Final Year For Four: Longtime state executives reflect on careers in propane industry

Corky Clark

Clark

You might say James Morgan “Corky” Clark Jr. was born into the propane industry. His father managed the Essotane retail operation in Aiken, South Carolina, and he joined the propane industry right out of college, where he studied business management.

“It’s the only industry I’ve ever worked in,” Clark says.

And after 50 years of working for pay, he’s looking toward expanding his volunteer work in the Columbia area where he was born and raised.

Clark is retiring after overseeing the transition from a single-state association to a three-state alliance, now the Southeast Propane Alliance (SEPA), composed of Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, that formed Jan. 1. John Jessup, who previously led North Carolina’s state association, became SEPA’s president and CEO.

In 2000, after Clark had spent 28 years in retail operations, the propane business he led as president was sold to Suburban Propane, and colleagues from the propane industry approached him about becoming the state’s first (and, ultimately, only) full-time executive director of the South Carolina Propane Gas Association (SCPGA). It was a seamless transition because he had served as chairman of various committees and as SCPGA president in 1996, and he was part of the NPGA board of directors from 1987 to 2000. At the time, South Carolina and Tennessee shared NPGA’s Chuck Brandon as their part-time executive director.

“I knew all the people in the propane association, having grown up, so to speak, with them,” he says. “They were friends, and when they asked me to take over the leadership role, it seemed like a natural fit.”

During the next 22 years, Clark created the foundation to accept PERC funds, which were used for training, advertising and publishing a magazine. He is proud of work they did around 2010 and 2011 to get the state legislature to pass a limited liability law protecting marketers when customers work on their propane systems without notifying their gas company.

“That was a fairly large accomplishment because we had so many trial lawyers who were legislators,” Clark says. “I think it was a real feat to get them to work with us and agree to let us have that legislation passed.”

More recently, the association worked to secure funding from South Carolina’s portion of the Volkswagen settlement funds for propane school buses. And now he’s pleased to see South Carolina poised to pursue its own state check-off program. Members were getting behind it when COVID brought work to “a screeching halt,” Clark says. A membership survey is underway to assess their willingness now to support the measure; if that proves positive, legislation could be introduced in January.

As with their SEPA partners, state PERC funds collected by South Carolina’s program would be used for training, advertising, appliance rebates, autogas conversions and regulator changeouts, he says.

Clark feels confident that South Carolina’s propane industry is in good hands with Jessup and the regional alliance. He already has worked closely with Jessup and Georgia’s executive director, Jenni McKeen, and, as the smallest association in terms of membership and gallons sold, it makes sense to join forces.

“We’ll be able to do so much more than we’ve been able to do on our own,” Clark says. “It will really benefit our members.”

And there’s work to be done. In particular, South Carolina must stay vigilant or risk losing market share to electric heat pumps and the “electrify everything” effort.

“More and more, it is an ongoing effort to try to keep propane top of mind for potential consumers and the existing customers that we have because they always have a choice if an appliance goes out to change from what they’re currently using to something else,” Clark says. “We have to be on our toes all the time to be sure we’re providing the service and reliability of our product.”

But that’s for the next generation of leaders. Clark is ready to step aside and focus more attention on Janet, his wife of 36 years, and their teenage grandsons. He wants to spend more time with his volunteer work with Meals on Wheels, a local soup kitchen and a children’s home associated with his Presbyterian church.

“The propane industry has some of the best folks in the world, and I will miss them,” he says. But, he adds, “I’ve got plenty of things to do in retirement.”

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