\n<\/p>\n
\n\tWanda Clark, who served as Lucille Ball\u2019s devoted secretary for 26 years until the famed comedienne\u2019s death in 1999, died Sunday in Langley, Oklahoma. She was 87.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile working as a secretary at Look<\/em> magazine, Clark struck up a friendship with a woman named Cleo Smith. Clark left to take a job as a travel assistant on Queen for a Day<\/em>, but the TV game show got canceled shortly after she got there.<\/p>\n \n\tSmith, however, told her about a job opening at Ball\u2019s company, Desilu Productions \u2014 and as Ball\u2019s cousin, she would have known. The I Love Lucy<\/em> star hired Clark in 1963 without an interview based solely on Smith\u2019s recommendation, and she was her valued assistant until Ball\u2019s death in April 1989 at age 77.<\/p>\n \n\tOn social media, Ball and Desi Arnaz\u2019s daughter, Lucie Arnaz, noted that she was 11 when Clark began working for her mom. Clark also was her matron of honor at her first wedding, to actor Phil Menegaux in 1971.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe traveled across the globe to catch any performance of mine or my brother\u2019s [Desi Arnaz Jr.] that she could get to, including attending our daughter\u2019s wedding,\u201d Arnaz wrote. \u201cShe had a memory like an elephant and a heart the same size. Everyone she met loved her.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe and our late amanuensis, Frank Gorey (who also knew me since I was four feet tall), stayed in my brother\u2019s and my life for decades after my mother passed. She was my North Star. Wanda and [her late husband, Frank Stamatovitch]\u2019s spirit of joy and pure kindness are responsible for most of anything good in me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWanda Lou Clark was born on March 19, 1938, in Vandervoort, Arkansas. She and her family lived in Idabel, Oklahoma, and moved to Oklahoma City in 1951, and she graduated from U.S. Grant High School in 1956.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile working for six years at an insurance company in Oklahoma City, Clark accompanied her sister, Bonnie, and brother-in-law, Ross, to California, where Ross was stationed at what was then called Vandenberg Air Force Base. Ross and Bonnie returned home in 1962, but Wanda decided she liked where she was and moved to Los Angeles, where she would eventually connect with Ball.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWith her efficiency and thoroughness, Wanda always saw to it that every task was done in an exceptional way,\u201d Michael Z. Stern wrote in his 2016 book, I Had a Ball: My Friendship With Lucille Ball<\/em>. \u201cShe handled everything so effortlessly, balanced it all with such sharpness and clarity. I really don\u2019t know how she did it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tClark even appeared \u2014 as a secretary, of course \u2014 on a 1969 episode of Here\u2019s Lucy<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter Ball\u2019s death, Clark worked for philanthropist Barbara Davis, actresses Victoria Principal and Melody Thomas Scott, talent agent Roger Vorce and producer Ray Stark.<\/p>\n \n\tClark was a founding board member of the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York. She also loved animals, poodles in particular.<\/p>\n \n\tSurvivors include her sisters, Marian and Beverly; her brothers-in-law, Robert and Dan; her nephew, Scott; and her niece, Shelley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wanda Clark, who served as Lucille Ball\u2019s devoted secretary for 26 years until the famed comedienne\u2019s death in 1999, died Sunday in Langley, Oklahoma. She was 87. While working as a secretary at Look magazine, Clark struck up a friendship with a woman named Cleo Smith. Clark left to take a job as a travel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[6817,7310,15951,2412],"class_list":{"0":"post-26612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-balls","9":"tag-longtime","10":"tag-lucille","11":"tag-secretary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}