wifey’s home

As the summer of ’81 waned in New Hudson, Ohio, Kathy Clark packed her life into her yellow Nova to head north to Ann Arbor and grad school, closing out the last “free” summer she’d see for several decades.  She was leaving behind her high school teacher’s post at Western Reserve Academy to see what she might do with this Kinesiology thing.  U of M didn’t pay her right off the bat and she had to put in early mornings at the Bagel Factory to make ends meet.  Teaching “Dance for Fitness” (or “Dance for Fatness”, as she liked to call it) brought her first U paycheck and her PhD research was going well enough 2 ½ years later to land a collaboration with a young post-doctoral fellow in Rheumatology.  The rest is – as they say – history (1).  Unlike her football season tickets, her duties at the U were interrupted a couple of times so when she decided in the Winter of ’20 she’d hang ‘em up at the end of that term, the big bad U said pas si vite!  That didn’t stop us from having a big blowout retirement party on her birthday that summer (2), but it was back in the saddle that Fall for one more half-time term, with another added on for good measure so her Dean could keep her as Associate Chair.  But this June, she finally packed up her academic life and her campus office no longer bears her name.  As always happens at the U, once you’re gone they write nice things about you.  The piece below is in the Fall 2022 issue of Movement, publication of the School of Kinesiology.  I’m sure the readers of this blog have heard plenty about me, so for a change I thought I’d give you a longer peak at my dear wifey.  Yes, I’m the luckiest man in the world.

References

1. Ike B.  How we met.  WordPress 2/6/20.  https://theviewfromharbal.com/2020/02/06/how-we-met/

2. Ike B.  Wasn’t that a party?  WordPress 7/17/21.  https://theviewfromharbal.com/2021/07/17/wasnt-that-a-party/