In Memory

Ken Sralla - Class Of 1967 VIEW PROFILE

Ken Sralla, a former Alice mayor and one of the more well-known Alice personalities of the ‘70s and ‘80s, has died. He was 60.

Sralla was working as the head of Afghan operations for SSG Global, a Delaware company involved in the construction of U.S. military facilities in Afghanistan. He was in Kabul, Afghanistan when he died.

Sralla was elected mayor of Alice in 1978. He served one term before leaving office to pursue other interests.

 

Though he moved from Alice in 1985, Sralla left an impression on his hometown community.

“He was very well liked and very well-respected... just a nice fellow,” longtime community business and civic leader Bill Findley said. “I think he did a fine job as mayor, and he had a lot of public support. He was just a good person.”

Jim Wells County Sheriff Oscar Lopez was an investigator with the district attorney’s office. He, too, remembered Sralla for his qualities.


“I knew Ken Sralla,” Lopez said. “He was an honest and sincere person, and did a good job here.”

After graduating from William Adams High School, where he was a standout athlete and a part-time disc-jockey for KOPY, in 1967, he worked for the Alice Police Department.

In 1973, he returned to Alice as an investigative reporter for KOPY Radio, where his reporting attempted to uncover the dealings of the Parr political family in Duval and Jim Wells counties.  During these years, he became part-owner in KOPY Radio and was also heard as the voice of Texas A&I Javelina football.

Mando “Bob” Pena knew Sralla well. His father, Armando Pena, worked for Sralla at KOPY. Pena, the program director for Claro Communications, which includes KOPY and KUKA, said Sralla helped open the door for Spanish radio programming at the radio station.

“As a person, he was very genial and nice,” Pena said. “As a reporter on the radio, he was relentless and as a broadcaster, he was very professional. Then, as a mayor, he was very fair and decisive. I have nothing but the utmost respect for Ken Sralla.”

Sralla moved to Kerrville, Texas, in 1985. More recently, he served as senior project manager for Kellog Brown and Root in Iraq from 2005 to 2007.

Later he lived for a year in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before returning to Iraq in 2008. In March 2009, he moved to Kabul, Afghanistan, to oversee construction projects related to the United States military buildup in that country. 

Sralla is survived by two sons, Bryan Sralla and wife Kristie of Fort Worth, Texas, and Scott Sralla and wife Anna of Lewisville, Texas; two sisters, Francis Gregorcyk of Beaumont, Texas, and Betty Sharp of Weesatche, Texas; and six grandchildren.

Services at Holmgreen Mortuary in Alice are pending.

 





Click here to see Ken's last Profile entry.