John Clarke was both my protégé and mentor at the same time; with his passing, I lost a student and a teacher, and I am forever blessed to have met his acquaintance and honored that he called me a peer and a friend.
John reinforced in me the percipience that one should never stop striving to learn.
As a political watcher, I noticed as the 2022 commission election geared up for a vote that John did not really have the fire in his belly to want another term. It seemed like he had other ideas, and he did.
In that election, John hardly campaigned or tried to raise any money, and, on election night, the moment the results came in, he almost gleefully picked up the phone to call Wayne Guilfoyle and congratulate him on his victory.
That same election night, I called in to his “headquarters,” which doubled as his living room, to get his response for the article the next day and, of course, the last questions were somewhere along the lines, so what’s next for John Clarke? Will you remain in politics or is this the end of the road?
He planted the seed: “Maybe I’ll come work with you.”
I know now that John wasn’t joking; but at first, I thought he was just making a little quip about how the next thing he could do would be my job!
It marinated in my mind for a few days, and I thought, he talks like a trucker, was the leader of a Country and Western band that was a favorite act at some large gay bar along the East coast, and he served as a commissioner, and a pretty outspoken one at that. Perfect!
The more I thought about it, the more I felt that we should give him a chance, if he really wanted to do it and wasn’t joking.
John wasn’t joking.
By that time, Sylvia was contemplating retiring for good, but I never thought John could, or would replace her as the lead columnist. John was no Margaret Twiggs or Sylvia Cooper, and the great thing was that he knew that and he never tried to imitate either of those two local journalistic legends.
So, it was agreed by the ownership to bring John in as a weekly columnist ,and I was assigned to be his editor. John and I were a lot alike in our past pursuits, our outlook on life and our senses of humor, and that turned out to be a bit of a dangerous combination.
What I immediately found was that John wrote just like he talked, which is both a good and a bad thing. John’s strength was that he wrote like he was a friend chatting over the back fence or chilling at the barbershop on a Saturday afternoon. He was never condescending, nor was he a know-it-all.
While John’s writings had a folksy charm, none of it was a put-on. He was a man equally at ease at a formal event, dinner or political prayer breakfast as he was at a Willie Nelson concert.
It was a couple of weeks after he started his column that he came to me and said that some trolls had gone on some forum and accused him of having a “ghost writer,” and he was wondering if he should take some courses in grammar over at AU.
My response was to remind him that all of the thoughts represented in his column were his and that my main task was fixing comma splices and run-on sentences. We did bounce punch-lines off of each other to see which phrasing had the right effect, but I reassured him that everyone has an editor to make them more legible.
What began as a 10 minute weekly call turned into an hour each week as I helped John correct his own grammar, and he got more and more sure of his own talent. And boy, we had a blast coming up with jokes we knew would never see the light of day.
The last text I received from John was sent the day before he fell ill. It read: “Great edits. I can almost see you salivating as you added and filled in the blanks. I love it! Thank you my friend.”
Most of you are aware of my ongoing battle with cancer, and you should know that John has been by my side since the diagnosis, calling and visiting often throughout this entire time. John was also the primary caregiver to his son, Tres, who is my age and was diagnosed with cancer right around the same time the doctors gave me the bad news. John doted on his boy and made sure he got to his doctor’s appointments, so he knew a thing or two about how cancer affects the entire family, not just the person with the disease.
When the radiation treatment really kicked me in the behind last year and made it to where John had to rely on other editors, he called me in an almost flawlessly feigned faint, demanding I get well and get back to work. He needed me…the readers needed me!
I can say that John was one of the responsibilities at TAP I had that I felt I couldn’t shirk. Cancer, be damned!
John found that being a columnist was unlike being a commissioner with one vote. John was able to exert an enormous amount of influence on the commission via his weekly writings; instead of being given two minutes on the dais to explain why audits were necessary, he had virtually unlimited space to explain to the public why those audits were needed, and the public responded by demanding them. It wasn’t long after that the department heads who were covering up the outrageous spending, but pitching a fit over Mayor Johnson’s receipts, were shown the door and others remain “dead-man walking,” waiting on that audit to be announced, never knowing when they are going to be next.
Never could I have imagined that I would outlive John, but that is how it happened. It is yet another reminder that none of us are promised another day, so it is important for all of us to make every day count. John did just that, and he died when he was at the absolute top of his game.
The only chains any of us are bound by are ones we create for ourselves, John taught me that.
I was very humbled when I was asked to create a weekly Sunday column for The Augusta Press and sorta pick-up where John left off; not that I can, in any way fill his shoes, but John would want someone equally as irreverent and sarcastic to comment on the shenanigans that occur weekly at the Marble Palace.
This Tuesday, I will be sitting in the peanut gallery, fedora in hand, notepad and pen at the ready, with a bag of popcorn and a box of Dots, to document and report back on the burning issues of the day, such as:
Was Commissioner Brandon Garrett abducted by an underground alien vampire colony and should we send out a search party? What is TIA II and does the state really want to rip up Broad Street and take away parking spaces to create elevated bike trails or are business owners getting riled up over nothing? Will Hameed Malik from the Engineering Department try to get in on the action and charge everyone a pedal fee? Commissioners are slyly trying to hire an administrative staff for themselves, what’s next? Are they going to hire their own personal shoppers? Speaking of jobs, now that the Democratic party has lost some of its major income streams so that even Stacey Abrams is being forced to downsize, er, lay off people, will Commissioner Jordan Johnson be forced to get a job? Scott’s Scoops will reveal all as it comes to pass.
As John would say, folks, you can’t make this stuff up!
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter, Editorial Page Editor and weekly columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
