The initial CLR EN in your first example is simply a pre-clear to ensure that when the time comes to make the strobe pulse in the trailing part of the sequence it can be recognized.

You do not really need that there if you do two things.

1) Initialize EN low in the first logic that sets up the LDC interface lines.

2) Each operational routine that accesses the LCD includes both the SETB EN and CLR EN instructions in that order.

Michael Karas