Clarence Gamble - Legacy

Legacy

Throughout the many countries where Clarence and his fieldworkers had been working toward the "Great Cause," they left not only clinics and family planning associations but also dedicated individuals, who, in their native countries, were actively carrying on the work. Clarence's sometimes controversial approach was both lauded and criticized throughout his travels.

In January 1964, Clarence was diagnosed with leukemia. He told very few about it, but in early 1965, Edna McKinnon visited Charles and Bernadine Zukoski. They told Edna that Clarence was no longer able to take care of administrative matters. The board of directors had to intervene and name a new director. They needed to know if Clarence's family want to continue the work of The Pathfinder Fund. Edna and the Zukoskis put together a plan for transition and sent it to Clarence’s children.

The Gamble children were committed to continuing the work. Edna McKinnon came to Massachusetts. From July through November 1965, she worked with Clarence and the family to organize the transition. It was not an easy job for Clarence, who was growing weaker each day and whose habits of secrecy and total control were deeply ingrained or for Edna, who had to confront, cajole, and argue as necessary to ensure the solid future of Pathfinder.

On November 4, 1965, the first meeting of the newly formed Pathfinder Fund Advisory Council was held in Milton, Massachusetts. All of the Gamble family was there, as were John Gordon and long-term fieldworkers Edith Gates, Margaret Roots, Edna McKinnon, and Charles and Bernadine Zukoski, along with old friends Stuart and Emily Mudd. Ellen Watumull of the Watumull Foundation, which had supported both Margaret Sanger and Clarence Gamble for years, had been invited, and Alan Guttmacher, president of Planned Parenthood-World Population, was there to speak.

An unidentified public health physician said, "The only reason that our government was now able to officially help these countries was that private foundations such as Pathfinder paved the way by starting things. carried on such successful programs with the people and did such a fine job of education that the government was now able to operate in these areas."

This essay drawn from the Clarence James Gamble Papers, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and the Sarah Merry Bradley Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.