Joe Clark, the baseball bat-wielding former New Jersey principal who was the inspiration for the 1989 movie “Lean on Me,” has died after …
Joe Clark, the baseball bat-wielding former New Jersey principal who was the inspiration for the 1989 movie “Lean on Me,” has died after a long battle with an unspecified illness, his family said Wednesday. Clark was 82. The longtime South Orange resident, who was played by Morgan Freeman in the hit movie he inspired, died Tuesday surrounded by his family in his retirement home in Gainesville, Florida, the family said.
