A Man Among Men Has Left Us

 

I haven't made any blog posts for quite a while, I know. To be honest, I think I'd just lost my passion for writing.

Until today.

It took some terrible, terrible news to get me in front of my laptop in order to tell you about Joe.

I first met Joe Wendling in August of 1984, during my first few months at Mansfield PD. He was one of four Wendling brothers to serve the citizens of our city while wearing a badge. One brother, Jim, had already retired from the department before I started, having been shot in the line of duty during a very short gun battle. Jim killed his assailant during the encounter, but suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen which ended his career. I've yet to have the pleasure of meeting him. John, Joe and Jan were still working, though and, through the coming years, I'd get to know each on a personal level, at one point serving on night shift under Joe's command. Great, great policemen, all of them highly-decorated by the city and veterans of the United States Marine Corps.

All four brothers saw combat in Vietnam. A lot of it.

There are many memories I could recount involving the brothers and the police department; some comical and others tragic. It was when I interviewed Joe for a story about his service in the Marines, years after we'd both put down the badge, that I gained a totally different insight and level of respect for this man. Not that I didn't respect him before but I was to learn just how decent, honorable and...well, heroic... he was over the three hours we spoke.

It was a late autumn afternoon when I rang the bell on Joe and Candy's house, a spacious, two-story stone and brick affair in a quiet suburb southwest of the city, the lawn meticulously trimmed to perfection. Joe, his usual affable self, invited me in. We sat at his dining room table, looking through photographs from that time so long ago when the young Marine was nineteen or 20, dropped into the middle of green, stiflingly hot jungle to defeat Communist insurgency.

Joe wanted to tell me about Operation Union 2 but he couldn't; this man, who I'd witnessed arrest hardened criminals, was lost for words, tears welling and voice strained by the memory. Instead, he handed me his Bronze Star with valor device citation summary, which recounted his actions when his company came under fire as soon as the transport helicopters landed.

Entrenched Communist troops. hidden in thick vegetation at the edge of the LZ, opened up with machine gun, mortar and recoilless rifle fire on the exposed Marines, killing or wounding many of them. Joe, who'd been returning fire with the M-60 machine gun he carried, ran 100 meters into the clearing and dragged/carried four wounded men to safety before collapsing due to heat exhaustion.

The corpsman attached to his company thought he was dead.

"My brother came to inside a body bag" his brother Jan had told me after the story had been printed. I cannot comprehend the horror Joe must have felt; I fully understand why he hadn't spoke of it.

Joe served two tours in Vietnam, his interview giving me more than space would permit in the newspaper. I had a word count, you see, and his story was very tough to cut down in order to meet that count.

After retiring in 2009, I asked Joe why he hadn't every applied for the Chief's job; he would have been perfect for it. "I don't want the headache of dealing with all the politics involved", he'd told me, which I should have expected. Joe would have always put his street coppers first because he was a true leader.

At the end of the interview Joe thanked me for listening. This man, this true American hero, showed his gratitude by giving me a chromed bayonet. I was at a loss for words and didn't want to accept the gift, but he insisted. "It meant a lot to have someone listen."

Joe Wendling, retired Lieutenant of the Mansfield Police Department and also retired Lt. Colonel from the Ohio Air National Guard, died this morning...

...and I will grieve and miss him greatly.

God rest your soul, Joe; you earned it.

Joe Wendling, 2017

                                                        Shouldering his M-60 in Vietnam

New Posts Coming Soon

 

It's been a while since the last post, I know; I've been out of state tending to Mom but will have a couple of new stories very soon.

Iwo Jima, Tasers And A Dirty Cop

 Being a student of history, particularly from WW II, I've developed an immense respect for those who fought and sacrificed in that war, a war that was fought on two fronts against three enemies: Germany and, to a lesser extent, Italy in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific theater.

When I was writing the veterans stories for our local newspaper, my favorite subjects to interview were the veterans from the Second World War. That generation of men...they were just a different breed from a bygone age. They are and were, truly, America's Greatest Generation.

I mention that in order to tell this story.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of seventeen years ago I was working night shift with my pal Troy Weaver, who's now a captain at Lexington PD, and another guy I'll refer to as Goof, a man that should never have worn a badge.

Goof was probably 6 foot two and, in his mind, handsome. Arrogant doesn't begin to describe his attitude, coupled with a distinct lack of respect for those who commanded him. Here was a man who'd never, in his ten-plus years on the job, done anything he could hang his hat on. Goof would do the bare minimum in order to get by on the job.

