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Reg Clark remembered

Owner of movie theater and funeral home was familiar but private, too

Barbara and Reg Clark, who have run Lake Placid’s Palace Theatre since 1961, stand in front of a film projector that was replaced when the movie industry went digital. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

LAKE PLACID — Reginald Clark was a lot of things — a funeral home director, a movie theater owner and operator, an ambulance driver, a husband, a father, a Freemason, a Kiwanian and much more — so it’s hard to sum up the man’s life and his impact on his community.

“How much did he matter?” Reg’s wife Barbara posed. “I can’t put that into words.”

Reg died Monday evening three days after turning 89 years old.

“You can go to any person in the community that has a little bit of longevity, and they would know Mr. Clark,” said Brian, one of Reg wife Barbara’s sons. “My brother told me recently, he was hiking through Europe, and a couple was there from the West Coast. They got talking, and he mentioned that he’s from Lake Placid and that his dad owns the movie theater. The couple asked, ‘Was he that guy with the white hair, taking tickets?'”

In high school, Reg worked at the Palace Theatre on Main Street, scooping popcorn, tearing tickets and changing the marquee — the “grunt work,” Barbara called it. He also studied under his father at the family funeral home, M.B. Clark Inc., on Saranac Avenue. Reg later went on to mortuary school. He had an established career when he returned home, but when the Palace owners wanted to sell, he took out his checkbook. In 1961, a year after Reg and Barbara married, he purchased the theater, which he referred to as a “she.” It was a big surprise for Barbara.

“Happy anniversary, honey. I bought the theater,” she says he told her. “By the way, do you have any money stashed away?”

The theater has been a staple of the community for nearly a century, showing films both current and classic. It’s also the main venue for the Lake Placid Film Festival. Reg insisted on keeping ticket prices affordable — $7 for adults ($6 for matinees) and $5 for children. Even when many other theaters raised their prices and services like Netflix and Redbox appeared, Reg kept the prices low.

Since Reg purchased the theater all those years ago, the Palace has remained a family-run business with all of his and Barbara’s children and grandchildren working the same jobs he worked in his high school days.

Brian was in charge of keeping the theater clean.

“Sometimes I didn’t do so well, and my dad would let me know,” he said. “He’d say, ‘Those black and white tiles in the foyer look a little dingy,’ but sometimes he would comment, and you would know he was really proud of you.”

More often than not, though, Reg would give a look — one that even his family can’t mimic but they remember well. He can be seen doing it in a photo stuck to Barbara’s refrigerator. While Reg had a look of disapproval, he also had a look of gratitude.

Choked up, Brian said, “He didn’t have to come out with praise because you knew he was proud of you.

“I think that tells a lot about a person. He had that presence.”

The presence stayed with him at the funeral home, where his son Mark works now.

“He was the funeral director,” Barbara said. “That sums it up, and if there was a category for number 1, he’d be at the top.”

Reg’s work at the funeral home allowed him to pass on lessons of kindness and empathy to his family.

“He would say, ‘Be nice to every person that you meet,'” Barbara said, “‘because tomorrow, I might get a phone call that their mother or their father or their relative has died.'”

Before the 1980 Winter Olympics, Lake Placid didn’t have a volunteer ambulance service. Reg and the funeral home actually drove the ambulances, and it was a much more expansive operation.

“He would take people from the hospital that broke their leg while they were skiing and drive them up to Montreal,” Barbara said. “He would take people to Virginia for chemotherapy. He would take psychiatric people to Philadelphia.”

Reg was a suit-and-tie man, but despite the business attire, he knew how to leave work at work.

“When he was with family,” Barbara said, “he was a family man. He didn’t ‘let his hair down’ in so many words or change his personality. He became the dad he longed to be. He would put on a bathing suit go out and swim with the kids, or, you know, he would fish with the kids.”

If Reg was ever called on a business trip, he would never go alone and always bring one of his children.

“I wrote so many notes to school,” Barbara continued. “‘Brian was absent from school because he went to visit Uncle Sam’s grave.'”

While stopping at the monument wasn’t necessarily the focus of the trip, the crematory Reg would have to visit was at the same cemetery where Uncle Sam’s grave is, so they would always stop by afterward.

“I would keep my dad company,” Brian said. “It was special.”

Reg was also involved in many organizations and charity groups in the area such as the Adirondack Community Church, the Lake Placid Masonic Lodge, the Saranac Lake Elks Club, the Lake Placid Chamber of Commerce, the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society and the Lake Placid High School Alumni Association. One of his most loved philanthropic groups was the Kiwanis Club, a community service club that helped children. The club disbanded in 2017 shortly before turning 91 years old.

Reg was a member for more than 50 years and served in a variety of officer positions. Former president Kelly Conway said Reg loved working with children. One fond memory she has of Reg is when he was the grand marshal of the Teddy Bear Picnic.

“He rode around in this antique car and led the parade,” Conway said. “They went around the park with all these fire trucks and floats.”

Reg didn’t wear anything regal in the position of grand marshal. Instead, he wore his usual suit and tie.

“In my life,” Conway said, “I think I’ve only ever seen him four or five times without a suit.

“I don’t know if I can describe Reg in a couple of sentences,” Conway said, “but he was the longest-running member. He was what people emulated and respected.”

Other community-related highlights for Reg include being inducted into the Lake Placid Hall of Fame, speaking at a Lake Placid High School Winter Carnival and delivering the commencement speech at the 2004 LPHS graduation.

A line from the end of his speech sticks out — “Finally, the single most important thing I would like to leave with you is my personal word of advice: If you can dream something, you can do it. Follow your dream. That will be the greatest inspiration for you to keep on learning and working toward your goal whatever it may be.”

Though he was involved in so many aspects of Lake Placid, Reg was normally described as a humble and reserved person.

“I’m overwhelmed today because we’ve always been a private family,” Barbara said, “and I’m coming to the realization that we didn’t own him like we thought. The community owned him.”

Reg Clark’s obituary

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