Remembering Clarence Thorpe Sanders (1932–2022)

By Don Pendergraft, Director of Regional Museums

When you imagine the world as a child, it is with the wonders of myths and legends, along with the possibilities your imagination holds. Few adults are able to retain the freshness of imagination long after the myths and legends have evaporated.

CLARENCE THORPE SANDERS

Courtesy Museum of the Albemarle

When I met Clarence Sanders in the fall of 1993, it was in the original Museum of the Albemarle on Highway 17 South. I felt like a wayfaring stranger, newly arrived and starting a career as an exhibit designer in the small museum converted from a former North Carolina Highway Patrol Station. We met accidentally; Clarence had dropped into the museum and stopped in the gallery. I assumed he was a visitor and casually approached him with “Welcome to the museum.” He was gazing into a small diorama of early Indigenous hunters engaged with a large tusked, woolly mammoth. His expression was expectant as if the scene was about to commence. I asked if he liked the diorama, artfully designed and made with precision and creative flair in the deadly duel for survival. He replied in an unassuming tone, “Yes, very much so,” then added, “I made it.” I got to know Clarence and called on him for many favors in producing the exhibits through the years. We shared similar backgrounds in sculpture, his in realism and mine in representational sculpture. Our styles were in different disciplines, but the foundations and fundamentals of sculpting are the same.

Clarence had a way of making you feel welcome and was a natural teacher and leader. He talked, and you learned without knowing you had absorbed the knowledge. He was humble and never raised his voice, a calm, insightful, and inquisitive man.

Clarence was one of the early charter members and presidents of the Friends of the Museum of the Albemarle. He used his mind and hands to help build a dream, the Museum of the Albemarle, now celebrating 55 years of collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of the Albemarle region.

Thank you, Clarence, for your imagination and steadfast vision!