This night, dispatch got a couple of calls from a local nursing home about a resident who was highly agitated and armed with a club and a large shard of glass, threatening staff. 

The man had also recently had open-heart surgery.

The three of us arrived at about the same time, rushing inside. The nursing supervisor, obviously distressed, led us down a hallway until it terminated at a crossing hall. To the right, in a dead-end area that served as a waiting room, stood our subject, totally naked and bleeding from his recently acquired surgical scar, which ran from just below his throat to his belly. In one bleeding hand he held the piece of long, jagged glass; in the other a table leg, which still had the metal triangular fitting which had attached it to the bottom of said table.

He was somewhere around eighty or 85 years old.

"He had bypass surgery two weeks ago", exclaimed the supervisor, who was now huddled behind a large desk with a few other nurses. "He wants to see his wife."

Hearing those words, the man said, "You're damned right I wanna see my wife, now call her up and get her down here!" He then turned to us and semi-crouched, as if ready to attack. "I ain't afraid of no cops! I fought the Japs on Iwo Jima!"

The agitated man was a World War Two veteran and, if he'd been on Iwo, definitely a Marine.

About a year or so before this incident we'd had Taser training, qualifying our officers to carry and use the electronic device. I had conducted the training, having attended a week-long instructor's class.

The device delivers 50,000 volts of short, very quick waves of electricity, and is designed to sort of 'short-circuit' the connection between nerves and muscles, temporarily incapacitating its target. In my experience, if delivered correctly, it is very effective; however, at that time there were three instances in which it was NOT to be used: on obviously pregnant females, on subjects who would be injured by falling from elevation and on heart patients.

Naturally, Goof draws down on the man with his Taser.

"DO NOT use that weapon!!" I screamed. "He's a heart patient!"

Goof didn't care, keeping the Taser trained on the man. I stepped into his line of fire. "PUT THAT THING AWAY!"

He did, wearing a sneer on his face.

"I WANT MY WIFE!", shouted the old Marine.

The nursing supervisor crept up behind us, wary of the elderly man who no doubt would do harm to anyone who approached him. "His wife's been dead for three years", she loud-whispered to us.

Troy and I had a quick discussion and came up with a plan: while one of us kept the man talking and at bay, the others would retrieve two hospital-bed mattresses. We'd use them to pin the cardiac patient to the wall and disarm him. Meanwhile, we had nursing supervisor call for a rescue squad, as the distraught veteran would need more medical care than the nursing home could provide.

Weaver and I rushed the man, who'd tried feebly to swing the table leg, the blow cushioned by the mattresses. Once he was pinned, we successfully disarmed him. The man started crying, calling out for his deceased wife.

He was transported to the hospital; that was the last I ever heard of him. 

Goof? Well, all I'll say is that he eventually resigned...after a search warrant had been served a few months later on a local drug trafficker and Goof's business card, with his home phone number written on the back, was found in the drug seller's coat pocket. It seems they'd had a cozy relationship, often riding their motorcycles together; we'd planned and pulled off the search warrant without Goof getting a whiff of it, otherwise, I'm certain Goof would have warned the mope. I probably should mention that, in addition to drugs shipped from overseas and cash, a .45 caliber Desert Eagle was seized from the doper.

Who knows what would have transpired had the trafficker been forewarned.

I sometimes think about that incident, knowing that the WW II Marine is probably gone from this earth by now, and wish I could have written about his military service. 

What a story he could have told.

 

Making A Difference Over 20 Years Later

 I'm home alone during the week, save for my usually snoring dog, Roscoe. He's a thirteen-year-old pit bull and also my best buddy in the world; I spend more time with Roskie than I do my bride, who is still among the working class.

It can get very quiet most days, especially in winter, when I can't get outside and tend to the flower beds or mow our little slice of heaven. I take great pride in our home and don't consider its upkeep as work. In winter, however, there's only so much to do as I await the arrival of spring. The quiet...well, that is an advantage I didn't see when I first retired, but I've come to savor the solitude.

A guy can watch only so much television, right?

The silence affords time to think, reflect and remember, to recall, mostly, the job. Sometimes I relive the hilariously funny episodes that occurred while wearing a badge from the fall of 1979 to early August of 2013; other times, its the moments that normal people never see or encounter, times that have drawn tears and reopened old wounds in the soul.

