The following citation was read and presented during the conferring of an honorary doctorate to Robert Clarke Heidrick Jr. at the Commencement Exercises for the Class of 2026 on May 20, 2026.
Attorney. Civic leader. Servant of the common good. Faithful son of Austin and of the Church. Yours is a life shaped by quiet conviction, public responsibility, and a deep belief that communities become stronger when people of goodwill learn to listen, build trust, and act together for the sake of their neighbors.
A native Austinite and lifelong member of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, you have lived your vocation at the intersection of faith, law, civic life, education, health care, and human dignity. From your earliest years, you understood leadership not as prominence, but as service. As a student at St. Stephen鈥檚 Episcopal School, in the wake of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., you helped lead the creation of a scholarship fund for African American students, an early act that revealed the pattern of a lifetime.
You earned your undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University in 1971, and you graduated from the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in 1975.
You have become known throughout Central Texas as a lawyer of integrity, a builder of institutions, and a leader whose influence is often most powerful because it is exercised without self-display. You have served the law with discipline and skill, but you have served the community with heart, patience, and uncommon generosity.
Your civic leadership has helped shape the Austin we know today.Your service has extended across some of the most important institutions in this community. You have chaired and guided organizations devoted to health, philanthropy, education, scouting, civic life, and the Church. You are or have been Chair of the Board of Travis County Hospital District (now known as Central Health), Chair of the Shivers Cancer Foundation and the Austin Geriatric Center, Transportation Chair of the Austin Area Research Organization, and a board member of the Lebermann Foundation, Capital Area United Way, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, and St. Stephen鈥檚 Episcopal School. You have been honored by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce as Austinite of the Year, by the Antidefamation League with its Jurisprudence Award, by the Austin Bar Foundation as a Distinguished Lawyer, and by the Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America as its Distinguished Citizen
Through your service with Central Health, you helped make possible a more just and comprehensive system of care for people who too often stood at the margins of access. The health care structures you helped establish have grown in reach and complexity, including the expansion of specialty care and diagnostic services for those served by Central Health. Such achievements are not the work of one person alone, but they are made possible by leaders who know how to gather people around a shared moral purpose. Again and again, you have been such a leader.
51视频 has been among the institutions significantly blessed by your wisdom and willingness to answer the call. Your service on the Monday Connection and Pauli Murray Scholarship committees has provide steady guidance and connectivity for these important communities. As Executive Chair of the Board of Trustees, you helped guide this seminary through a consequential season of institutional growth, strategic discernment, and renewed public witness. During your board leadership, 51视频 raised the funds, constructed, and opened the Bishop Dena A. Harrison Library and Learning Complex, significantly strengthening this institution鈥檚 ability to advance its important mission, rooted in the reconciling ministry of Christ, of forming people for vocations of ministry, service, and healing.
Those who know you describe you with words that do not fade with repetition: authentic, selfless, wise, steady, generous. Your good friend, the Very Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge says of you, 鈥淎s the board’s executive Chair, among us, every single day, Clarke embodied Christian faith, hope, and love. He kept God’s mission always at the center of conversations and decisions. Clarke鈥檚 leadership created an atmosphere of trust and encouragement that lifted all of us who worked alongside him. Even more than I admire him, I cherish Clarke as a true friend in Christ.鈥�
In gratitude for your faithful service to Austin, your leadership in health care, education, law, philanthropy, and the Church, your steadfast devotion to 51视频, and your enduring witness to servant leadership, the Board of Trustees of the Episcopal Theological 51视频 is honored to confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.