For Immediate Release
May 13, 2005
The city of Brownsville has lost one of its longtime favorite educators, Margaret Clark. She died Thursday, May 12 at the age of 94.
A Distinguished Alumnus for Texas Southmost College in 2001, Clark was most known for teaching generations of Brownsville youth to swim.
A celebration of her life will take place on Monday, May 16 at Church of the Advent Episcopal, 104 West Elizabeth in Brownsville. In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made in her name to the Brownsville Boy’s and Girl’s Clubs or the donors favorite charity.
Clark was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 18, 1910. She moved to Brownsville with her parents when she was five years old. A product of the Brownsville public schools, she graduated from Brownsville High School in 1927.
In high school, Clark was active in Interscholastic League Literacy Contests, Advertising Manager of the Yearbook, and a member of the Pep Squad. Clark’s future husband, Kenneth, was a member of the same high school graduating class and was a letterman in track and football.
Following her high school graduation, Clark attended the University of Texas at Austin. In 1931, she graduated from Texas State College for Women, now Texas Women’s University with a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education.
In 1931, Clark began her career as a teacher with the Brownsville public schools as a third grade teacher. During her years as a teacher, she taught kindergarten, first, third grade and eighth grade History and English, in addition to Physical Education.
In 1949, she was offered a teaching position at Episcopal Day School so she enrolled at Texas Southmost College. She says the classes she took at the college prepared her for her work as teacher and years later as a principal. During the 1960’s, she also taught physical education courses at TSC.
Since 1974 and until her retirement in 1981, Clark had served as BISD Elementary Physical Education Coordinator. Girls’ track in Brownsville got its start in 1964 when Clark and Jack Shulze organized the first Sams Girls’ Relays.
In Brownsville, Clark was known by many as “The Mother of Swimming.” Since 1930 she had been giving swimming lessons in the resacas and pools around Brownsville.
“I’ve probably helped save a lot of lives by teaching a lot of people to swim. Many of them now have grandchildren and we’ve taught them to swim too. I think the thing I’d like people to remember about me is the number of children I’ve taught to swim,” she said in an interview in 2001.
Today, the multi-million-dollar BISD high school aquatics complex in Brownsville bears her name
Clark is survived by three children, Gerald, Stephen and Kathleen “K.K.” Clark and two grandsons.