Photos by Erin Nelson.
U.S. Army veterans William “Bill” Clark, left, and Marshall Clay both graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Clark graduated in 1963, and Clay graduated in 2001.
To honor our military veterans this month, Village Living spoke with two Mountain Brook businessmen about their time in service and their civilian careers.
William ‘Bill’ Clark
Photos by Erin Nelson.
William ‘Bill’ Clark
William “Bill” Clark has practiced law in the Birmingham area for more than 50 years and also spent three decades of his life serving in the military.
Clark and his family moved to Homewood when he was in the sixth grade. During high school, they moved to Vestavia Hills, where he graduated from Shades Valley High School.
Although he was offered a football scholarship to the Virginia Military Institute, Clark knew he would rather attend West Point instead. He was able to play at defensive back his senior year, which he describes as a successful season, besides a loss to Navy and its quarterback, Roger Staubach.
Upon graduating college in 1963, Clark went to Ft. Benning, Georgia, where he attended the Infantry Officer Basic Course, Airborne School, and the Army Ranger School.
He married his wife, Faye, on Feb. 1, 1964, and then a month later sailed to England on a converted troop ship then boarded a train to Augsburg, Germany for his first assignment that lasted for two years.
“This was when [the U.S.] and the Soviet Union were at odds with each other,” Clark said. “The division I belonged to had a mission to block the gap route the Russians used to come into Europe.”
Clark spent two years as an infantry officer in Germany. Faye joined him on the deployment and gave birth to their first child there, before the family returned home in the summer of 1967, when the Vietnam War was just beginning.
Clark was then stationed at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, where he commanded a basic training company training new soldiers, almost all of whom were reluctantly headed for Vietnam upon graduation, he said.
Before being deployed to Vietnam, Clark attended the Army Advisor course at Ft. Bragg North Carolina, and then to the Army Vietnamese language school at Ft. Bliss, Texas where he served as an Advisor to the Vietnamese Army.
Photos by Erin Nelson.
A photograph of Marshall Clay at West Point is seen in the foreground and a photograph of Clay, far left, with the Civil Affairs team of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division in the Kurdistan region of Iraq on the northern border of Iran.
Clark’s next deployment was serving as an advisor in the Delta region of Vietnam, where he would spend one year.
Upon reflecting on his service, Clark said he had a “lot of interesting experiences” as an advisor, including surviving a helicopter crash.
After his return from Vietnam, Clark transferred to the Army Reserve and started law school at the University of Alabama. After which he clerked for Hon. Walter P. Gewin in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Tuscaloosa for a year before moving to Birmingham to begin practicing law.
“When we came back to Birmingham, we bought a house in the Birmingham City limits before moving to Mountain Brook (our current residence) on Canterbury Road within walking distance of both the elementary school and the junior high school and our children were school age at the time,” Clark said.
Clark continued his military service in the Army Reserve during law school, serving in a number of key command and staff positions. One of his first missions in the Army Reserve unit in Panama was to build a major bridge across a river that flowed into the ocean, as well as minor bridges along the north coast of Panama.
“That was not just a training exercise, but a real service to the people of Panama,” he said.
The thing most important for a leader in the Army and Army Reserve is to understand what the mission of your unit is and train your soldiers to perform that mission and to take care of your soldiers. Instill that same ideology in all the people that work for you, and that’s true whether you’re a lawyer [or any other profession], but particularly necessary in the military with people putting lives on the line.
William ‘Bill’ Clark
He was promoted to major general in 1995 and retired from the Army Reserve in 2000. His decorations and awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Bronze Star, Combat Infantryman Badge, Expert Infantryman Badge, Parachute Badge and Ranger Tab. He is also a graduate of the Army Command and General Staff College and the Army War College.
During his legal career, Clark practiced with the law firm Redden, Mills, Clark & Shaw and its predecessors from 1972 to 2020, then joined Wallace, Jordan, Ratliff & Brandt, LLC in 2020 in an “of counsel” role. He has served as president of both the Birmingham Bar and the Alabama State Bar associations and been presented with numerous awards over his career.