Sometimes, though, an encounter with someone from my time as a cop brings me sheer joy. Today was one of those times.

Stacy only works a half-day on Mondays and we've gotten into the routine of going out for lunch when she gets home. As she usually does, my wife called just after noon to let me know she was on the way, and asked if I'd be interested in eating in town; of course I would! I'm a big fan of food, you see.

Shaving while awaiting Stacy's arrival, I ran through the list of possible eateries we might visit and settled on one of our favorite locations, knowing she'd agree. We bustled out the door of Black Gold Homestead a mere five minutes after she got home. Arriving in town, I slid to a stop at a parking meter in front of The Mansfielder (not the restaurant's actual name), dropped a dime in the meter and walked inside with my redheaded angel.

I'm not going to describe the eatery in detail because I wouldn't want to reveal the identity of the person I'm about to tell you of; suffice it to say the place is nothing fancy and has been around for awhile, and the food is always good.

After being seated and reviewing the menu I looked around the place, sitting as I always do, facing the door. There were probably five people working in the place, but one in particular piqued my interest; I knew the woman from somewhere, but where? Even though she was wearing a surgical mask (is anyone else getting sick of seeing them?) I knew I'd come across her before sometime back when I was on the job.

Stacy and I ordered (the mystery gal wasn't our waitress) and I told my wife about the woman behind the mask, that I knew her from somewhere. Once our food arrived and we'd started eating, the cop part of my brain worked in the background, trying to remember...

Then it hit me. I'd arrested her for drug possession a little over two decades earlier. This story, however, has a bit of a twist to it.

Back on that day, as she sat in an interview room at the department, she was a little scared and apprehensive, as she should have been. It was her first arrest for drug possession. I knew her from another restaurant in town, one I'd visited a lifetime ago (read: back before I met and married my wife) on a semi-regular basis. I was surprised this woman (barely out of her teens back then) would be involved in drug use.

"Annie (not her real name), you know me; I can't tell you how shocked I am."

Tears started flowing down her face.

"How do you get from being a young, beautiful girl with your entire future in front of you to sitting in a police station in handcuffs?" I should mention here that Annie had dropped off the radar, leaving the restaurant where she'd worked about a year before this episode, and the ravages of dope use had taken a toll.

That began an extended conversation about the pressures of life as a single mother and succumbing to drug use. We talked about getting clean, of changing your environment, including who you hung out with, ways to make it in this world, of inner strength and considering the effects your actions will have on your family and children.

I took a lot of time with Annie because I knew she could be better. I knew she was worth it. I hoped my erstwhile counseling session took hold.

Now, all these years later, here's Annie again. As she passed by our table I stopped her.

"Excuse me, but do you know who I am?" The heavy, gray goatee and added age lines in my face, I was surprised by her reaction.

"I sure do! You're the policeman who saved me!", she said, pulling her face mask down to reveal a beaming smile. "That talk we had...I can't tell you how much it meant to me. I've been clean for almost twenty years now, I'm married to a great guy and have three kids, and...well...thank you."

Annie's eyes started to tear up; this old copper had a lump in his throat.

Not wanting to embarrass her (or myself), I changed the subject, introducing Annie to my wife; we chatted about Covid and the weather. Before she left our table, though, Annie remarked to Stacy, "He was one of the good ones."

By taking a few minutes out of the decades I wore the badge, I made a difference in just this one life. Maybe more, I'll never know, but seeing this former addict alive and flourishing...

It was worth it.

Covid...A Term I Never Want To Hear Again

 Several times across my sixty-four years on this earth I've gotten absolutely sick of an assortment of words and terms, most often because of their repetitiveness and over-saturation in society.

Disco comes to mind. Hillary. Star Wars. Global warming, which morphed into climate change. Hanging chads.

More recently? Social justice warrior, or SJW. Politically correct. 

Now comes Covid 19.

Turn on the television or radio and you're guaranteed to hear that word within 15 minutes. It dominates the news and social media, platforms in which everyone is an expert while simultaneously being astoundingly ignorant.

Mask up. Slow the spread. Flatten the curve. Lockdown.

My wife, especially since she's employed in the medical field, stringently followed Covid protocols...yet still came down with the virus. Thankfully a very mild version, as her only symptoms resembled a head cold.

