Trooper Down! (19 page)

Edna says the highway patrol knew what they were doing, however, for Ronda was a one-horse town between Elkin and North Wilkesboro that desperately needed a trooper.

“The town had requested a patrol officer and I think Dean's superiors recognized that with his even temper and fair-minded ways, he would be a good person to send.”

A sturdy man who stood six feet tall, Dean was well regarded by everyone who knew him.

A friend remembers him as the type of person “who could give his own grandmother a ticket and make her like it.”

Edna admired his fun-loving nature and zest for living.

Not that everything was peachy-keen during their thirty-four-year marriage. Edna refers to her husband's first duty station as “the town where I served my sentence.”

In the early fifties, Ronda was a wide place in the road with a
church, a school, a general store, a filling station, and a chair factory. Locals grew tobacco to earn a living, and opportunities for women were as rare as the visitors who moseyed through town.

“I finally landed a job working for an attorney in the county courthouse,” said Edna, “but I had to drive twenty-five miles each way.”

With her husband's salary barely topping $225 per month, and two young children to help support, she had little choice but to work.

New at being a trooper wife, Edna was startled by the attitudes she encountered.

“I was the same ole gal I had always been, and Dean hadn't really changed. He had just learned to be a law enforcement officer. But people suddenly didn't like us because we were ‘the law.'”

The long hours and crazy shifts brought troubles too.

“We couldn't do things together as a couple, so if I went to a church social, it was always, ‘Where's Dean? What's going on with you two?' It was hard to get it through their heads that he was working.”

Even worse, Edna says, were the reactions her children experienced.

“There were kids who didn't want to play with our kids because there was a lot of ‘Your daddy arrested our uncle for so-and-so.' You could tell they didn't want any part of us. And you didn't have time to really cultivate friendships or be a part of everything going on in the community.”

Since Dean was the only patrol officer stationed in the county, Edna also lacked the support another trooper wife could have provided.

Still, she struggled through, and in 1955 Trooper Arledge and his family were transferred to Buncombe County. Dean was promoted to sergeant, and Edna became active in the North Carolina Highway Patrol State Auxiliary, an organization for trooper wives that bears the motto, “The Women Behind the Men Behind the Badge.”

Though she had learned to deal with the frustrations of being a trooper wife, Edna never conquered her fears for her huband's safety.

“Dean wouldn't talk about his work because he wanted to protect me. And I had sense enough not to ask.”

Saturday, October 5, 1974, began as a normal day for the Arledges.
Their daughter, Charlotte, now grown with a baby of her own, was staying the weekend, much to the delight of her parents.

About 3:00
P.M., 
Dean began preparing for work while Charlotte put the baby down for a nap. An immaculate man, he always waited till the last minute to slip on his long-sleeved uniform shirt so he wouldn't wrinkle or stain it. Besides, he had one more thing to do before he finished dressing.

Slipping into the baby's room, he leaned over the crib, picked up his sleeping grandson, and carried him into the living room.

“This is my boy,” he said, patting the infant's back. He turned to Edna and handed her the baby.

“Here honey, you take care of him for me.”

A few minutes later, as he was leaving, Edna asked what he wanted for Sunday dinner.

“Charlotte loves round roast,” he answered. “Why don't you fix that?”

Dean then kissed her good-bye, and went out the door. It would be their last conversation.

“His supper hour was between 7:00 and 8:00
P.M. 
and we had an understanding that if he wasn't home within half an hour of the time he was supposed to be, not to look for him,” she said. “So as it got closer to 7:00
P.M., 
I waited. I began thinking about the leftovers I could fix for supper. Charlotte's husband was planning to fly to Washington the next day and she had gone home for a while. I decided to go to the store and pick up what we needed for Sunday dinner. As I was heading back, I noticed a patrol car behind me and thought, ‘Good, Dean's coming home after all.' I pulled into the carport and the patrol car pulled in too. Then I saw another one. And a third one.

“I was standing there with a bag of groceries in my hand and was just about to say, ‘What do you think we're running here, a motel?' when I saw the lieutenant step out of his car.

“I remember saying, ‘How bad is he hurt?' and thinking, ‘I want to go help him wherever he is.' They were trying to tell me he was dead, but it took them the longest time to convince me it was true.”

In a daze, Edna entered the house and called Charlotte at home.

“As I was talking to my son-in-law on the phone, I could hear Charlotte crying in the background, ‘Not my daddy! Not my daddy!'
By the time she got to the house, several troopers were here. My other daughter, Deanna, arrived later. The officers stayed through the evening. The man who shot Dean was still at large so the patrol made a point of protecting us.”

Dean had stopped a fifty-four-year-old man on Interstate 40 for drunk driving shortly after 7:00
P.M. 
About ten minutes later he arrived at the Buncombe County courthouse in Asheville and took the driver, identified as Edward Collins Davis, into the breathalyzer room where fellow trooper Lawrence Canipe was to administer the test.

No one knows exactly what happened next except that three loud noises sounding “like doors slamming” were heard around 7:50
P.M. 
When the troopers failed to report their whereabouts, another officer went looking for them and found the door to the breathalyzer room locked. He got a key, turned the handle, and stepped inside.

What he saw appalled him.

Dean was kneeling against the desk. Trooper Canipe was facedown on the floor, his .357 Magnum missing from its holster, along with a watch that had been jerked from his wrist. Both men had been shot in the back at close range. (Later, the defense would argue that Dean had been killed accidentally when he interfered in a struggle between Davis and Trooper Canipe over the officer's gun.)

