Architecture prof. dies in plane crash

Arizona Daily Wildcat Photo Courtesy of the UA Architecture Dept. Architecture professor, Ken Clark and his wife, Ruth were killed in a plane crash in Panama on Dec. 31.

But those who worked with and learned from Ken Clark feel a gaping void has been caused by the loss of their friend over the winter break.

University of Arizona architecture Professor Kenneth N. Clark, 56, and his wife, Tucson businesswoman Ruth Clark, 53, were killed in a plane crash in Panama on New Year's Eve, along with eight others.

"It was such a shock," said Karen Young, Kenneth Clark's secretary. "It was like a member of the family has died."

The U.S. Embassy in Panama City reported that the 10-seat plane crashed into a mountainside hidden by dense fog just before the plane was to land on a remote airstrip.

A search team found the wreckage in a thick jungle about four miles from the plane's destination.

"In a small department like that, he was a teacher, mentor and friend," Richard Corbett said about Clark. Corbett, chief transportation planner for the Pima Association of Governments, worked with Clark and hired some of his graduate students in the past.

"A person like that, with a personality like his, becomes another father figure for students," Corbett said.

Brent Hoefflin, who graduated with an architecture degree last spring, said he had spoken to Kenneth Clark in a bookstore just a few weeks ago. Clark was buying an Ansel Adams book for a student who had expressed an interest in landscape architecture

"He really loved what he was doing," said Hoefflin, a former student of Clark's. "He had a real comfortable manner that influenced me as a student and as a person."

The Clarks were not strangers to Panama, having visited the Latin American country many times for business and pleasure.

Kenneth Clark headed a U.S. Information Agency-sponsored study of the Panama Canal Zone during its transition to Panamanian control.

He was scheduled to spend the spring and summer in Panama as part of a faculty exchange program with two universities - the Universidad de Panama and the Universidad de Santa Maria La Antigua.

His wife bought textiles from the Panamanian Kuna Indians, which she sold through her Tucson-based company, Ruth Clark Linens.

Kenneth Clark was born Aug. 12, 1941 in Fostoria, Ohio.

He earned a master's degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and did post-graduate studies at the University of Skopje and the University of Zagreb in the former Yugoslavia.

Clark joined the UA faculty in 1967 and became chair of the Interdisciplinary Planning Program in 1991. Students enrolled in the program earn a master's degree and study urban issues such as transportation and zoning.

He also established various exchange programs between the UA and universities in Latin America and Spain.

The Clarks are survived by two children, Stephanie, a UA architecture senior, and Stephen, a UA engineering sophomore.

The College of Architecture will hold a memorial service for the Clarks Jan. 24 at 2 p.m. at the Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave. Students are welcome to attend.

The college has also established a scholarship fund in the Clarks' names. It will fund an international travel scholarship for architecture, planning and landscape architecture students.