Audubon Arts | Culture & Community | Arts & Culture | The Arts Council of Greater New Haven
Top: Bitsie Clark's granddaughter Tommy Vines, who knew her affectionately as "Mama." Bottom: Poet and playwright Aaron Jafferis, with "Bitsie Chick" Robin Golden (in the red scarf), and Clark's longtime friend Billy Fischer (in the red plaid). Third photo: Musicians who played included Trevor Davis (percussion), Art Hovey (tuba), Tom Boates (trombone), John Smayda (soprano saxophone), Ed Stern (banjo), and Jim Caplik (trumpet). Lucy Gellman Photos.
Aaron Jafferis' words echoed through Battell Chapel, crawling into every nook and cranny in the space. Bit by bit, Bitsie Clark brought together the bickering business and art cliques / So before nothing existed but parking spots / The Audubon Arts District now sits / And that's where I met Bitsie. The sound drifted upwards to the choir pews, blanketing the organ where Ronald Ebrecht sat at attention.
I was a community organizer / for the regional cultural plan
I thought I represented Fair Haven / And Bitsie represented the man
But when we went around the table introducing neighborhood artist after artist
The former Girl Scout came off the realest and the hardest—
Listeners, some already crying, leaned forward to catch every word. Sunlight streamed in through the stained glass. Outside, a brass band waited patiently for friends and family to assemble behind them, and give Clark the second line sendoff she had asked for. Jafferis looked out onto the audience, eyes wide and a little wet, and kept going.
Trumpet player Jim Caplik and tuba player Art Hovey.
Frances "Bitsie" Clark, a giant of the arts world and architect of the Audubon Arts District, received a proper sendoff Wednesday morning, as spoken word, song, an original hymn and organ music filled Battell Chapel in the heart of the city she loved so much. Over a month after her passing at 93, Clark's exuberant spirit filled the space, vibrantly alive in the memories that hundreds of artists, friends and family members brought with them as they said a final goodbye.
Read an earlier and fuller piece about her extraordinary life in the Arts Paper here and the New Haven Independent here. She is buried at 30 1/2 Cedar St. in Grove Street Cemetery, among some of the other poets, writers, thinkers, abolitionists, inventors, and artists who lent New Haven its cultural heartbeat.
"If I become half the woman she was, I'm set," said Clark's granddaughter Thompson "Tommy" Vines, whose emotional, joyful, unbridled and ebullient tribute to her "Mama" channeled some of the volume, moxie and enthusiasm with which Clark lived her life.
Beaming, she remembered the endless "Mama Hits," long, winding stories that Clark would tell, changing her narrative pacing or her intonation if she needed to. To those listening, she usually signaled that she was getting to a juicy part by slapping the person on the arm.
"She is with every single one of us," Vines said. "She is a part of the lifeblood of New Haven ... Mama was a force unlike anyone I've ever met before."
Emceed by City Historian Mike Morand—who loved Clark, and thought of her as a mentor and co-conspirator—Wednesday's service centered not just the extraordinary life of a nonprofit leader, public servant, curious stirrer-of-pots and doting mom, but the legacy that she leaves in New Haven, from the Arts Council itself to the Bitsie Clark Fund for Artists.
During her life, Clark's footprint was massive: she dreamt of becoming president, led the Girl Scouts, transformed the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, brokered consensus and pushed for discussion on the New Haven Board of Alders, and ran HomeHaven at a time when many elders were already well into retirement or already gone. She did it while raising two children, and later doting on five grandchildren whom she adored.
As Morand recalled, she was a troublemaker and a pint-sized power broker in the best way: some of his favorite memories include the two sitting in Wooster Square, puffing on cigars from a former location of the Owl Shop. Whether he serving on the board at the Arts Council or the Board of Alders, where he served two terms in the 1990s, he looked to her as a mentor and a friend.
