In one terrible instant, a family's heart breaks

ST. PETERSBURG -- Gregory Clark and Kangha Mitchell, a tomboy who liked to climb trees, were inseparable childhood friends.

They played football and wrestled each other. Later they became sweethearts and married.

With their two teenage daughters in the back seat, Gregory and Kangha Clark were driving to church Feb. 9 when a stolen SUV came roaring west on 18th Avenue S. It smashed head-on into the Clarks' Toyota Camry.

The thunderous collision left Mrs. Clark with a broken neck, punctured lungs and shattered bones. She lay in a coma for five days in Bayfront Medical Center's intensive care unit.

Late Friday, on Valentine's Day, Kangha Clark, 37, died.

That morning, as he lay in his own hospital bed with a broken hip, Gregory Clark wrote his wife a love letter she never saw. They had been married for 21 years.

"We were like Romeo and Juliet. Peanut butter and jelly. I had to have her," Clark, 40, said Tuesday from his trauma unit hospital bed.

After the crash, police arrested a 14-year-old youth seen running from the wreck. He is being held at the Juvenile Detention Center on unrelated drug charges. Police say he is strongly linked to the crash but has not been charged.

Gregory Clark is getting physical therapy and said Tuesday he expects to be released in about two days. The couple's daughters received minor injuries and were treated and released.

Early Friday, Gregory watched Valentine's Day weddings on television. It made him think of his own and how he and Kangha always did something special on Feb. 14, like dinner.

A nurse offered to take him to see his wife on another floor, and because he didn't want to go empty-handed, he wrote a love note.

"I said, 'You never know how long we're going to be together. In our vows, it says for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part. And that means a lifetime . . . until the rivers run dry or the stars turn to dust.' "

"It was like she was waiting for me to come down to see her, and that's when God let her come home," Clark said.

"She'd been showing just slight signs of improvement," said Gregory Clark's mother, Retha Nero. Mrs. Nero left the hospital Friday night to get dinner when she got a call from Kangha's youngest sister, LaWanda Mitchell.

"We had only been gone about an hour, an hour and a half when we got the call," Mrs. Nero said. Mrs. Clark died about 8:40 p.m.

She was the one who broke the news to her son.

"She was God's gift . . . an angel," Clark said. Besides her husband, Mrs. Clark leaves two daughters, Shawntavia, 17, and Janay, 15; and two sons, Gregory Jr., 20, and Marcus, 19. A funeral is 11 a.m. Saturday at Mount Zion Progressive Baptist Church, 955 20th St. S. A visitation is 3-5 p.m. Friday at McRae Funeral Home, 1940 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. A family wake is 6-7 p.m. Friday at the church.

Gregory Clark's last note to his wife will be in the funeral program.

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