Joe Clark, New Jersey principal who inspired 'Lean on Me,' dies at 83
Joe Clark, the bullhorn-bearing New Jersey principal who gained national celebrity in the 1980s with his efforts to impose order on his inner-city high school, a story that inspired the 1989 film “Lean on Me” and made him a lightning rod in an enduring debate over education in America, died Dec. 29 at his home in Newberry, Fla.
He was 83, according to his daughter Hazel Clark, who said that other reports of his age as 82 were in error. She confirmed his death but did not cite a cause.
A self-described “poor black welfare boy from Newark,” Mr. Clark grew up in poverty and often found refuge, as well as heat on cold winter days, in the public library. In that place, his daughter said, he discerned the power of education to improve his life, as well as those of others.
After a turn as an drill sergeant in the Army Reserve, he began his career in New Jersey’s Passaic County, where he worked first as an elementary school teacher. From 1982 to 1989, when he presided over Eastside High in Paterson, Mr. Clark was arguably the most famous principal in the United States — the subject of glowing praise from admirers who saw him as a savior of foundering youths, as well as withering criticism for tactics his detractors regarded as draconian and even cruel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/joe-clark-dead/2020/12/30/df02c530-4aa0-11eb-a9f4-0e668b9772ba_story.html
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