10/16/2009

CLAY CENTER — A Clay Center woman was found dead in her crashed car Thursday morning after she had been missing for two days.
When Rose Clark’s relatives didn’t hear from her on Wednesday, they became concerned, and her son, Bill Clark, called Clay Center airport manager Mike Spicer early Thursday to arrange to look for her from the air.
“We waited for daylight, and it took us about 20 minutes to find her,” Spicer said. “He thought she might have been coming out to see them, and we looked along three different roads.”
According to the Kansas Highway Patrol, Rose Clark, 76, was driving north on Frontier Road, about seven miles northwest of Clay Center, when her 2004 Ford went off the side of the road and came to rest in a creek.
The Highway Patrol said the wreck happened about 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Spicer said the brown car, down in the creek bed, simply wasn’t visible from the road.
“With everything turning brown, you just couldn’t see it,” he said. “Even when we were circling, we saw people driving by.”
Spicer radioed the car’s location to the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, and “by the time we landed, they were headed out there.”
Spicer said Clark was “really well-known around here,” having worked for years in the city utility office, and later at the local Gibson’s store.