Not just another accident victim

In the six days since a longtime West Seattle resident was hit and killed on 35th near Fire Station 37, we have learned more about the victim, 85-year-old Oswald Clement, and we wanted to highlight the fact that those organizing a memorial service for him are hoping to hear from others with memories:
On Saturday night, we didn’t know much about what had happened, other than someone had been hit and 35th was blocked for several hours. On Monday, the medical examiner identified Mr. Clement as the victim and reported that he had passed away. After we posted about that sad development, we learned more about him from commenters, including a man who remembered Mr. Clement as co-proprietor of the Little Folk Montessori school in West Seattle in the 1970s. Then this comment came in, from Sharon, one of his former students:

Hi all – I am a former student of Mr. Clement and Miss Cochran’s Little Folk Montessori School (1968-70). We kept in touch over the years. I am working with his family to organize a memorial service for him in the weeks to come. I hope to get in touch with, and connect, any of his former Little Folk students, music student he gave lessons to later after the school closed, and others who knew him. If you want to e-mail, I created an acct for this purpose. It would be great to have a reunion at his service, for those of us he taught so much.

oclement2007@yahoo.com

… He was an intelligent man of great dignity, integrity and wisdom, and will be greatly missed.

Sharon has promised to send WSB more information and a photo when available; in the meantime, we didn’t want to wait any longer to make sure anyone who knew him knew that the memorial is being planned and organizers would like to hear from you. No date yet but she expected it wouldn’t be any sooner than the week of November 12th. Side note: There is one reference to Mr. Clement in an online archive — a short excerpt from a P-I story in 1997; given that he was hit and killed near a fire station, we thought it bittersweetly ironic that the article was about off-duty firefighters helping fix up his home.

Mags November 3, 2007 (11:08 am)

My daughter went to the Little Folks Montessori from the time she was 3 till 3rd grade. My husband tried to teach Mr. Clements to drive at one point..that didn’t quite work out. We used to have a little game that we called Mr Clements sightings (a very recent sighting of less than 2 weeks ago).We were both on vacation and just came back to this story. We both work downtown and would often see him waiting on 1st avenue for the #21 bus. We are very sad that this happened. He was truly a kind, considerate and thoughtful man and truly loved the kids at the school. We were just looking at some of her class pictures and wondering what happened to some of the other kids..she was probably there until the mid to late 80’s.

Daryl November 7, 2007 (11:49 am)

I have been one of Oswald Clement’s neighbors for more than 14 years and often rode the #21 bus with him. I also often worried about Oswald crossing 35th Ave SW at SW Othello St where we get off the bus and where he was struck by a car on the evening of 10/27. Traffic tends to move at 40-45mph there (the speed limit is 35mph) and it is extremely rare that anyone stops for pedestrians in the unmarked crosswalk. I hadn’t heard about Oswald’s accident until yesterday, 11/06, but just the day before I was wondering why Oswald hadn’t been on the #21 bus for the past week. I am deeply saddened.

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