She didn't fear death, added NewAlliance Foundation Executive Director Maryann Ott, who remained friends with Clark for three decades, and praised her friend's tireless spirit of adventure. When the two spoke about end-of-life care, Clark said she saw it as "life's last greatest adventure," a phrase she'd heard from Billy Fischer several years before.
Wednesday, that love and reverence was everywhere, from a church packed with three generations of arts leaders (as well as current and former city staff, veteran journalists, and Mayors John DeStefano and Justin Elicker) to a Second Line that cut through the New Haven Green.
Taking the pulpit early in the service, playwright, poet and educator Steve Driffin made clear that Clark was many things to many people—but for him, family was always one of them. After the two met at James Hillhouse High School during a run of his play Yo' Street, they remained close for decades. Often, Clark was a greater champion for his work than he knew how to be himself.
"Bitsie was also a star," he said, tearing up a little bit. He remembered hearing a scientist speak eight days after Clark's death, and feeling something click. "We know that energy cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed. The impact of energy does not stop when the source changes."
Her children, too, captured that energy as they spoke, recalling her gift for storytelling and fierce, feisty spirit. Her daughter, Mary Vines, traced the trajectory of her life from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to New Haven, chronicling stops at Vassar and NYU Law School (she halted her studies after a year) and in Oklahoma, Branford and countless summer camps in between. Along the way, Vines said, her mother fell in love with working, whether it was selling dresses at Sears or running a regional arts council with elbow grease and a sense of stick-to-itiveness.
"She was a rebel with a cause," and her cause was improving life for those around her.
"Bitsie Chick" Mimsie Coleman. Bottom is Billy Fischer, whose mantra around death was and is that it is "life's last great adventure," said fellow "Bitsie Chick" Maryann Ott.
As he took the stage before a final benediction, Jafferis also captured that in his "Bitsie Rap," a lyrical tribute fitting for the woman who scored Home Haven Hamilton Tickets in 2016, when an original cast still included Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Daveed Digs and Leslie Odom, Jr. among others ("at full price," specified her daughter, Mary Vines). Turning the clock back to the planning meeting in which he met Clark, he remembered how she introduced herself as a "bullshit artist"—a phrase that years later, still sticks with him.
Sorry if I'm offending her / Or maybe you
When she called herself a bullshit artist / It was partly true!
Just like a bull whose belly is full / Bitsie made shit happen! Still does!
That's why we're in Battell Chapel and I'm up here rappin'
Bitsie made shit happen / Saw through the bull crap / And told a crew of community artists
The hardest thing to do is also the smartest
Don't just be about ideas / Be about action!
Make this faction talk with that faction!
Her legacy lives on across New Haven, friends and mentees added Wednesday, encouraging attendees to donate to the Bitsie Fund in Clark's memory (as of the writing of this article, the fund has nearly surpassed its $500,000 goal).
At the Shubert Theatre, of which Clark was a longtime fan and champion, Leonard H. Suzio has also funded a long-running collaboration with the Girl Scouts of America, now officially called the Bitsie Clark Girl Scout Patch Program.
Eleven years ago, the program began when Kelly Wuzzardo, director of education and engagement at the theater, longed for a Girl Scout patch program like the one Broadway theaters were running with Wicked. Clark, as she so often did, made it happen.
"I was just so glad to do it because I loved Bitsie's Girl Scout stories," Suzio said in a call Thursday afternoon. In one such story, he remembered, Clark spoke about meeting a member of New Haven's Whitney family, who would attend an annual Girl Scouts of America dinner at the Waldorf Astoria each year.
Each year, she wore her Girl Scout uniform faithfully. At some point, however, she would head to the bathroom, peel off the uniform, and hand it to an attendant before taking a smoke break. Clark, who could be wickedly funny, loved to tell the story.
"We are thrilled that Len has sponsored the program in Bitsie's memory," Wuzzardo added. "Bitsie was key in helping me to create this program, and it is fitting tribute to her and all she did over the years to support the Shubert and our education programs. "