The dark history of Sterling Clark
It is true that I have an unhealthy obsession with Sterling Clark, the meta-rich , right-wing maniac who built the lovely Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. A lifetime ago I lived across the street from the institute, actually an art museum flush with gorgeous Impressionist paintings. And no, I did not pal around with my famous South Street neighbors, author Joe McGinniss and "Empress" Farah Pahlavi , the widow of the deposed Shah of Iran, both of whom have since decamped.
Only recently has the dark history of Clark, whom the Institute describes in official biographies as a moneyed thoroughbred aficionado married to a Paris showgirl, resurfaced. In 2004, Joel Bakan's book "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power" resuscitated the story of an attempted coup d'etat against Franklin Roosevelt by right-wing financiers in 1934, and Clark's role in funding the effort.
It is a tangled tale. Clark, busily squandering his Singer sewing machine fortune in Paris with the above mentioned showgirl, also fell in love with European Fascist politics. He and some cronies approached two-time Medal of Honor winner, Marine General Smedley Darlington Butler , to lead a putsch against Roosevelt. Butler wasn't interested, and ratted out Clark & Co. After the plot came to light, Clark threatened to sue Time magazine for reporting on his role, and promised to return to the United States to defend his reputation. True to form, he did neither.
To date, mainstream historians have dismissed the coup talk as overblown. "The gap between contemplation and execution was considerable," the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in "The Age of Roosevelt." "It can hardly be assumed that the republic was in much danger." Roosevelt biographer Conrad Black thought Clark's coup effort was absurd, and described the Singer heir as "sort of batty . . . he was never taken seriously by anybody."
Well, OK. But here's a new book, "The Clarks of Cooperstown," by historian Nicholas Fox Weber , which seems extraordinarily well researched and takes the coup attempt very seriously indeed. (Coincidentally, Jules Archer's 1973 book, "The Plot to Seize the White House," has just been republished.) Weber leans on Archer's account, and on the archives of the House Un-American Activities Committee, chaired by former Boston trial lawyer John McCormack . Weber calls Sterling "a volatile reactionary," who habitually called Roosevelt "Rosenfart." The historian definitely believes Clark was angling for regime change on Pennsylvania Avenue.
As did McCormack, the future speaker of the House, who later called the plot "a threat to our very way of government by a bunch of rich men who wanted fascism." "It was one aspect of European culture that Robert Sterling Clark did not succeed in bringing to America," Weber writes.
He got written up in the Globe -- twice -- and now he's made medical history. The New England Journal of Medicine has just published an article, "Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital: A 55-Year-Old Man Impaled in a Rowing Accident," describing the MGH emergency surgery that probably saved Yasaitis's life, in extraordinary, icky detail.
The Journal notes that the high speed of the crash -- the boats collided at about 15 miles per hour -- tore the rubber safety ball from the prow of the eight, which "entered the left side of the patient's lower back, above the iliac crest, and exited the central portion of his lower abdomen above the pubis." In case you lack spatial imagination, the NEJM provides an illustration of exactly how this happened.
Translated from medicalese into English, the article relates that if you're going to be disemboweled by an eight-man shell, you would be well advised to have that happen near the Arsenal Street bridge. Why? Because medics got to Yasaitis 16 minutes after the accident. Within 35 minutes he was being treated at MGH's Level 1 Trauma Center. They don't call it Man's Greatest Hospital for nothing.
Dr. Robert Sheridan , the surgeon who operated on Yasaitis, is a co author of the article, which is also illustrated with photographs taken in the ER. If you are squeamish, do not click here. After 10 days in the hospital, Sheridan notes, "The patient was highly motivated to recover and worked avidly in physical therapy. He has since returned to competitive rowing."
Alex Beam is a Globe Columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
