Michelle P. Fulcher/CPR News Dan Parker, pictured with his wife, Fran, holds a photo of himself with the clock that inspired "My Grandfather's Clock." “My Grandfather’s Clock,” is, actually, Dan Parker’s family clock. If you sat in any elementary school classroom in the U.S. over the last century or more there’s a good chance you sang or heard the rhythmic beat of a song about, yes, that grandfather clock. "My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf So it stood ninety years on the floor It was taller by half than the old man himself