McALLEN — Kirk Clark, who died Friday at the age of 76, was not your average car dealer.
There are not, afterall, many car dealers who are also professional abstract artists and intellectuals who found employee lending-libraries in their dealerships. You can find dealers who are philanthropists, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many with the stories of casual altruism Clark left behind.
That’s not to say he wasn’t a car dealer, of course. He was one of the most prominent ones in the Rio Grande Valley for almost half a century, guiding the now 89-year-old family Clark Chevrolet through a high-profile partnership with a large-scale partnership with the Knapp family and likely tripling Clark Chevrolet’s physical footprint.
A consummate businessman and gregarious talker, Clark was a born salesman and titan of South Texas industry.
Clark, though, probably wouldn’t have wanted his life measured in lot footage or car sales or gross revenue. He would have wanted his life measured in people.
The salesman in him would have wanted it measured in the number of people who smiled at one of his notoriously corny puns or laughed at a well-wrought story, and the number of employees who found their own wealth and success through working at the dealership.
The philanthropist would have wanted it measured in the people who benefited from the institutions he supported like IMAS and the Valley Symphony Orchestra, and the people who benefited from more discrete, personal acts of charity.
The artist would have wanted it measured in the number of people his artwork touched and inspired.
“He wanted people around him to be happy and he had this desire to help people, that’s very unusual for someone of his stature in his business,” Alex, Clark’s son, said Monday. “He was a person who always had a lot going on his entire life, and he always made time for others in a way that was pretty unique.”
A third generation scion of the Clark Chevrolet automotive family, Clark was born to sell cars.
He was also born into a family that valued art. Serious print collectors, Clark’s parents would take their son along on trips to galleries in the United States and Europe, meeting artists and assembling a formidable collection that would mostly be donated to the UT System.
At first, Clark seemed prone to follow that passion as his profession. He studied art at the University of New Mexico in the 1960s and was invited to produce art in Japan.
Clark called his father, Charles, about the opportunity. Charles pointed out that his son was at a crossroads: it was time to choose whether he’d pick art or the family business.
Clark chose cars.
“So they got to work with each other daily for 31 years,” Alex said. “And he never regretted that choice, he loved it. He loved the art, but he loved the business just as much.”
They were a good team. Charles was the analytical one, Clark the social butterfly.
The business success put Clark in a position to help people.
Occasionally, Alex said, a car deal would break down. A customer would find out they weren’t able to buy a car after all and see the vehicle they’d set their eyes on slipping through their fingers. There’d be tears.
Clark, Alex said, would see the small-scale tragedy unfolding, stroll across the showroom, discreetly talk to the manager and pony up the money out of his own pocket to make the deal work.
“Over the years I’ve watched Kirk write personal checks for employees and family members and friends and people in the community who came to seek his counsel and needed him,” Michele Sparks, Clark Chevrolet’s marketing director, said. “You know, Kirk was one of the greats. A community giant.”
Employees were especially privy to that trust and generosity. Sparks, who has been with the dealership for a little over 20 years, said.
“He trusted his family brand to this 23-year-old kid from San Angelo, Texas. I got to do a big job at a young age,” she said. “He was high on praise, but he was very high on expectations too.”
Another of those employees was Billy Canales, the longtime dealer and owner of Rio Motors in Rio Grande City. Canales, the son of migrant farmers from La Feria, grew up picking cotton. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force, he went to business school on the GI Bill and started working in the parts department of a dealership for a dollar a day in the ’60s.
Canales met Clark in the ’80s, with the dealership in need of a parts manager who could set up its computer infrastructure.
In the early ’90s the Chevrolet dealership in Rio Grande City became available.
“Billy, would you think about the dealership over there and see what you can do with it?” Canales remembers Clark saying.
Canales said Clark signed a note at the bank — a big note — so he could afford the deal.
It was an astounding amount of trust. The business had been run poorly, to say it mildly, and Rio Grande City was more village than city.
The bet paid off. Rio Motors is profitable to this day and Canales is a philanthropist in his own right now, serving on business and charitable boards and adding a pair of commemorative spurs to his office every year for sponsoring the stock show.
“I’d probably still be there as a parts manager and service manager without that. Nothing like it is now,” Canales said. “He and his dad brought me up and gave me all the opportunities I asked for. I’m just very grateful to him.”
Years in business did nothing to shrink Clark’s cerebral side. He would expound on a variety of topics — aboriginal culture, Episcopalian theology, sound waves — and especially art.
Around 2000, Clark returned to the canvas, at first at his kitchen table. He’d often paint on mylar, setting down swirls and splotches of vibrant-colored paints in swirls and splotches.
Lots of those pieces have an almost hypnotic quality, dots of paint within dots within dots. They were produced at a dizzying pace, winding up in galleries internationally and, often, in charitable auctions.
In many ways, those pieces are as idiosyncratic as the man who painted them.
“I thought always that he was at heart pure-artist and pure-humanitarian,” Peter Dabrowski, the conductor of the Valley Symphony Orchestra, said. “His interest in the human soul, his interest in religion, in philosophy, the origin of life. How art is expressional of our beliefs, and history. That’s what really, in my opinion, fascinated him.”
Dabrowski met Clark when he moved to the Valley some 20 years ago. They hit it off, bonding over a passion for the arts and a shared sense of synesthesia, or experiencing other senses through color.
Clark donated to the symphony, and he also gave to IMAS and paid for art installations throughout McAllen. Dabrowski remembered Clark, often anonymously, purchasing works from struggling artists in financial straits.
The maestro and the car dealer became fast friends. Dabrowski would attend Clark’s exhibitions, Clark would attend Dabrowski’s concerts. On one occasion Dabrowski let Clark paint to the music, an experiment they were both curious about.
There was something about Clark that struck Dabrowski two decades ago, and he still seemed to be struck by it reflecting on his late friend Monday.
Dabrowski says he’s met many patrons of the arts from many places over the years. For those people, he said, business was the primary pursuit and supporting the arts was more of a fancy or an expected chore.
For Clark, Dabrowski said, the arts were a devotion that surpassed or at least equaled his business pursuits.
There was something more to it though, Dabrowski and others who spoke about Clark said. They described business and philanthropy and art swirling together and intermingling through Clark’s life, not unlike the myriad patterns on his mylar canvases.
The end work — perhaps the portrait of Clark’s life — was that of a man whose main pursuit in life was a love of humanity and a desire to know his fellow man better.
“It’s a great loss for our community. He loved McAllen, he loved the Valley,” Dabrowski said. “There are not enough people like Kirk and I do not think there will be more.”
