Tributes to
J. Desmond Clark
1916-2002
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My introduction to Desmond took place in 1960 at the headquarters of the Royal Anthropological Institute in London. Dr. Kenneth P. Oakley, Director of the Department of Anthropology at the British Museum of Natural History, made the introduction. In our initial conversation I mentioned that I was engaged in marriage to a fellow graduate student at Berkeley (where I received my B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees) whose dissertation topic was the organization of a dictionary of Paul Radin's field notes on Winnebago linguistics. The "dictionary" part of our conversation must have stuck in Desmond's mind since whenever I saw him on subsequent occasions he called me "Dr. Johnson". Later we straightened out that my name was Kennedy and that I was conducting research with Oakley for my doctoral thesis.

I was delighted to know that Desmond was joining the Anthropology faculty at Berkeley, so during the period I was writing my thesis he, Betty and I were often together on social and academic occasions. Around 1980 Desmond was in India where he was exploring Palaeolithic sites along the course of the Son Valley, Uttar Pradesh, with Dr. G.R. Sharma. I was not on that project, but we did see one another during this period when I was also in India examining prehistoric human skeletal remains from the Ganges Valley.

Desmond was a kindly and courteous scholar who was always interested in the work of his colleagues. Betty was a wonderful helper to him in the field and in Berkeley, and she protected him from unwelcome visitors and those who would take time away from his valuable work. But both of them were hospitable to friends and colleagues, and I count myself fortunate to have been within this community of Desmond's admirerers.

-Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Cornell University