After his death, Mrs. Clark volunteered and got overwhelming support. Her son, Winfield Shaw Clark of New Boston, N.H., said she served as publisher from 1950 to 1963, running the ship, writing a weekly column, selling advertising space, attending meetings of town officials, and seeing that the paper worked for the community’s common good, as her husband had vowed.
Mrs. Clark, who sold the newspaper in 1963, died at her New Boston, home on Aug. 7 of complications of dementia, her son said. She was 99.
When feminist Betty Friedan interviewed Mrs. Clark for Everywoman’s Family Circle in the 1950s, she wrote that John Clark “bought a heavily mortgaged Claremont Daily Eagle and used it to help rebuild a community that had become demoralized by loss of many of its industries.’’
On hearing of Mrs. Clark’s decision to run the paper, Friedan wrote, “Businessmen were surprised or shocked. How could a homemaker, with no business experience, run a newspaper? Even Rhoda’s father warned, ‘You’re not tough enough.’ But, less than a week after her husband’s death, Rhoda sat down at his Daily Eagle desk, noted the appointments he could not keep, and read through an enormous accumulation of mail. ‘It’s all beyond me,’ she thought, but I’ve got to do it.’ ’’
As if administrative work were not enough, Mrs. Clark wrote a weekly column titled, “Random Pencilings on a Lace Cuff,’’ a chatty, folksy report of goings-on about town and the larger area. When three new shoe companies opened in Claremont and Newport, providing jobs for many, she wrote: “Must all be a dream. Claremonters and Newporters are all wandering around wearing big smiles.’’
Winfield said she wrote only on a typewriter, using the “hunt-and-peck’’ method.
