Mr. Clark L Natwick will be 91 on April 1st. He is unable to walk and do activities of daily living. He is in a wheelchair and can not walk. He has Dementia and Parkinson's. He is a veteran of the Korean War. His Medical expenses are taken care of by the VA. He receives a small VA pension and social security. This combined income falls short of the cost to keep him at his home which he's known for over 60 years.

Clark has spent many years being a teacher and a vonuteer.

Pacifica Tribune Article about Clark L Natwick

https://www.pacificatribune.com/opinion/in-appreciation-of-pioneering-renegade-who-made-pacifica-better/article_99d1cb9c-80b7-11ed-807d-db0a3128eb38.html

In appreciation of pioneering renegade who made Pacifica better

Clark Natwick called last week. He wanted to say goodbye.

If the name doesn’t sound familiar, you probably didn’t live in Pacifica 50 years ago. You weren’t a member of the Pacifica Democrats during his “short-hair period.” You never heard about the riots in Linda Mar over the Vietnam War or how he lost his teaching career because he had the audacity to let students read the books they chose. You weren’t on the front lines with him trying to protect snowy plovers and you probably didn’t hang out at the Amused Carrot either.

In some ways, Natwick, who is 90 years of age, has been the conscience of his community.

Natwick was born in Port Townsend, Wash., in 1932. His dad was in the pulp production business and took the family from Arkansas to Louisiana to Alabama and Florida and beyond. He moved to Pacifica, according to a 50-year-old Tribune profile, because his wife Lil’s family considered the Bay Area the best place in the world.

“Most everybody in Pacifica knows or has heard of Clark Natwick,” former Publisher Bill Drake wrote years ago. Natwick likely first came to the residents’ attention after a Vietnam War protest that became known as “the Linda Mar riots.” Natwick was one of several young men charged with “failure to disperse” that day. He claimed the city’s anti-loitering ordinance was unconstitutional and fought the charges.

Two years later, he represented a group called Pacifica Draft Help, which counseled young men facing a wartime draft. After the city of Pacifica and the Laguna Salada School District denied the group meeting space, the ACLU filed suit in federal court on his behalf. For its part, the city suggested that the group violated federal law by advising young men to avoid the draft.

Natwick was a crusading English teacher at a South San Francisco high school in the early 1970s — that is until someone took exception to a book of verse by the poet Eve Merriam called “Inner City Mother Goose,” which Natwick allowed his students to read. The book (which includes one memorable cuss word) turned children’s nursery rhymes on their heads to report what was really going on across America’s urban landscape.

The book banners pounced.

The state Board of Education rescinded what was supposed to be his lifetime teaching credential. The Tribune reported allegations at the time, which quickly expanded: “Students talk, read magazines of their choice, play games, do other homework.” Elected officials said he also allowed students to “possess and display cigarettes.” And it only got worse from there. The board said he was guilty of “acts involving unprofessional conduct, moral turpitude, evidenced by emotional and mental instability, history of mental disease, a history of emotional and mental instability.”

It was really that book, though, and perhaps his opposition to the war.

Natwick’s supporters were loud and many. Some 600 South City students signed a petition demanding he be let back in the classroom. Hundreds of people turned out to support him during tumultuous school board meetings. Pacifica Police hustled one young woman out of a school board meeting after yelling, “Are you running a school or a jail?” Union officials and academics supported the young teacher, all to no avail.

But no one spoke with more conviction than the soft-spoken Natwick himself. “I believe in the power of books and the right to make up our own mind,” he told Drake, noting that not everyone was fond of the Bible either.

That is how Natwick came to work at Lynn Buchanan’s print shop in Rockaway Beach, where he learned graphic arts. That vocation became his second act. He also got involved in environmental causes, including the Keep Pacifica Scenic movement. He told me he was particularly worried about the habitat of the snowy plover.

Old-timers remember Natwick at the long-gone grocery co-op called the Amused Carrot. He raised children, including a national cycling champion. As he grew older, he took long walks through the city he fought so hard to protect.

The former publisher of this paper, Bill Drake, seemed to have a grudging respect for a man with whom he surely didn’t always agree. In 1972, Drake wrote that Natwick was his own worst enemy when he “fires off contentious letters to the editor, or makes a speech or does something which a lot of people find outrageous and even his friends call ill-advised.”

For his part, Natwick didn’t always appreciate the Tribune either. “There are too many ideas I believe are just not being expressed” in the newspaper, he said at one time. And yet, on Friday, he called his hometown newspaper one last time. Because he wanted to say goodbye.

Clark, it was a privilege to speak with you. Thank you for your service.

— Clay Lambert

It's with immense gratitude from his two sons (Clark & Don) and appreciation for any donation you may give on behalf of Clark L Natwick.