Maria Bella Clark

Born in the winter of 1942, in Amsterdam, The Nederlands, was our mother Bella Katz. She was born to Miriam and Samuel Katz during a time in history and a place in the world where to be a Jew was tantamount to a death sentence, and yet she, along with her mother and father, survived the Tsunami that engulfed their lives. In February 1943, her mother and father were ordered by Dutch Anti-Semitic laws to be interviewed; resulting in the both of them being transported to the Westerbork transit camp and then the Buchenwald concentration camp. Prior to being interviewed, our Grandmother and Grandfather hid our 3 month old mother, Bella, in a chest of drawers, and told a married Christian Dutch couple that were neighbors (resistors) where little Bella had been hidden. For the next five years, the Dutch couple provided a safe haven for my mother; with two years of that being hidden away from site from the Germans that occupied Amsterdam. After being separated from her parents for five years, our mother was miraculously reunited with her father; subsequently, the whole family was reunited back in Holland. Her father’s dream was to work in the diamond trade business in New York City which caused them to pick up and leave a place our mother had known all her life, including the people that kept her safe from harm and the people she considered her actual mother and father. In 1952, our mother came to this country, along with her mother and father, and was detained at Ellis Island for close to a year, before allowing entrance. Once her family was released from Ellis Island, they moved and lived in the Dutch section of Manhattan, near the George Washington Bridge. Her father loved his daughter so much; he would bring our mother along with him on business trips that took her on boat trips back-and-forth across the Atlantic Ocean. After the death of her father in 1961, our mother was placed in an orphanage for a year, and after a brief enrollment period at NYU, she pointed herself in a new direction. She placed herself on a boat to Israel to be with her uncle. Fortunately for us, her boat was detained by the government of Greece and never made it to Israel, and this is where she met our father, James Clark, who was stationed in Greece with the U.S. Navy. They were married back in the states in November 1963 and our mother Bella became Mrs. Maria Bella Clark. In December of 1964, her son Michael was born in Greensburg, Indiana. And then in July 1971, her son Rodney was born in La Junta, Colorado. In February 2004, her only Grandbaby was born, Zachary Clark. We are blessed for the 9 years our mother had to share with Zachary. We are also blessed to of had such a caring mother, wife, and grandmother. My mother liked to sew, knit, cook for her family, collector of jewelry and purses. She was very passionate of her purses. Our mother was very proud of her sons and her only grandson, Zachary Clark. She always had to have a clean house, clean floors, and clean EVERYTHING. My mom would come to my parties and was a person who lend an ear to anybody.

Maria Bella Clark

December 16, 1942 - November 19, 2012