01 Ray Clark

We toss around the word “inspiration” quite casually, but when someone truly earns the description, it's worth stopping for a moment to mention it.I met Ray Clark only twice, but both times he sent me back to my exercise routine with renewed determination to take care of myself.What's more, I know many other people had the same reaction.

Clark is a fellow from Gaithersburg who I wrote about in 2013.At the time he was 102, but still working out once a week with the help of his then-70-year-old trainer, Thom Hunter, who has a mild form of Parkinson's disease.Clark hit the gym for the first time at 98 after the deaths of his wife and daughter.

During those half-hour sessions, I watched him curl 40 pounds, exercise vigorously on a rowing machine and pluck bouncing eight-pound kettle bells from the air.He did 10 reps with 60 pounds on the “pullover” machine and moved 60 pounds 10 times on the “seated row” apparatus.He did modified pushups and pullups.

A year later, I checked in on Clark, and he was doing much of the workout at 103.At 148, he weighed three pounds less than he did a year earlier.

Clark died on Oct.5 of congestive heart failure, having touched my life and earning the respect of many people who read my stories about him.They left notes of admiration for him on our Web site.

“Way to go, Ray!”, one person wrote in a comment that was typical of many others.“A true inspiration for the young, the old, and everyone in between...You rock!”

Clark's son and daughter-in-law, Dennis and Joan Clark, who had encouraged him to begin working out, told me in an e-mail that Clark “died quickly and, from what we could observe, painlessly.His final day was spent with his grandson in the morning and his granddaughter in the evening, until we got home.In retrospect they were honored to spend the last day with him.”

Clark, they said, “was most proud of the fact that he made a difference and helped people he never met.”