace, her husband Andrew Wallace, and their son Arthur; and Mattie's youngest sister Vesta all shared the home. When Isabel was four years old, the entire family moved up to Atlanta, GA, where many of them lived the rest of their lives.

When Isabel was 13, her father Charles died. Over the next years, the Depression and World War II impacted the rest of the family severely, and poverty was a constant. The family never went hungry, but they had to move a number of times because they could not afford the rent.

When Isabel graduated from Girls High School in Atlanta, an honor student who had a gift for mathematics and who was a champion tennis player, she took any job she could find to help the family. One of her early jobs was at Sears Roebuck and Company on Ponce de Leon Avenue. Years later, she told her daughter Dorothy that during the years working there, when she would go to bed at night, she would pray to die in the night because the working conditions were so bad.

In the 1930s, she found a much better job working for General Electric Company on Peachtree Street and found her place in the payroll office, where she could put her math skills to work. It was there that she first saw "that cute boy at the end of the hall," John Bond Clark. They became friends and dated a few times before he was called up for service in the Army in 1942.

During the years that John served in the Army, he and Isabel corresponded back and forth and became more smitten with each other. In 1946, when John came back home after the war, he asked Isabel to marry him. They married May 3, 1947, at Druid Hills Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. Isabel was almost 34 years old and John was 36.

They both continued to work at General Electric and in 1950 bought a little gray shingle house in Decatur, 3180 Hillside Avenue. (The address was changed in the late 1950s to 2578 Glenvalley Drive.) They lived in that home until the end.

Having almost given up having any children, Isabel and John made one last effort using fertility drugs, and in June 1953 Dorothy joined the family. At that point, Isabel left her job at General Electric, but John worked there until his retirement. Isabel finally had what she had lacked during her growing-up years: a stable home, enough income that she did not have to worry about meeting the family's needs, a kind and good husband with whom to share her life, and a healthy daughter to round things out.

Once daughter Dorothy started school, in about 1960 Isabel began to work as a preschool teachers' aide at the kindergarten at their church, Columbia Presbyterian Church, Decatur, GA. Isabel found that she loved working with young children and that she was good at it. She continued working there until the kindergarten closed about 1980.

Her church was very important to Isabel, and she told John when they married that if he ever quit going to church with her she would divorce him! In their later years, John was relaying this story to daughter Dorothy, and when Isabel heard him tell Dorothy this, she called in from the kitchen, "I meant it then, and I STILL mean it, John Clark!" When Isabel made up her mind about something, no one could change it!

In the mid-1980s, when Isabel was in her early 70s, she began to suffer from Parkinson's Disease. She had lived an extremely healthy and physically active life, and this was terribly hard on her. One year into the diagnosis, though, the day after Christmas, 1987, Isabel had a massive stroke. She lived for three more years, bedridden at Presbyterian Village nursing home in Austell, GA. It was a horrible three years of severe pain and crippling paralysis.

Finally, on November 3, 1990, just a little over a year after John had died from complications of Alzheimer's Disease, Isabel died. She was cremated and buried in the Clark family plot at the College Park, GA, cemetery. Her graveside service was conducted by the Rev. Joan Standridge Gray, pastor of Columbia Presbyterian Church, Decatur, GA. Surviving her was her daughter, Dorothy Elaine Clark of Decatur and her brother Charles Neil Roberts (who died a few years later).