Former Fireman, Policeman Ed Clark Celebrates 100th Birthday With Friends & Family

In 1921 Warren G. Harding was president of the United States. There was talk of building what is now known as Yankee Stadium and Ed Clark was born, and at 100 years old Ed Clark has lived a full life. 

Married to his wife Bonnie for 75 years before her passing, he was the fire chief at the Naval Air Station in Shawnee, until in 1946 when he became an Oklahoma City police officer. 

“On the beat you were walking we didn’t have radios. You had to walk down to the corner, and they had a light post down there with a telephone on it and you would call in once an hour to tell them you were still alive, I guess,” said Clark. 

After his time as an Oklahoma City police officer Mr. Clark became the police chief in Nichols Hills. 

“One of the strange things about the wealthy people, I’d get amused, they’d come down and spend 15 minutes talking to me seeing if there was any way they could talk me out of a ticket. It would cost them $6 or something and a lot of them were millionaires you know,” Clark said with a chuckle. 

In all of Mr. Clark’s time as a police officer, he had one fear, “I didn’t ever want to shoot anybody. I didn’t want to kill anybody,” he said. 

So, he became an expert shooter, so he would be able to wound someone and not kill them. Those expert shooting skills would lead to him going to the FBI academy, but he declined to work for the agency after the academy.

He was even offered a job with the secret service but turned that down as well, after discussing the details of the job with a good friend that worked with the secret service. 

“He said you’d probably be sitting in a chair by the president’s office, by his bedroom at night. And then you’d be following his train of cars that he uses to go down the roadway with, and I thought that doesn’t sound like too much fun to me,” Clark said. 

Clark also didn’t like the idea of being away from his wife and family. 

Clark was an expert shooter and is responsible for starting the firearms training center for the Oklahoma City Police Department. 

Clark was set to retire after thirty years in law enforcement; however, he was told his service for the different departments would not be bridged to combine for the total thirty years. He called a good friend at the attorney general’s office and together they made it possible for officers to bridge their service between different police departments. 

Clark said of today’s generation, honesty is gone, and people are discourteous, especially when driving.

He encourages people to calm down to be considerate of one another. 

Today, Mr. Clark still lives in the home he built and loves to sing and tell jokes.