At age 82, Clark said he is still enjoying practicing law and “going full speed,” although he doesn’t handle as many cases as he used to. Both of his children live in Mountain Brook and he gets to spend time with them often.
“The thing most important for a leader in the Army and Army Reserve is to understand what the mission of your unit is and train your soldiers to perform that mission and to take care of your soldiers,” Clark said. “Instill that same ideology in all the people that work for you, and that’s true whether you’re a lawyer [or any other profession], but particularly necessary in the military with people putting lives on the line.”
Marshall Clay
Photos by Erin Nelson.
Marshall Clay
Marshall Clay served seven years as an officer in the U.S. Army, where he performed two combat tours of duty in Iraq and one tour in the Republic of South Korea.
Clay grew up in Mobile with a family military background and a spirit of service. His father and brother both attended The Citadel and his father served in the Air Force.
A tennis player during junior high and high school, Clay met the West Point tennis coach at a tournament during his junior year and was invited for a recruiting trip at West Point. After the visit, Clay said it was evident that West Point would be his college of choice.
“The most eye-opening thing for me when I visited West Point was it really just opened up this new world for me that I never really thought existed,” Clay said. “You can’t really appreciate it until you go up there. I was just super impressed with everything that went along with the lifestyle in the academy.”
A starter on West Point’s tennis team in each of his four years, Clay was team captain during his senior year and was also voted outstanding male athlete for his senior class.
After graduating from West Point in June 2001, Clay attended a basic course in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and was there when the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks occurred. Six months later, he reported to Ft. Campbell, Kentucky in the spring of 2002 and was deployed with the 101st Airborne Division during the initial invasion of Iraq in February 2003.
Clay spent a year as a field artillery officer during that tour. After that, he went to Ft. Benning, Georgia, for an infantry officer advanced course and was then assigned to the Republic of Korea for a year, where he lived at Camp Casey on the border between North and South Korea.
Clay said he got out of the military after that duty station and started law school six months later, in fall 2007. However, he was in the inactive ready reserves and was called back into service to deploy again to Iraq.
During his second deployment, Clay served with the civil affairs unit, attached to the 25th Infantry Division, for another year before returning to the U.S. in October 2009.
“Both tours were difficult in their own way,” Clay said. “The first time, everything was all new and I had never deployed to a combat zone. There was the typical fear of the unknown and how you’re going to respond when pressure is on. The second time was different in many ways and in many ways was a lot more dangerous. There were no clear-cut battle lines. The complexity of deployment was a lot more difficult during the second tour. For me, I had to be a lot smarter with how you operated. The pressure was, in my opinion, more consistent and continuous during the second tour as opposed to the first.”
My military career has definitely served me well, in addition to my law degree, in this business. My experiences include leading people, dealing with diversity, overcoming mentally tough situations. Most people would say all their life experience gives them an advantage in what they are currently doing, and that’s the case for me.
Marshall Clay
Clay restarted law school in spring 2010 and graduated in December 2011 and took the bar exam. However, he decided that he no longer wanted to practice law. Instead, he pursued a career in finance.
Photos by Erin Nelson.
A photograph of Marshall Clay at West Point is seen in the foreground and a photograph of Clay, far left, with the Civil Affairs team of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division in the Kurdistan region of Iraq on the northern border of Iran.
Mountain Brook Mayor Stewart Welch was the one who took a chance on Clay and gave him an opportunity to join his firm, the Welch Group in 2012. Clay became a partner in just over four years and has now been a senior advisor with the firm for over 11 years.
“My military career has definitely served me well, in addition to my law degree, in this business,” Clay said. “My experiences include leading people, dealing with diversity, overcoming mentally tough situations. Most people would say all their life experience gives them an advantage in what they are currently doing, and that’s the case for me.”
Clay, 43, and his wife, Dailey, have three sons ages five and under and live in Crestline.
