Tribute to Glen T. Clark WA3BBJ, W3JL
1950 - April 19, 2019

Glen was a friend of mine all the way back to the mid 1960's. I believe we met on 6 meters AM. Before Glen had a drivers license, he would "hitch hike" over to my QTH to ragchew and get on the air. My dad would take me and Glen around town to visit the local hams. Some good friends of ours from the 1960's were Drew Kelley W8GFG sk, Bob Bell K3SAN sk, Frank Obermiyer WA8HLN sk, Bob Jacobson K3FOO sk, Bob Jacobson Jr. WA3CXF sk, Phil Martin WA8UQS sk, John Sercia WA8TMR sk, Rick Szabo WA3CGA. We all shared a lot of good memories together. Rest in peace my long time friend.
Tom K8CX

Glen & I go back a long way. And it was Glen who had the greatest impact of any one person on my future career path. In the spring of 1967, when I was a senior at Hickory HS and Glen was a sophomore at Sharpsville, Glen had a bug to get the FCC First Class Radiotelephone license, which back then was the meal ticket to get a job as a radio or TV station engineer. Glen persuaded me to study to take the test, as he was too young to drive to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, or Detroit to take the exam. We decided the Detroit option, offered every Friday, was the best choice vs. a quarterly exam in Pittsburgh or Cleveland. But since my parents had only one car, I couldn't take that for an overnight trip. But Glen's folks had two cars. Only one problem - the one we could use was a stick shift. So on Tuesday night Glen took me out in the back roads around Sharpsville taught me to drive the stick shift. And on Thursday night I drove the two of us to Detroit. I passed the exam. Glen did not, I think because at the time he had not had trigonometry, so didn't really understand all those trig functions that pop up in reactance calculations and the like. Anyway, armed with the license, I applied at the various Youngstown stations, and got hired at WKBN. I worked there for three summers before becoming totally bored with living at home, so I looked for a job in Cleveland where I was going to Case Tech, and found a similar summer job at WJW-TV. Thirty nine years later WJW offered me a lot of money to go away. Glen went back that summer to Detroit with Bill Lauer, K3ZHH, and passed the FCC test. That was also an interesting trip for them. They noticed the city was very tense when they were there on Friday. That Sunday night the big Detroit riots of 1967 broke out.
Anyway, RIP OM WA3BBJ.
Jim K8MR

A tribute to Drew Kelley W8GFG sk from Glen Clark W3JL:
Drew W8GFG had a 1965 GTO that I almost bought from him in 1970. He and I connected through other friends who were gear heads. Back before the Emlenton Bridge was finished, the stretch of I-80 east of the Route 8 exit was technically "closed". But an enterprising group of guys looking for a long, straight piece of concrete with no traffic had no trouble getting around the orange barricades. Because it wasn't opened, the State police did not patrol it. I know... hard to imagine a time when I-80 wasn't open yet... Sharon legends like Billy Quinn, Mickey Dipretta and others would go out and make a few bucks by making black marks on that fresh concrete. The total crowd on any night was usually 20 to 30 people. There were usually about 8 racers, including Drew, and a dozen or more observers. It really, really was a scene straight out of the movie American Graffiti.
Drew was always sad that they closed the Sharon GATX. The good news was that GATX liked him enough to offer him a job in the corporate headquarters in downtown Chicago when they closed Sharon. So he wasn't out of a job. But the bad news was that he didn't live near his family and old friends any more. :(
W8GFG became a SK March 1, 2011
Glen W3JL

Glen graduated from Penn State and was self employed designing audio & antenna systems for broadcast stations. He sold his business and retired.

Courtesy of Jim Davis

Back row, Left to Right:
WA3WIK, Glen Meyer, WA3BBJ, K3LA, K8MR, AC8E, WB3IGH, K3LR, K8NZ, K8AZ, WN3BAK
Sitting: WN3INS, WN3EUB, WN3CEG, W3YQ, John Bostwick Jr.
FD 1977 K3LR Transfer, PA

Glen Clark W3JL (WA3BBJ), Jerry Viele W8JV, Jim Hartzler K8EIJ
2008 MVARA (Mahoning Valley Amateur Radio Association) Field Day near Youngstown, Ohio

Back: K6BL, K3LR, K3LA
Front: W6NL, W3JL, K8CX
Get together at "The Lube" in Sharon, PA. on Aug. 1, 2009

W3JL, WB8IBA, N8YMZ
2013 Warren Amateur Radio Association Hamfest
Trumbull County Fair Grounds, Bazetta, Ohio
August 18, 2013

W3WGK, W3JL
2013 Warren Amateur Radio Association Hamfest
Trumbull County Fair Grounds, Bazetta, Ohio
August 18, 2013

1977 FD Photo courtesy of K3LR
2008 MVARA photo courtesy of W8JV
2009 Lube photo, 2013 WARA photos K8CX Collection