She's fully recovered now and has been back to work for a week. Simultaneous with her infection, though, I was quarantined from participating in cardiac rehab until she got clearance to go back to work. 

I went back for exactly one day, Monday the 11th of January.

That evening the China virus decided to hit me.

Suspecting the worst, I went and got tested on Tuesday; Wednesday, the nurse practitioner called and advised that the test had returned as inconclusive and inquired if I would be so kind as to return to the testing site and have my nasal passages vigorously violated once again?

I did and this time there was no doubt....I have the virus. I don't really feel all that bad, though, suffering a low-grade fever off-and-on, its highest temp having been 99.7, but the headache has been the worst. I'm also occasionally coughing but not with any consistency. I notified my physician, Dr. Becker, who is setting me up with something called monoclonal infusion. No scientist am I, but it has something to do with introducing Covid antibodies into my system, which is supposed to keep symptoms minimal. President Trump underwent that treatment as part of protocol and he was back to work in four days.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, I'll keep downing Ibuprofen every few hours, watching TV and tending to the stove.

Geez, can't believe I still hate disco so much...

Making The Best Of A Bad Circumstance

 

Merry Christmas!

My wife tested positive for Covid 19 yesterday, a day before my son, his girlfriend and our nearly year old granddaughter are scheduled to fly in to Ohio from Florida. They should be on the ground at Rickenbacker in just under two hours.

Desiree has family in Crawford county, so their trip won't be a total waste, and this will surely be a Christmas Stacy and I will remember for decades to come.

Here's how things unfolded:

Wednesday, Stacy commented that she wasn't feeling the greatest, her main issue being a runny nose. Wednesdays are when we usually go see our local granddaughter, Mila, for a few hours, so we cancelled that. Didn't want to chance Gramma passing her cold on to our little punkin' pie.

Knowing my oldest and his crew were due in today, Stacy went to a OhioHealth drive-through Covid testing site, just to be safe. She was also tested for influenzas A and B, with instructions to check her test results on line later in the evening.

The flu tests came back negative; Covid, unfortunately, was positive.

Stacy only has a runny nose! No fever, no aches, no cough...nothing else! How can this be?

My bride and I were devastated, as we haven't seen Raelynn since March. Texts and phone calls followed, fast and furiously, delivering the bad news. As I'd read a bulletin from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently warning of possible false-positive Covid test results, Stacy and I cleaned off her Jeep (we were in the midst of what was to become a seven inch snowfall), warmed it up and headed to OhioHealth MedCentral's emergency room for another test...for which she was turned away, after being told their tests have a 96% accuracy rate. They wouldn't retest her as she'd already had one earlier in the day.

So we trekked back home over unplowed roads (it was Christmas Eve, after all), both of us suffering a deep, growing depression. We'd been so excited at the prospect of seeing Raelynn and the kids; now, it seemed an impossibility. Stacy felt the worse of the two of us, expressing that she felt responsible for our predicament.

"Honey, it is NOT your fault", I told her, "I mean, you didn't get infected on purpose, right?"

It didn't help.

Once back at Black Gold Homestead, we had a conversation on what to do next. As of right now, we're both going to be tested Saturday morning at a large chain pharmacy, through appointments made on the internet at 0030...Christmas morning.

As we await Stacy's retest and my test, she's quarantining on the second floor of the house, donning a mask and gloves when she needs to come downstairs and sanitizing everything she touches. She notified the office manager of the physician's office where she works and her two-week lockdown clock started today. She feels much better than she did Wednesday and is constantly taking her temperature, as am I. I feel totally fine and think that I probably had suffered through the dreaded Wuhan flu at the end of June, when I'd been deathly ill with severe digestive issues. I'd gone to an emergency room at its height and they tested me for everything under the sun....except Covid. All my tests had come back negative, and still to this day no one can tell me what I'd been afflicted with back then. I mean, it was so bad that I even let Stacy mow; anyone who knows me well knows how huge that sacrifice had been, as I'm very particular on how our place looks.

Having been exposed, my three-days-a-week cardiac rehab will no doubt be put on hold and I'll probably also have to reschedule my first follow-up visit with my cardiologist since the heart attack, which had been scheduled for the 29th...unless, that is, my test tomorrow comes back negative for Covid tomorrow. In that case, I'm not sure what MedCentral's protocols are.

