Scott Bruun: Why I’m Thankful For Former Portland Attorney, Kelly Clark

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

Kelly Clark via kellyclarkattorney.com

Kelly Clark, the renowned Portland trial attorney, was all smiles that morning. He was leaving Portland Providence, where he’d been for weeks, and was finally on his way – via specially chartered flight - to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

Kelly was smiling because a large group of friends and well-wishers had gathered at the hospital to see him off. To tell him he was loved, to get well soon, and that we were praying for him. This was December and it was cold, so Kelly was snugly wrapped in wool blankets as they wheeled him on a gurney out to the waiting ambulance. Although he had lost the use of his arms, he still waived goodbye to all of us by wiggling his feet back and forth under the blankets; almost like an excited young child.

That was the last time I saw Kelly Clark.

He died on December 17th last year at the Mayo Clinic of a rare and incredibly hard to diagnose form of liver cancer. He was 56 years old. His beautiful German-born wife Sabine, after her own long battle, had succumbed to Lou Gehrig’s disease only eight weeks earlier.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the day we formally acknowledge and celebrate our debts of gratitude. And this Thanksgiving Day, as I am every other day, I will be grateful for Kelly Clark. Grateful for the life he lived and the legacy he left.

His story is quite public. As a brilliant, highly-ambitious young lawyer, he won a seat as a Republican in the Oregon House of Representatives. Salem insiders at the time thought that Clark’s eventual rise to Oregon’s governorship was not only possible, but probable. Destiny awaited it was assumed, only a few successful years down the road. But then as so often happens with men of immense talent and boundless ambition, his own demons, aided by anger and alcohol, crushed him. His fall from public grace was hard and fast.

Yet it’s not the fall, but Kelly’s comeback that made him so remarkable. A comeback achieved not through public bravado or newfound political victories; but instead achieved through time, humility, faith and selfless dedication to others.

Kelly became an ardent defender and advocate of those who had been abused. He used his enormous courtroom talents, his incredible speaking and debate skills, to find vindication and compensation for victims of childhood sexual abuse. He became nationally renowned for his ability to expose the false-excuse of institutional ignorance and inertia.

Kelly was also a mentor, spending countless hours over years working with and coaching men with alcohol and other addictions. He wrote eloquently on the same. Hi blog, “Gospel of Bill (W)”, where he wrote on issues of alcoholism, faith and his own brokenness, is worthy of hardcover publication.

In his next to last post, made only a few weeks before his wife died, Kelly expressed pain and frustration at the injustice of her illness. That “a beautiful woman dies in the prime of her life by a cruel and heartless disease that chews up the body and gnaws on the soul.” Writing further, Kelly does not come to terms with the situation. Who could? He’s angry and he is hurt, yet still notes that everyone’s story is unique, and that faith never guarantees freedom from suffering. After all, Kelly wrote, “the shortest verse in the bible is ‘Jesus wept’.”

As others have written, Kelly Clark would rise, fall, and rise again. That his second rise was made of something much bigger than himself is what made Kelly one of the most attractive people I could ever hope to know.

On Thanksgiving Day I will be thankful for my family, my home, my job, my country. My God. And I will be thankful for Kelly Clark. Through him, our world is better than it otherwise would be.

Scott Bruun is a fifth-generation Oregonian and recovering politician. He lives with his family in the 'burbs, yet dutifully commutes every day to Portland, where he earns his living on the fifth floor of Big Pink.