I read with keen interest a recent AP article, picked up by The Street, on the fortune (or misfortunes) of Huguette Clark, a copper-mining heiress of great age – she’s 104 – who has been living in hospitals for over 20 years now. In a tale reminiscent of the recent brouhaha over Brooke Astor’s mismanaged wealth, the Manhattan DA’s office is poking around what’s been happening with Clark’s half a billion while she’s been eating jello and rubber chicken off of Dentyne-pink plastic trays and trying to figure out whether you’re better off tying those johnnies in the front or the back.
Since Clark left her digs, via stretcher, in an ambulance at some point in the 1980’s:
…nobody has lived in her meticulously maintained 42 rooms at 907 Fifth Ave., or her Connecticut castle, surrounded by 52 acres of land and now on the market for $24 million.
Although she had been something of a mad-cap socialite, roaring around the Roaring Twenties hanging out:
…with rich young men who drove fast cars and flew planes
Clark had long since said twenty-three skidoo to public life. Even before she left for the hospital, she seldom went out or had company:
Even distant relatives attempting to visit were discouraged from entering; she told several of them to stand on the sidewalk and she would wave to them, staffers remember.
With that mention of distant relatives, a tiny little bell was rung in my skull, and I have a pretty darned good idea that Huguette Clark and I are related.
Here’s the story.
Clark was born in 1906 to William Clark, a U.S. Senator from Montana who’d made big bucks in the copper mines of Montana.
Well, in the way-, way-, way-back, I had a great-uncle, John Rogers, who just up and took off from the family farm in Barre, Massachusetts. The story was that John “absconded with the milk money” and went to Hammond, Indiana. Now when I was a child, those words “milk money” always puzzled me, since “milk money’ meant the dime a week that we had to bring to school to pay for the daily half-pint of milk we were given at recess. Even if I wasn’t quite sure what “abscond” meant, I was pretty sure you couldn’t abscond very far on ten cents. Later, I was not surprised to learn that the “milk money” was, in fact, the dairy money from the milk cows that were kept on the farm.
Little was heard of John again, although it was said that he came back to Barre once, for the funeral of his mother, Margaret Joyce Rogers,. He carried with him a suitcase that contained nothing but a clean collar and some donuts.
Well, here’s my theory.
William Clark was actually John Rogers.
Sure, the dates are off a bit, as William Clark was 67 when Huguette was born in 1906, whereas John Rogers would have been in his mid-twenties. But I do believe that anyone who would abscond with the family milk money was also perfectly capable of telling a whopper about his age.
It’s also well known that a lot of those drawn to Montana mining were Irish, and that fits with John Rogers as well. He certainly would have been comfortable in that milieu – brogue wouldn’t have bothered him in the least, as it was spoken in the home he absconded from. And I’m guessing he took the name “Clark” from Worcester’s own “Clark University.” I’ll bet that on the day he absconded, he ran into someone at the train station who asked him for directions to Clark, and the name just stuck in his head.
And didn’t I see a family tree that had John Rogers’ name scratched out and William Clark’s name written in? Now, someone might claim that the writing uses a liquid-gel pen of recent vintage, but that’s beside the point.
And that suitcase that John Rogers, I mean William Clark, brought back for Margaret Joyce’s funeral? I’m pretty sure that I heard that the name “Clark” was stenciled on it – and that the collar inside was from a white-tie-and-tails dress shirt, of the type that a U.S. Senator turned socialite might wear. I’m sure that he didn’t bother to pack much because he was so rich. He just figured he’d buy what he needed when he got home. Home as in Worcester, not in Barre. Surely, he would have remembered that, other than an ice cream cone and a John Deere tractor, there’s not a damned thing to buy in Barre, Massachusetts.
Anyway, I’m pretty darned convinced that William Clark is John Rogers.
So, dear, sweet Cousin Huguette, let me introduce myself as one of your many first cousins, once removed.
Alas, your first cousins, un-removed, are all dead. You do get the award for only unusual name in the bunch. Charlie. Jim. Margaret. Katherine. Albert. You’re the clear winner there.
Plus you win the longevity award, hands down.
Your father’s brothers both died young, and the only one of your first cousin’s who made it into their eighties was my Aunt Margaret.
By the way, while they were no copper billionaires, your uncles did have a rather successful business – Rogers’ Brothers Saloon. Rather successful, that is, until Prohibition came in and it went out. Your father might have even been one of the Rogers’ Brothers, if he hadn’t upped and absconded with the milk money. But then, if that hadn’t happened, you probably wouldn’t have been named Huguelette or anything nearly that exotic. I’m thinking Mary or Annie, like your aunts by marriage. Or maybe Lizzie, after your father’s sister, the old maid who got stuck with the farm, thanks to your father.
There’s lots I could tell you, Huguelette, about the next generation, and how we’d all be so wicked happy to meet you, now that we know you exist. We are all mega-nice, and not one of us would be after your money or your mansions or anything like that.
We’re just the kind of folks who really get into it when new relatives show up out of the clear blue, or out of Big Sky Country. (I could provide proof of our ability to extend a hand of welcome to new family members, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.)
I will be in New York this weekend, and plan on stopping by the hospital. If you’re not up a face to face, I’d be happy to stand on the street and wave to you. I wonder who you look like?
I did read that:
There is no public record of a Clark wills.
For someone who’s worth half-a-bill, that makes no sense whatsoever.
So just in case you are up for a personal meeting, the second bald guy with me – the first is just my husband, who’s no blood relation – will be your first-cousin-once-removed Phil, the lawyer.
See you on Sunday! Let me know if I can bring anything. (Twenty-plus years of hospital food: ugh!)
I love you already,
Maureen
P.S. I saw in the article that your mother’s maiden name was LaChapelle. Any relation to the Winchester Ave. LaChapelles? Wouldn’t it be something to find out that we’re not just related, but that we’re former neighbors, too?
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