“Harold Terry Clark, perhaps more than any other individual in the last half century, made Cleveland a fine city in which to live and grow,” wrote the Plain Dealer upon Clark’s death in 1965. Born in Connecticut in 1882, Clark attended Yale (A.B., 1903) and Harvard (LL.B., 1906). The same year that he earned his law degree he moved to Cleveland and joined Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, marrying partner William Sanders’s daughter Mary in 1911. He would remain with the prestigious firm until 1938, when he opened his own practice in order to devote more time to community pursuits. Mary had died in 1936 (the couple had six children), and in 1940 Clark married Marie Odenkirk.

Clark’s civic involvement was longstanding. In 1920, he spearheaded the movement to establish the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, later becoming its president. (In 1961, the museum would begin awarding the Harold T. Clark Medal to those “whose achievements inspire a love and respect for nature.” Clark was its first recipient.) He promoted relocation of the Holden Arboretum to Kirtland, was instrumental in the formation of Friends of the Cleveland Zoo, and for a quarter century served as vice president of the Cleveland Society for the Blind. When Leonard C. Hanna Jr., scion of a Great Lakes shipping fortune, died in 1957, he left Clark in charge of his trust fund. Hanna had instructed that the fund be liquidated within five years of his death, with $33 million to be given immediately to the Cleveland Museum of Art. That left Clark, who had been Hanna’s personal attorney, with more than $40 million to distribute. The beneficiaries of this largesse would include the University Circle Development Foundation, Cleveland Development Foundation, Cleveland Foundation and Karamu House.