Retired Lt. Col. Clark Scott, an Air Force intelligence officer who earned a number of medals for his service in the Middle East and elsewhere, died Oct. 9.
He was 87.
Scott’s job was U.S. diplomacy, but sometimes it included family diplomacy.
During one assignment, Scott was military attache in Saudi Arabia.
One day as he was entering the family home, an Arab man approached him holding an infant, followed by a “substantial number of camels,” said Scott’s daughter, Jacqueline Scott of Conifer.
The man wanted to trade his infant and the camels for Jacqueline Scott, a teenager, because he was “fascinated with our flame- gold hair, believing that it signified God was coming out of our heads,” said Scott.
Clark Scott diplomatically turned down the offer, but in later years, when his daughter did something that aggravated him, he would say, “Remember I turned that man down. Don’t make me sorry I did that,” Jacqueline Scott recalled, laughing.
Clark S. Scott was born in Weir, Kan., on Nov. 18, 1920, and went to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps to earn money for the family.
He later earned an economics degree at the University of Denver and did advanced studies in Middle Eastern affairs and Arabic at the University of Michigan and Georgetown University.
While in the Air Force, he flew 15 missions over Germany and France.
Injuries during his military service forced him to have vertebrae fused, leaving him in a wheelchair for much of his later life, said his son John Scott of Leadville.
Scott was “very comfortable” in other cultures and with the Arab language, said his daughter. “He was very good with people, not the know-it-all American,” she said.
Scott was the person people went to if they wanted to get to U.S. leaders, Jacqueline Scott said. “He was the conduit of information,” she said.
He was awarded six Air Medals, the Air Force Commendation medal and the Gallantry Cross from the Republic of Vietnam.
In addition to serving as a military attache, Scott was a flight commander in Libya, taught aerospace studies at the University of Iowa and was a staff officer at SAC headquarters in Omaha, deputy director of intelligence, 7th Air Force in Saigon and chief of the Air Force Intelligence Training Center at Lowry, where he was stationed after the war.
He met Elberta L. Michael, whose parents entertained servicemen and -women stationed here. They were married in 1946.
In addition to his wife, son and daughter, he is survived by another son, Steve Scott of Fort Walton Beach, Fla.; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
