Rainy Clarke

CLARKE During her 90 years, Rainy Clarke enjoyed a full and complete life that left little time for dawdling. There were children to be raised and a family to be run. There were Camp Fire Girls to be inspired, songs to be shared around the family piano, meals to be prepared. She was a Cub Scout den mother, a school volunteer, a cupcake maker and pizza chef. If something involving her children -- sons Chris and Ken, daughter Judy -- needed to be done, Rainy made sure the task was completed. She wasn't simply a wife and mother, she was the unquestioned commander in chief of a family of five. Her perseverance was amazing to behold. No obstacle was too difficult, no challenge too daunting. "When one door closes, another opens," she liked to say. It was her husband, Dan, who brought home the paycheck as a guidance counselor at Englewood High School. But Rainy was the chief financial officer who decided how every penny was to be spent. Dan joked that she squeezed a dollar hard enough to make Martha Washington jealous! Beyond her family, Rainy's great loves were music and nature. At 19, the Jacksonville native was a professional singer, crooning the blues in the late 1930s with the local Johnny Entenza Band. By 21, however, she had married Daniel Clarke and divorced the world of professional music. She and Dan had met a couple of years earlier when one of his brothers answered a knock on the Clarke family's front door. Rainy was collecting subscription fees for her Florida Times-Union route. "Hey," his brother Cecil exclaimed over his shoulder, "the paper boy's a girl!" As her children grew, Rainy instilled in them a love of nature. Nothing was more glorious to Rainy than simply being outdoors. A walk through the woods with her was an experience like no other: No plant, no tree, no bird was a stranger. Rainy knew their habits, their likes and dislikes. Always she was active. She doted over the plants and trees in her large yard. The songbirds loved her, and flocked to her feeders, rewarding Rainy with glimpses of their beauty. Until the final three years of her life, Rainy walked two miles a day. Two deaths affected her deeply: She lost her husband Dan in 1986 to a heart attack. Her daughter Judy was taken by breast cancer in 2006. She is survived by two sons, Chris, Santa Rosa, Calif.; and Ken, Orlando; four grandchildren; three great grandchildren; sister, Katherine Gallagher, Liberty, S.C.; and brother, Webster Marlowe, Palatka. A memorial service will be held at noon, Saturday, Dec. 6, at Northeast Florida Community Hospice, 4266 Sunbeam Road, Jacksonville. Arrangements under the direction & care of ETERNITY FUNERAL HOME. Please Sign the Guestbook @ Jacksonville.com