Dorothy Clarke Wilson

Dorothy Wright Clarke was born in Gardiner, Maine in 1904, the daughter of a Baptist minister and his wife. She excelled throughout school, was valedictorian of her high school graduating class and began attending Bates College at seventeen. In her senior year at Bates, Dorothy won an essay contest for “Arbitration Instead of War.” This experience began her lifelong interest in activism for peace and social justice.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1925, Dorothy married a college classmate, Elwin Leander Wilson, who went on to attend Princeton Theological Seminary and the School of Theology at Boston University. After Elwin completed his graduate studies, he and Dorothy returned to Westbrook, Maine where he became a minister and she began her long and distinguished literary career.

She traveled extensively (Palestine, India, Egypt, Mexico, and England) always conducting thorough research in order to capture the authenticity of her subjects and settings. Over her lifetime, Dorothy Clarke Wilson presented over one thousand illustrated lectures, and received numerous honors—including Doctor of Letters from Bates College (1948) and the University of Maine (1984). She was the recipient of the Maryann Hartman Award from the University of Maine in 1988 and the Deborah Morton Award from Westbrook College in Portland in 1989. Other honors include the New England United Methodist Award for Excellence in Social Justice Ministry (1975); the Woman of Distinction Award of Alpha Delta Kappa (1971); the Award for Distinguished Achievement from the University of Maine at Augusta (1977); and the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women, Maine Division (1988).

Today, deserving students attending Orono High School and the University of Maine are presented with the Dorothy Clarke Wilson Peace Award. The Maine Christian Association Board named one of its buildings, The Wilson Center, honoring her support of their organization.

Dorothy Clarke Wilson’s papers (including many unpublished works) can be found in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and in the Special Collections Library at Bates College. Ms. Wilson’s work has been translated into dozens of languages and condensed into guides and digests for readers worldwide. Collectively, she is the author of 213 works in 473 publications in 17 languages with 16,154 library holdings.

Elwin, her husband, died in 1992; and her only son, Harold, died in 1977. Dorothy’s own death occurred in 2003 in Orono, Maine after a brief illness.