ComEd chief Frank Clark retiring after blazing hard career path
BY SANDRA GUY Sun-Times Media February 21, 2012 8:02PM
Frank Clark, chairman and chief executive officer of ComEd, is retiring. He is photographed in his South Loop home on Friday, February 17, 2012 in Chicago. | Richard A. Chapman~Sun-Times
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Updated: March 23, 2012 8:14AM
After a 46-year career, Frank Clark, the man who rose from mailroom clerk to become Commonwealth Edison’s first African-American CEO and then chairman, will put in his last day Friday at the company that powers 3.4 million homes in Northern Illinois.
His colleagues describe him as collaborative, determined and a great mentor.
The high school underachiever credits his mother for his success, his wife for pushing him and his service in the Vietnam War for changing his life’s ambitions and drive for an education.
Clark, 66, who owns a $1 million home in Flossmoor, grew up in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood. He was the eldest son among eight children whose mother raised the family on her own.
At age 8, he began working part time, competing against older boys to cart groceries home for shoppers at his neighborhood Kroger. It was 1954, and most of the women shopping there walked to the supermarket. They chose their grocery helper from among a group of boys with wagons, each brandishing his most earnest smile.
“I learned to be polite, consistent and well-mannered. The ladies loved that,” he said.
A love of reading, especially poetry, English literature and science fiction, led him to start his career in a bookstore, and at age 20, he married his childhood sweetheart, Vera. Although promoted to supervisor at the bookstore, his wife insisted that he get a better-paying job, and ComEd was hiring for mailroom clerks. Though he hated the idea of working in a mailroom, he got the job.
Within a year, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and in 1968, his second year of service, he was sent to Vietnam. The profound experience of war changed his lackadaisical attitude toward life and, in particular, toward education. He returned to ComEd with a sense of purpose.
DePaul University agreed to accept Clark if he made straight A’s for two semesters at a junior college. He made the A’s — the first in his life — at Loop Junior College (now Harold Washington College) and went to DePaul at night while working and raising a family — sons Frank and Steve. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a minor in finance, and, in 1976, a law degree.
Clark’s bosses at ComEd took notice of his after-hours academic success, and insisted that he take the Illinois Bar Exam, which he had not planned to take. But he did and passed. The achievement earned him newfound respect and continued promotions: superintendent of division services; senior staff attorney then director of regulatory and government affairs; vice president of governmental affairs and senior vice president of corporate governmental affairs.
In 2001, Clark became ComEd’s first African-American president, and then its first African-American CEO and chairman in 2005.
His rise to the top of a buttoned-down utility company came with an additional challenge: racism.
When Clark was promoted to purchasing department clerk — the first African-American to hold the job — some co-workers refused to speak to him. He soldiered on.
“Some people were accepting while others were quite unaccepting,” he said. “I was raised not to use how people treated me as an excuse not to do what I was supposed to do.”
Kevin Brookins, ComEd’s senior vice president of strategy and administration, said Clark’s “living legacy isn’t just reaching the boardroom — it’s excelling in the boardroom.”
Clark knows how to involve people in a quiet, collaborative style, said Calvin Butler Jr., senior vice president of corporate affairs for Exelon. He asks for each person’s opinion in meetings, and seeks to ensure that people are treated fairly, he said.
Brookins said Clark oversaw the company saving $10 million a year by getting rid of unnecessary vehicles, among other cost savings. He also developed a division that found where ComEd was losing money through theft, faulty metering and other issues, raising revenues in that division from $4 million to $28 million.
Clark is being succeeded by President Anne Pramaggiore, 53, who will be the utility’s first female CEO.
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