If anybody deserves a monument – a very beautiful one – it’s Bill Clemens, who died March 2 at age 95.
Many people might not have known Bill, but almost everyone has heard his name memorialized through his incredibly kind and generous philanthropic triumphs: Clemens Stadium and Clemens Field House at St. John’s University, the William E. and Virginia Clemens Chair in Economics and Liberal Arts at SJU, the Clemens Library at the College of St. Benedict and the Clemens Gardens in East St. Cloud above the bank of the Mississippi River.
It’s those spectacular blooming gardens that have carried the Clemens name far and wide. People from all over the world stop to behold the gardens while passing through; others travel many miles to gasp in awe at the botanical wonder; and many who live in the greater St. Cloud area make an annual summer pilgrimage to the gardens – a certain sign of summer at its finest. The fabulous gardens were inspired by Clemens’ deep and abiding love for his wife, Virginia. The first garden established there (and still flourishing) was dubbed the Virginia Clemens Rose Garden.
The generosity of Clemens and his wife knew no bounds. Many of his good deeds remain unsung because Clemens was a humble, kindly, unassuming man.
In 1994, Clemens gave $5.6 million to the Central Minnesota Community Foundation to fund various charities, and nearly half of that money was put into an ongoing, growing fund to perpetuate the Clemens Gardens, along with Munsinger Gardens at the edge of the Mississippi River across from St. Cloud State University.
The gardens alone are an outstanding legacy left to us by this great businessman and kindly philanthropist, but the entire central Minnesota area has benefitted from Clemens’ extravagant generosity, and the investments he made continue to grow and to enhance our area in so many ways.
Clemens began Bankers Systems in the early 1950s in St. Cloud, a company that produced documents for legal services. The company, hugely successful, was sold about 40 years later and then sold again to become Wolters Kluwer.
The Clemens moved to a house in East St. Cloud on Killian Boulevard in the mid-1950s, right across from the land that later became the Clemens Gardens. The first garden, his tribute to Virginia, was the awesome rose garden, started in 1990. The other dazzling gardens were added, gradually, over the years to the south of the rose garden.
Virginia, who suffered for decades from multiple sclerosis, died at age 77 in 1998.
The Clemens-Munsinger Gardens, filled with hundreds of thousands of flowers, attracts an estimated 250,000 visitors each summer. It’s one of the largest and most beautiful gardens in the world, with its massive banks of colorful blooms, paved trails, statuary, fountains and dappled shade.
We can all be thankful to Clemens for funding so many charities and cultural enrichments, and that is why a monument – a very beautiful one to him and his wife – should grace the Clemens Gardens.
Clarification
An editorial in the March 11 Newsleader paid tribute to the recently deceased Bill Clemens, businessman and philanthropist who lived in E. St. Cloud. The editorial suggested a monument should be constructed in honor of Clemens and his late wife, Virginia, who both started the Virginia Clemens Gardens across the street from where they lived on Kilian Boulevard. The Newsleader has learned happily that a monument to them has, in fact, been constructed several years ago.
