Martha K. Rickey Clark

12/21/1920 - 09/19/2012

Martha K. "Rickey" Clark

December 21, 1920 ~ September 19, 2012

PACIFIC GROVE - Martha "Rickey" Clark, 91, died quietly on Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at the medical facility of Canterbury Woods. In a draft of this obituary she herself prepared 20 years ago, she had predicted that she would die on a Wednesday, but unexpectedly, and not after a long, debilitating illness.

She is remembered by her friends for her artistic gifts, love of nature, and creative spirit. Raised in Winnetka, Illinois, a suburb on Lake Michigan, north of Chicago, she was active in the Winnetka Congregational Church. She attended three different colleges before graduating from the University of Illinois with degrees in fine art and architecture. She worked as an interior designer for a number of years.

In 1945 she married Donald Clark, an officer in the United States Marine Air Corps. They lived in Los Alamos, New Mexico, until the United States entered the Korean conflict. Clark went to Korea as a pilot and there, in 1952, was killed in an air battle. For a time, the young widow returned to Winnetka to live.

"Rickey," as she was known, was a painter, composer, and poet. Not many of her paintings were publicly shown, nor were her poems widely published, but the hauntingly beautiful music to which she sang texts from "The Song of Solomon" was memorable.

She moved to Monterey and, in 1981, became a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Monterey Peninsula. She loved living in a condominium with an ocean view, surrounded by a forest filled with birds. She was a devout animal lover, who will be missed by many friends, including the winged, the finned, and the four-footed. She left no immediate family. She generously provided for a number of charities. She requested cremation and the scattering of her ashes "where her spirit will fall forever free."

There will be a memorial service at Canterbury Woods on Wednesday, October 3, 2012 at 2:30pm and a celebration of her life at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 490 Aguajito Road, on Friday, October 5, 2012 at 4:00pm. The latter will be followed by a reception. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the church or to a

charity.