Clark Harrison; Paraplegic Adventurer

Clark Harrison, 64, a paraplegic adventurer who nine months ago crashed his single-engine airplane into the wilds of Greenland but survived with only a cut on his face. Harrison, a pilot, author, politician, banker and real estate broker, had been paralyzed from the chest down by a sniper’s bullet in Germany during World War II. He used a wheelchair to travel around showing young people with spinal cord injuries what they can do with their lives. He served as a director of Shepherd Spinal Center, an Atlanta rehabilitation hospital for paralyzing spinal disorders, since its founding in 1975. Harrison got his pilot’s license at age 55 and, at 60, flew a hand-controlled single-engine plane solo to Anchorage, Alaska, from his home base to raise money for Shepherd. He was trying to raise money for the Shepherd Center for Independent Living when he attempted his solo trans-Atlantic flight last July to Germany, where he had hoped to visit the battlefield in Stolberg where he was wounded. But his plane ran out of gas over Greenland. In Atlanta on Tuesday of the complications of flu.