ROGERS -- Long-time Rogers community leader and former state Rep. Dick Barclay received this year's Dick Daniel Distinguished Service Award today from the Rogers Rotary Club before a crowd of 315 people.
Dignitaries including former Gov. Mike Huckabee, current Gov. Asa Hutchinson, U.S. Sen. John Boozman and U.S. Rep. Steve Womack all said the reward was richly deserved, although Womack was the only one of those four able to attend in person. Former state Rep. David Matthews, a Democrat from Lowell, and Barclay's son John were among the other speakers present.
Barclay's role in launching Northwest Arkansas Community College was vital, Womack said, and that was only one of the more visible roles he played.
"Look at anything good done in the community in Rogers, and Dick Barclay's fingerprints are on almost all of them," said Womack, a former mayor of Rogers. Barclay received the award at a luncheon event at the Embassy Suites hotel in Rogers, which much of Northwest Arkansas' legislative delegation attending.
"I don't believe I know any lawmaker as respected across the aisles than Dick Barclay," Matthews said.
Barclay moved to Rogers in the 1960s and later served on the Rogers City Council. He was elected to the state House in 1976, one of the few members of that time to win as a Republican. He left in 1992 after an unsuccessful bid for Congress. He returned to state government in 1996 in the Huckabee administration, ultimately serving as the state's chief fiscal officer and director of the Department of Finance and Administration.
Barclay was in a re-election campaign once and John Barclay was "talking bad about the other person in the race," the younger Barclay recalled at the event.
"My dad heard and took me, introduced me to the other candidate and his wife and family. He taught me that behind ever person you disagree with is someone with dignity," he said.
NW News on 08/08/2018