Clara C. Park, 86
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. â€' Clara Claiborne Park, 86, of Hoxsey Street, died peacefully on Saturday, July 3, 2010, at home in the company of her daughter Rachel.
A writer and teacher, Mrs. Park's work on autism and as an advocate for families of people with autism earned her an international reputation. Her classic book "The Siege" was one of the first narratives about raising an autistic child and has been continuously in print since its first publication in 1968.
Born in Tarrytown, N.Y., on Aug. 19, 1923, daughter of Robert W. and Virginia McKenney Claiborne, both of Petersburg, Va., she attended the Dalton School in New York City and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1944. After college, she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and then attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, receiving a master's degree in English literature in 1949. She moved to Williamstown in 1951.
Mrs. Park taught English at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield in the 1960s and early 1970s, including a well-received course in the "Great Books." She was committed to the institution and its mission of accessible education. She also taught courses in Milton, Dante and expository writing at Williams College from 1975 until her retirement.
For a time, she had a regular column in The Berkshire Eagle. In the 1960s, she also began writing professionally for a wide range of national periodicals, from the American Scholar to the Ladies Home Journal to The Nation. Her scholarly articles, appearing over a period of almost 50 years, were notable for their breadth and originality. Her writing on female characters and female authors, including Jane Austen and Flannery O'Connor, is often cited for its pioneering character.
Other essays collected in her 1992 volume "Rejoining the Common Reader" dealt with intellectual history, literary criticism and cultural theory. More recently, she published articles on Rudyard Kipling and Anthony Trollope, and at the time of her death was working on an essay on the novels of Benjamin Disraeli. She counted many poets among her friends, including Howard Nemerov, James Merrill and Richard Wilbur.
Autism was not as well known when Mrs. Park chronicled her family's experiences trying to understand their daughter Jessica Hilary Park's condition. "The Siege: A Family's Journey Into the World of an Autistic Child" chronicled Jessica's first eight years. In the words of Dr. Oliver Sacks, a writer and professor of neurology and psychiatry, this work was "written with an intelligence, a clear-sightedness, an insight, and a love that brought out to the full the absolute strangeness, the 'otherness,' of the autistic mind. It also brought out how much an empathetic understanding could help to lay siege to autism's seemingly impregnable isolation."
A second edition of the book, which came out in 1982, includes an appendix, "Fifteen Years Later," which updates the story of Jessy Park. In 2001, Mrs. Park concluded her writings about her relationship with her daughter with "Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter's Life with Autism," which describes the interior of her daughter's world, based on Jessy's own notes and drawings. In it, Park celebrates accomplishments she could not have dreamed of in "The Siege": Jessy's reputation as an artist, her wide circle of friends, and her longtime employment in the Williams College mailroom.
Although she viewed these successes, together with those of her other children, as her greatest achievement, she was widely honored for her teaching, speaking and writing. In addition to two honorary doctoral degrees, from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and Williams College, she was awarded the prize for Feature Writing at the 1999 National Magazine Awards (the "Ellies").
Besides her daughters Jessy, of Williamstown, and Rachel, she leaves her husband, David Allen Park, whom she married in summer 1945; another daughter, Katharine Park of Williamstown; a son, Paul Park, and her grandchildren Miranda Park and Lucius Park.
FUNERAL NOTICE â€' A graveside service for Mrs. Park will be held at the Williams College Cemetery, in Williamstown, on Thursday, July 8, at 10 a.m. Memorial donations may be made in Park's honor to Francis of Assisi Society for Animals, P.O. Box 496, Shaftsbury, VT 05262.