Margaret Hayes Clark, great granddaughter of President Rutherford B. Hayes and First Lady Lucy Hayes, is currently serving as Mayor of Rosemead, CA, having served on the Rosemead City Council since March 1991. She studied in France at the University of Bordeaux through the University of California Education Abroad Program and she graduated with a bachelor’s degree and teaching credential from UCLA where she met her husband, Jim, at the nearby Church. Soon thereafter, they chose Rosemead in which to reside and raise their eight children.

She supported her husband’s lifelong calling to publish the Bible Fellowship, a study course that takes the reader through the Bible in 5 years, written by their pastor Milo F. Jamison. She became involved in local politics when she was led to practice Proverbs 31:8 as she saw lifelong elderly and disabled Rosemead residents being threatened with having their homes taken for a high school. They fought for 2 1/2 years and won with a win/win situation where no one lost their home and the school district got millions of dollars to improve the existing high schools. That rewarding experience led her to see there were so many important issues. This epiphany showed Margaret that regular people can point out bad mistakes by the government officials. The biggest “I told you so” of her life was when the California Air Resources Board mandated the gasoline additive MTBE. She met with the official ln charge and said it would get into the groundwater and he flat out said it wouldn’t. It did and the cost to clean it up was $29 Billion!! That told her that the people in charge are not necessarily doing the right thing when the “left hand” (air people) wouldn’t listen to the “right hand” (water people). With her passion for preserving the planet God gave us in a common sense way, in 1992, she helped form the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority to oversee the groundwater cleanup as well as helping form the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy which oversees funds for parks where young people can get out into the forests and enjoy nature instead of their addiction to video games.

When she sees the partisanship that divides our country, she has come to appreciate the importance of her great-grandfather, President Rutherford B. Hayes’ statement “He serves his party best who serves his country best." Having seen so many people ruin their lives through drug and alcohol addiction she appreciates all the more the stand that Rutherford and Lucy took in refusing to serve liquor in the White House which resulted in her great-grandmother being called “Lemonade Lucy." She is extremely proud of Rutherford who was wounded 4 times in the Civil War fighting against slavery, and vetoed the first “Chinese Exclusion Act” which she tells her majority Asian constituents. Margaret has never touched alcohol or drugs and is thankful to God for His many blessings and wonderful family. She can be reached at clarkeeesc@yahoo.com