Cletus Lee Clark was born on September 30, 1935, and attended Lincoln High School, a segregated high school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.¹ From 1971-2009, Clark worked as a painter and decorator at the White House. From painting the exterior of the home– no small feat– to assisting first ladies with their decor requests, Clark spent many decades in service at the White House. He even painted the stage for President Nixon’s East Room resignation in 1974.² Cletus Clark died on February 20, 2015, and is buried at National Harmony Memorial Park in Hyattsville, Maryland.³

Valarie Schwartz, Remembering Chapel Hill: The Twentieth Century As We Lived It (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009); “Birthdays,” Undated, folder: folder “Birthdays (Residence Staff),” box 29, Betty Ford White House Papers, Gerald R. Ford Library, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/sites/default/files/pdf_documents/library/document/0018/81556614.pdf.
Ibid; Untitled List of Staff, December 1971, Collection: White House Usher’s Office; Series: Rex Scouten’s Subject File; Folder: Residence Employees; Container 5, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library; White House Office of the Curator, e-mail message to author, March 16, 2026; Kate Anderson Brower, “No Ordinary Home: A Glimpse Behind the Scenes in the House at the Center of Power,” in Time: Inside the White House (New York: Time Incorporated Press, 2016), Ebook.
Ibid; “Cletus Lee Clark Sr.,” Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/143131932/cletus-lee-clark.

Birthplace

Unclear from Context

National Harmony Memorial Park