Right man, right time.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Leadership has been defined as the ability to keep one's head while others all around are losing theirs. Robert Clark had that talent, and employed it to good effect as the University of Oregon's 11th president. His death Tuesday at age 95, three decades after his retirement, draws attention to what has been built upon the foundation he helped lay.

Clark became UO president in 1969, after the tragic death of Acting President Charles Johnson. Johnson had been consumed by the turmoil on campus at the peak of the movement against the Vietnam War, which included violent protests and bombings of university buildings.

Clark succeeded in maintaining order at the UO while simultaneously respecting the right to dissent. Clark's limitless patience, his respect for the views of others and his quiet ability to stand firm served the university and the state well.

But Clark was more than a crisis manager. He was a builder of institutions. The UO became a member of the Association of American Universities shortly after Clark became president, joining what was then an elite group of the nation's 48 leading universities. All of the post-war UO presidents helped qualify the UO for AAU membership, but it was Clark who brought the effort to fruition.

Clark was dean of the UO's College of Liberal Arts and dean of faculty under president O. Meredith Wilson, who launched a "quest for excellence" that brought many top-flight faculty members to Eugene. As part of that effort, Clark created the nation's first honors college - which was named in his honor shortly before his retirement as president in 1975.

Clark came to the UO in 1943 as an assistant professor of speech. Over the next 20 years, he moved into administration and left Oregon to serve as president of San Jose State University before returning to finish his career in the top job at the UO. But he never left scholarship and teaching behind, and he completed a study of Thomas Condon, the pioneering Oregon geologist, while serving as UO president.

Clark's abilities were widely noted. In 1971, he won the Delta Sigma Rho/Tau Kappa Alpha Award as speaker of the year; other winners had included President John Kennedy, Billy Graham and Edmund Muskie.

In its citation, the award said that "as president of a great university in a time when thoughtless attack and unthinking defense are equally rigid, you have conducted your office and yourself not as a servant of the status quo, but as a champion of orderly change."

Clark was more than a distinguished president of the UO; he was a prominent citizen of Eugene. As much as any modern president, he sought to establish lines of communication between the academic community and the city around it. He moderated a series of 25 forums to that end. "That's his relaxation," his wife, Opal, who preceded him in death, explained at the time. "He likes to do things with people."

Those who knew Clark in retirement saw him as a gentle man with broad interests, ranging from politics to classical literature to botany. He was an occasional contributor to these pages, always offering constructive advice and fair-minded criticism.

Teacher, scholar, leader, citizen - his was a long life, lived well.