Willard Clark was born in Boston in 1910, but grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his father was President of the General Motors Argentina Branch. Growing up, he spent time studying painting and drawing, and he attended the Grand Central School of Art and the Hawthorne Art Academy.
In 1942, he began to work at the Los Alamos Lab. He worked here for the next 30 years as a master tool and die machinist.
He published Remembering Santa Fe.