Clark G. Reynolds

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Clark Gilbert Reynolds (born Pasadena, California, 11 December 1939 - died Pisgah Forest, North Carolina, 10 December 2005) was an historian of naval warfare, with a particular interest in the development of U.S. naval aviation. In addition, he made contributions to the fields of world history, strategic history, and the the history of martime civilizations.

[edit] Early Life and Education

The eldest of the two sons of William G. and Alma E. (née Clark) Reynolds, he graduated with his bachelor of arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1961 and went on the Duke University, where he earned his master of arts degree in history in 1963 and his Ph.D. in 1964 under Professor Theodore Ropp. In 1963, he married Constance A. Caine of Garden City, New York, a Phi Beta Kappa student in Political Science at Duke University, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, and who served throughout his career as his valued researcher, proof reader, and typist.

[edit] Academic career

Reynolds began his career as an instructor, and later an associate professor, in the Department of English, History, and Government at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1964-1968. From there, he went to the University of Maine, where he served in the Department of History from 1968 to 1976 as Associate, and then full Professor. While at the University of Maine, he and William J. McAndrew conducted seminars in maritime and regional history and Reynolds became a pivotal figure in helping to organize the North American Society for Oceanic History and served as that organization's first secretary-treasurer.

From 1976 to 1978, he was Professor, and later head of the Department of Humanities with the rank of captain in the U.S. Merchant Marine at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point New York.

He served briefly as visiting professor at Mississippi State University in the autumn of 1979, but for most of the decade between 1978 to 1988, he was an independent scholar, working as the part-time curator and historian at the Patriot's Point Naval and Maritime Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1988, he was appointed professor of history and served as chairman of the history Department at the College of Charleston from 1988 to 1993. In 1999, he was appointed Distinguished Professor and served in that capacity until his retirement in 2002, when he was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

A lover of jazz music from the 1920-1940 era, Reynolds often served as a volunteer disk jocket on radio programs broadcast on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network and South Carolina Education Radio.

Reynolds published fifty-seven journal articles in his field and contributed to a number of encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries. The American Military Institute awarded him its Moncado Prize for articles that appeared in Military History in 1975 and 1988. In 1993, the North American Society for Oceanic History (NASOH) awarded him its K. Jack Bauer Award for distinguished service to NASOH and for his lifetime of distinguished contributions to the field of maritime history.

[edit] Writings

• Carrier admiral by J. J. Clark (1893-1971) with Clark G. Reynolds. (1967)

• The fast carriers: the forging of an air navy (1968; 1978; 1992)

• Command of the sea; the history and strategy of maritime empires (1974; 1983)

• The saga of Smokey Stover by E. T. Stover (1920-19449 and Clark G. Reynolds (1974)

• Famous American admirals (1978; 2002)

• The carrier war (1982)

• The fighting lady: the new Yorktown in the Pacific war (1986)

• Global Crossroads and the Amercian Seas edited by Clark G. Reynolds for the International Commission for MAritime History (1988)

• History and the sea: essays on maritime strategies (1989)

• War in the Pacific (1990)

• Admiral John H. Towers : the struggle for Naval air supremacy (1991)

• Navies in history (1998)

• On the warpath in the Pacific : Admiral Jocko Clark and the fast carriers (2005)