Cedar Rapids animal care retirement closes six-decade chapter for grandfather, grandson

CEDAR RAPIDS — For virtually all of his 63 years, Jim Clark’s life has been defined by dogs.

From early childhood, Clark either spent time at one of Cedar Rapids animals shelters or was working one of them himself. In December, his retirement closed an over 60-year chapter of involvement in Cedar Rapids Animal Care & Control between him and his grandfather.

That’s because Clark’s grandfather, Charles “Chuck” Lockhart, was the first appointed poundmaster and dog warden for the city of Cedar Rapids in 1959, when the city moved operations in-house. Lockhart, who oversaw the modernization of the city’s department as demand surged through the decades, built the city’s first formal animal shelter, then called the pound, at his homestead on Otis Road SE.

With an adapted secondhand truck from the garbage department, handmade kennels and dog runs around his property and a gift for handling animals, he steadily advocated for the department’s growth to adapt to the demand for calls, eventually securing a shoestring budget to bring several employees on.

Clark, born the same year his grandfather started, was there to watch it all.

“I loved dogs ever since I could say the word ‘dog,’” Clark said. “I was bait, a lot, because the (stray) dogs would come to a little kid where they wouldn’t come to an adult.”

Spending most of his childhood time on the homestead that housed thousands of cats and dogs over the years, Clark was instilled with the same gift his grandfather had for handling dogs, in particular.

“We’d be sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas dinner … and people would walk right into the house. People wouldn’t knock — just walk right in,” Clark recalls growing up with his grandparents.

For Lockhart, the job was a 24-hour operation with very modest pay up through his retirement in 1982.

Blind in his right eye after a dog bite at age 3, Clark’s depth perception became an issue for operating heavy equipment as he tried to forge a career in construction. In 1985, he accepted a job as animal control officer.

“At that time, construction work was chicken one week, feathers the next,” he said. “I made the decision to do the very best I could.”

But what started as a job soon blossomed into a passion that was planted early on. Over 37 years, Clark tried on almost every hat in the department now called Cedar Rapids Animal Care & Control — interim shelter director, program supervisor, lead animal control officer and head of euthanasia tech.

With the same love for dogs Lockhart had and a commitment to pick up the baton from his grandfather, he helped the department through several location moves, several reorganizations and the shaping of its volunteer program.

In the flood of 2008, he helped transport 107 animals on boats over a half-mile of roaring river current to safety without a single loss or a single bite. In the four days immediately days after the flood, the department accustomed to handling about 120 animals took in over 1,200.

After the flood, his input helped steer the shelter toward a location near Kirkwood Community College, where veterinary technician students would have the opportunity to get hands-on experience.

“It’s kind of like home. I grew up there,” he said, explaining his sense of responsibility to the department. “We were changing animals’ lives for the better — for the animal and for the potential adopter.”

By the time he retired, the makeshift pound his grandfather built at home was in a multimillion dollar facility.

“He had an affinity for it. It wasn’t just a job for him — it was his thing,” said Dr. John Goedeken, a retired veterinarian from Edgewood Animal Hospital who has been spaying and neutering pets pro bono since 2010 with Clark’s assistance. “It was like he had ownership of it, he wanted it to be done right.”

When Clark started in 1985, the department had six full-time animal control officers plus support staff. Now under the city’s Public Safety department, the department saw perhaps the biggest evolution of growth, after Clark’s grandfather.

The department no longer handles calls for dead deer on Interstate 380 like it did until 2006, when it picked up about 400 carcasses each year.

“If it crawled, we trapped it,” Clark said.

With many wildlife concerns now handled by other departments, animal care has more bandwidth to handle priorities like pet hoarding and abuse.

A department in which Lockhart relied on rudimentary walkie talkies for communication now has more advanced systems connected to other public safety departments and the shelter.

Quality of care has increased greatly since 1985, thanks to veterinary medicine advances and a robust volunteer program, and animals with more serious injuries are able to receive care — decreasing the need for euthanasia. Though dog licensing requirements ended in 1994, cat vaccination requirements reorganized workloads.

Through all the changes, an educational approach to enforcement was Clark’s signature — a constant through a tenure that lasted longer than his founding grandfather. Meeting animal owners where they’re at is key to creating a cooperative relationship with the city, rather than an adversarial one, he said.

Through it all, he believes treatment of animals has gotten better in Cedar Rapids.

“Anybody can go write a ticket. That doesn’t take skill,” Clark said. “When you educate the public, you have somebody that’s probably going to be a supporter of your mission for life.”

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