For Larry Franks, M.A. ’73, it wasn’t the technical training gleaned from his graduate education that mattered most, but other, less concrete skills that truly made the difference.
“It was the ability to think, the ability to not only assemble data but to understand it, and then, most importantly, communicate it,” he says. A student of international relations, he was well-equipped to conduct surveys of Saigon households during the Vietnam War, in neighborhoods that had never seen an American.
Larry and his wife, Ellen Berelson, want to help ensure the opportunities for a unique and deeply felt educational experience will continue to be offered by Clark. To that end, they’ve made the University a beneficiary in their planned-giving profile.
The couple has also long supported Clark students with meaningful paid internships through the Theodore H. Barth Foundation, which funds more than 50 arts, education, and social service organizations.
Ellen is the foundation president; Larry, the secretary-treasurer. “We were lucky that when we went to college, you could graduate without crushing debt,” says Ellen, who previously worked for the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. “Cost should not be a bar to people getting themselves equipped fora better life. There’s no substitute for a good education.”
Larry, a Clark trustee, enjoyed a long career that included a stintin the Peace Corps in Africa, ownership of a video-production company, and ending his career with Vertex Solutions/AdayanaInc., implementing learning management systems for a number offederal and international agencies.
Why give to Clark? The answer is clear, Larry says.
“If science matters, if learning matters, if international understand-ing matters, then it matters that universities like Clark be nurtured and supported.”
