Phil Wolfe
PHOTOS BY JOHNNY JENNINGS
From adopted newborn to businessman to police officer to supervisor, it’s been a
Long, strange trip BY BOB DARDEN
M
ost people know Phil Wolfe as a member of the Leflore County Board of Supervisors or as the owner of a successful Greenwood-based company, Mississippi Alarm Co. There is, of course, the earlier Phil Wolfe, 56, who served 16 years on the Greenwood Police Department, rising to the rank of detective, or Wolfe’s tenure as the head of the International Union of Police Associations, Local No. 62. However, there’s more to Wolfe’s life story. There is the fact of how, as a newborn infant, Wolfe was put up for adoption just hours after his birth in Tyronza, Ark., because his biological parents, Clinton Eugene Ellington and Katherine Ellington, simply could not afford another mouth to feed. “They were real poor sharecroppers. They had already had my older brother, Gene. They traveled everywhere and picked crops. Then I came along,” Wolfe 42 / Leflore Illustrated Spring and Summer 2010
Phil Wolfe was elected to represent District 1 on the Leflore County Board of Supervisors in 1991. He says he plans to seek another term in 2011.