He was small, quiet and soft spoken; neat, friendly and cheerful. You would never think looking at him that he had spent most of his lice as a Peace Officer in some of the roughest oil boom towns in Texas and Oklahoma.
Isom F. Collier, one time Lovington constable and court district baliff used to be handy with his fists, guns and his "sap" and on accasion with his teeth.
His father was a Texas farmer who moved to Oklahoma to homestead when Isom was 10 years old. But he may have inherited his penchant for law enforcement from his grandfather, who was sheriff of Nacogdocheas County, Texas, not long after the Civil War.
His career spanned several intersesting law enforcement jobs. in Texas and Oklahoma. Several railroad policemen had been killed in Burkburnett, Texas after the oil boom began there, so the young "veteran" of four years as a constable in Harmon County and a hitch as a police chief and field deputy in ELdorado, Oklahoma was hired to protect frieght shipments going into Burkburnett yards and to route bums of of box cars.
Next he became a mounted patrolman on a a Ranger force gaurding the disputed boundary between Texas and Oklahoma, a stretch of 20 miles claimed by both Texas and Oklahoma.
He then returned to Burkburnett as a mounted policeman in plain clothes; he and a dappled bay he called horse went to work trying to maintain law and order. WHen Ison sold Horse, he brought the then magnificient sum of $500. "He was," Isom s said to have said. "the fastest fox trotting horse I ever saw. And also had plenty of smart".
From Burkburnett he returned to Eldorado, Oklahoma which, according to Isomwas a tough little hole. Because he'd been there before, he "knew the drag of everyone of those violators," and he spent three years trying to outwit them.
Syre, Oklahoma was booming so, he was invited to go there as Chief of Police and jailor to stop the hijacking and stealing.
Several years before he had eloped with the 18- year old daughter of a man who thought that Isom "was too old and too tough" for her and would not ive his permission for her to keep company with the good looking, gun toter. Isom married Lena Cleo regory February 8, 1921.
They were the parents of one child when they moved into quarters of the top floor of the Sayre jailhouse, and another child, Francis (Kizziah) was born at the jailhouse while they lived there.
Mrs. Collier was jail matron, cook for her family and the prisoners, and "assistant" to her husband. The Collier's mixed compassion with vigilance in their handling of prisoners, however, encouraging wandering young men to get in touch with their families, even buying paper, envelopes and stamps so they could writte to their parents.
Mrs. Collier says, recalling the early days, "and the prisoners ate exactly the same kind of meals we did." At times when prisoners could easily have overpowered her and escaped, she says, "they thought too much of us to hurt us." On one occasion, however, when a prisoner did get obstreperous with her, she hit him with the bunch of heavy cell door keys she was carrying and "knocked him across the room."
After working in various places in various law enforcement capacities, the Colliers moved to Lovington in 1940, and for awhile were truck farmers.
Isom was elected constable in 1958 in Lovington and served papers for the Magistrate Drayton Wasson and acted as Judge Kermit Nash's baliff.
The Collier's were the parents of eleven children. When asked some years back how many grandchildren he had, Isom replied, "Good God, I don't know!" But Lena, his wife, whi is still living in Lovington, can tell you she has twenty-eight grandchildren and twenty-eight great-grandchildren, without blinking an eye.

Isom died June 13, 1972 and Lena died December 11, 1989 both are buried in the Lovington cemeteray.

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