Law enforcement is in his blood, said Iolan Skyler Clark, 55, who filed Friday for Allen County sheriff as an independent.
He spent 20 years in the field; an uncle, Glen Cooper, was Allen County sheriff 1973 to 1979; another uncle, Herb Wilson, was an Iola police officer.
Clark hung up his gun in 1996 in a concession to four children, whom he seldom had a chance to see in school and other activities because duty always seemed to call.
“I was missing out on too much,” Clark said.
Now, with all four children grown, law enforcement calls.
“Besides,” said Clark, “I think it’s important for voters to have a choice in the general election.”
Undersheriff Bryan Murphy will square off against Jared Froggatte for the Republican nomination in the Aug. 7 primary election. The winner will face Clark Election Day, Nov. 6.
Clark filed as an independent, which meant he didn’t have to meet the partisan June 11 filing deadline.
“That’s what I’ve been for a good many years,” he said.
When his petition was checked Friday in the county clerk’s office, 417 valid signatures were noted, 76 more than he needed to have his name on the ballot.
CLARK WAS born and raised in Allen County and has lived here all but a few years. He was a police officer for three years in Denver, where he met and married wife Gladys.
“We got married in 1979” and soon were back in Allen County, where Clark worked as a law enforcement officer for Neosho and Allen counties and Humboldt and Iola police departments. After leaving the Iola force in 1996, he drove trucks hauling agriculture products and oil before settling back to his roots to farm with his father, Alvin Clark, and brother, Nathan Clark.
“My mom’s family, the Wilsons, came to Allen County in 1866,” he noted, while his father took up farming north of Iola in 1949.
“THE TIME is right for me to try to be sheriff,” Clark said.
“To be effective,” he said of the sheriff’s role, “you have to earn people’s trust and respect. To protect and serve are what law enforcement is all about.”
If elected Clark said he would examine all that was done in countywide law enforcement.