So, while we await tomorrow, Stacy's upstairs binge-watching 'A Million Little Things' as I'm downstairs typing this entry. Afterwards? Looks like I'll be re-watching my favorite WW II movies In Harm's Way, Midway and Fury, with maybe a side of Avengers thrown in there somewhere.

We'll also be praying that both our tests come back negative tomorrow, so we can see our precious little Raelynn.

Until then, we'll do what we have to do and make the best of this holiest of holidays.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Brotherhood? Not Always

Cops look out for their own kind, right?

Not necessarily.

The year was 1995; my then-wife and our two sons had traveled to South Carolina on vacation to visit my parents, driving our  SUV. It was about a nine hour trip. 

At the time I was assigned to Special Investigations / METRICH, part of a 10-county counter-drug task force. I mention this because, in order to deal with dopers and scumbags, we had to look the part; to say that grooming standards were relaxed in the unit would be a gross understatement. Back then I had hair and had let it grow out, to the extent I sported a ponytail to go along with a full beard, topped off with an earring.

I loved it. Mom? Not so much. About a year later, after I'd been promoted to sergeant and transferred back to uniform patrol, I had my best friend in the task force cut my ponytail off....and I promptly mailed it to Mom.

We spent the week with Mom and Dad, then headed home on Sunday, the day drenched in sunshine. My wife, Lorie, wanted to start out behind the wheel.

I should probably mention that she was something of a leadfoot, believing the Fraternal Order of Police emblem attached to the rear license plate would cut her some slack should she be stopped for speeding.

We'd gone about an hour north on US 25, then merged onto I-26, nearing Hendersonville, NC. On previous trips, I'd noted that there always seemed to be a handful of North Carolina state troopers in the Hendersonville area, working traffic on the interstate. I mentioned this to my wife.

"They're not going to stop me for doing ten over", she'd said after I mentioned lowering her speed. My spouse maintained her seventy-five MPH speed, failing to observe that the limit had dropped to 60. Not long after, a state trooper took notice and stopped us.

As the lanky officer approached our car on the driver's side, I had one thought: let him know that I was a police officer and was armed. It wouldn't do to have an avoidable, distasteful incident.

As my wife handed him her driver's license, he started into his spiel. "Ma'am, the reason I stopped you...".

"Excuse me, officer", I remarked, "but I'm a police officer from Ohio and I have a 9mm handgun in the door pouch by my right leg.

He eyed my bearded, scraggly appearance suspiciously. "Can I see your ID?"

I handed him my Mansfield PD identification card, explaining that I was assigned to Narcotics.

The trooper looked at the clean cut photo on the card, then back to me, the beginnings of a smirk molding his mouth. "As I was saying, the reason I stopped you is because you were fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit. Sit tight, I'll be right back."

I knew my wife was getting a traffic ticket and I'd be bearing the brunt of her anger for the next 500 miles.

Ten minutes later we're once again northbound, Lorie now in the passenger seat, seething.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SOMETHING?"

The truth was, I'd said enough...enough to let the trooper know I was a brother officer, a fact that hadn't mattered a whit. Though I didn't say it out loud, in my mind I thought, well, I tried to tell you...

Six hours and two stops later we're crossing the Ohio River, coming into Cincinnati. My wife was driving once again. 

Winding through the city on I-71, up what seemed like the longest incline on earth, we came across a stretch in which the speed limit was posted at 50MPH, which I mentioned....and, just like before, she got stopped for speeding.

And got another citation.

The next three hours were the longest of my entire life...and I drove the rest of the way home.

Over my five decades in law enforcement I saw a distinct shift in attitudes of younger officers. When I started out at MPD I'd already been a copper for 4 years at a small department and knew I didn't know squat about policing in an urban environment. As such, I kept my mouth shut and did what I was told...and got along just fine. Back in those days we considered one another 'family', save for a few exceptions. We stuck together and defended each other against all odds. You knew if you got in a scrape on the job that your brothers would have your back.

That's not the case anymore, so I've been told. One of my 'brothers', a Marine who saw combat and is still on the job, told me that the department is pretty much every man for himself now...and that is sad.

Those two young officers back then were just doing their jobs, I know that, and my then-wife paid a price for believing a little piece of tin on the license plate would shield her from the law. There's another thing from back in the day, though, that is sorely lacking nowadays, and that's empathy, understanding.

Maybe they were just a couple of tickets away from earning a toaster or something.

                                                          1995, while in METRICH