Davis, who had fled the building on foot, was captured the next morning. Five months later, he was sentenced to death by a jury who found him guilty on two counts of first degree murder. The execution never took place. Instead, Davis's sentence was commuted to two consecutive life terms, leading to a final twist in the case that left Edna and her children understandably bitter.

“I started getting letters from Davis in prison,” she said. “Even his wife wrote, wanting to come and see me. They were looking for my sympathy, but all it accomplished was to make my adjustment to Dean's death even harder. Imagine his wife wanting to see me. What could we possibly have in common?”

Through highway patrol efforts, the letter writing was stopped, while troopers and their wives offered Edna moral support.

“They did everything they could to help rne.”

Today, she is still a steadfast member of the state auxiliary for trooper wives and lives alone with her memories of Dean and the highway patrol.

“It's lonely,” she admits. “I don't expect it to be otherwise.”

Her advice to a young woman about to become a trooper wife is simple and direct.

“You must have plenty of love, understanding, and stamina. Because he's probably going to be married to the patrol. So the bottom line is that you have to love him enough to put up with it.”

Other trooper wives—all with stories of their own—agree:

There are two things you have to do to survive as a highway patrol wife. First, you don't think about the bad stuff, the dangers, the women, and all. And second, you learn to build your own life. You get involved with your children and their lives. You get a job, make your own friends. Because if you don't, the patrol will eat you up.

*

The worst part for me is all of the abuse my kids have gotten because their father is a highway patrolman. My son has been in several fights because someone called his daddy “pig.” We've even had people come into the yard and slash the tires on the patrol car, or come to the door unannounced to ask questions. And when we all go out together in public and he's in uniform, we get looks, as though people are saying to him, “You're not supposed to have a family.” It's like troopers aren't human or don't have feelings. It's not a normal way to live.

*

What surprised me most about the highway patrol was the closeness troopers feel for each other when there's a crisis, and the pettiness they show over silly things. There are certain times in the year when an unmarked car comes around [for the troopers to use] and it's always a matter of “Who's gonna get it this time? Who's pulled the right strings? Who's the favorite child?” They're like little kids fighting over a new toy.

*

People want to look at you as Trooper So-and-So's wife. That doesn't set well with me because I know who I am and how I want people to know me. I have my own friends who are not associated with the patrol. And I am not active in the auxiliary—which I've avoided on purpose. I got into it at first but I lost too many friends
through divorce and once you're divorced on the patrol, it's like no one else is supposed to be friends with you anymore. So I separate myself from all of that and lead my own life.

*

If any woman tells you she's never felt threatened by the fact that other women are attracted to her husband in uniform, don't believe it. It's a very common reaction among trooper wives, and one of the more aggravating things we have to deal with. When I was young, it upset me something terrible every time my husband got phone calls from girls he had given tickets to. One time it went on for days on end. Now it's more of a nuisance than anything else.

I've always said of the women who come on to him, I wish they could see him first thing in the morning. Or do his laundry for about a week. Maybe then they could see past the uniform.

*

It seems like the public goes out of its way to see if they can catch a trooper doing something wrong. I was coming home from my mother's one day and my husband stopped me. He was standing there talking to me on the side of the road, and the next day, we found out someone had called the station and filed a complaint. Another time, he used his supper hour in order to attend a Christmas event for our daughter, and that got back to the patrol station too. So you have to constantly be on guard.

*

I'm proud of my husband's role as a highway patrolman, especially the things he does the public never knows about. One night he called from the courthouse at 2:00
A.M. 
and wanted to know if he could bring a teenage girl home. I asked him what happened.

“She's a runaway,” he said. “And she's only fifteen. If I don't take her somewhere she'll have to spend the night in jail.”

So I told him to bring her home, and I made a bed on the couch. We fed her and took care of her until her parents came to pick her up the next day.

Another time, a boy from Ohio wrecked his car coming through Myrtle Beach and had only five dollars in his pocket. He had spent all his money at the beach. We put him up until his parents could wire him the funds to get home.

Unfortunately, the public never learns about that part of a trooper's work. They only hear the bad things.

*

What I like about being a trooper's wife is when your kid gets a ticket, at least you know how to handle it.

When my daughter got a speeding ticket, she asked me, “What's Dad going to say?”

“He's going to say, ‘Fifty dollars,' and make you pay it,” I told her. And that's what he did.

*

What I dislike most about being married to a trooper is that we have no privacy. We go out to eat and people recognize him and come over and sit down. The next thing you know, they're spending the entire evening discussing the highway patrol. I resent that.

What I like most is that if I'm late for work and I'm speeding down the road and see a trooper I know, I just wave at him because I know he'll give me a break.

*

I don't worry too much now about other women coming on to my husband. But it was a problem at first. He's very talkative and flirtatious and it took time for me to learn to deal with it. We discussed it—not very calmly either—because I'd rant and rave.

“I'm not doing anything!” he'd say. And I'd come back with, “Well, it doesn't look like it to me!”

We fight like cats and dogs but overall, we've got a good solid marriage and I trust him.

Some troopers worry more about their wives having affairs than the other way around. I can understand how it happens because the guys focus so much of their time and attention on the patrol, it leaves their wives out of the picture. When it does happen, the women usually go outside the patrol, because this organization is a hotbed of gossip. You can't get away with anything and not have somebody find out about it.

*

My husband and two other troopers went out to a club one night and I got a phone call.

“Do you know where your husband is?” the caller said.

“Yes, I do.”

“I don't believe you know what he's doing though. He's having a big time here, dancing and carrying on.”

I thanked her and hung up. Then it got to be midnight and I thought, “Where
is 
he?” About one-thirty in the morning I heard him tiptoeing in with another trooper. They admitted they had been dancing, but only with some friends of mine from work.