Albert G. Fausett

DIVISION OF FLORIDA HIGHWAY PATROL

50TH ANNIVERSARY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

INTERVIEW WITH LIEUTENANT ALBERT G. FAUSETT

SEPTEMBER 18 and 26, 1989

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY LIEUTENANT CHARLES WILLIAMS

PAGE 1

CW: This is Lieutenant Chuck Williams, Public Information

Officer with the Florida Highway Patrol. I'm interviewing

Mr. Albert G. Fausett, retired member of the Patrol.

Interviewing him in his home at 5460 SE 24th Street in

Ocala, in conjunction with the Florida Highway Patrol 50th

Anniversary activities. And the Oral History Project of the

Florida Highway Patrol will be placed in the archives in the

University of Florida. Good morning, Al.

AF: Good morning, Chuck. How are you?

CW: Good. I guess I'll get a little of background on you

first. Where, Where are you from originally?

AF: Ocala is my home.

CW: Ocala.

AF: In fact I'm a third generation. I was born here what you

might say in 9, 10, and 11, September the 10th, 1911. I'm

actually a third generation here. My folks came here by

means of a stagecoach.

CW: What, what did your folks do for a living? Farm, or.

AF: No, my grandfather here was quite an individual in this

county. He was at one time city commissioner in Ocala along

with Ed Carmichael who owned and developed Silver Springs.

He was quite a property owner. He owned lots of land out

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west of Ocala between Highway 27 and Highway 40, all the way

through there with cattle and sharecropping of vegetables

and things like that. And he had a grits mill, a huge

mercantile store, Victorian home that he built back during

the Spanish-American War. He was still putting the shingles

on the roof when the soldiers went by on the train which

went right along close to the house. Then my father, he was

Chief of Police of Ocala and.

CW: What year was that?

AF: Oh, that was back in the '20s, the latter '20s, early '30s.

And I got the idea then that I would be interested in law

enforcement. And by that I meant law enforcement not law

tolerance. So much that goes on today or were going on

prominently at those times even.

CW: I met your lovely wife a while ago. Is she from Ocala also?

AF: No, Doleen was born in New York state, a little town of

Springwater about 40 miles south of Rochester. She came to

Florida with her people back in the '20s over near Crescent

City. They lived there for awhile and they moved to Ocala,

and that's where I met her. Thirteen months later I asked

her to marry me.

CW: Any kids?

PAGE 3

AF: We have two, a boy and a girl. They're 41 and 40 years of

age now. My son lives here in Ocala and my daughter lives

in Ft. Lauderdale.

CW: What, I'm sure that Ocala was not as populated as it is

now. Describe, describe Ocala back in, after you were born

when your dad was Chief of Police.

AF: Well, Ocala had a lot of black people. I would say it was

about 50-50 in population, maybe half black half white. And

maybe 5,000 people. I know that when I went to school my

grandmother used to take me to school in horse and buggy,

pony and buggy with the little fringe on the top and all

that sort of thing, and a brown paper sack for lunch,

carrying my food like that. It was quite a thing, the

school didn't have any window screens. It didn't have any

heat inside and the plumbing was the -great outdoors. That's

the way it was. And, it's good that the school didn't go

year-round because it would have gotten too hot in the

school there because there were no fans or anything like

that. By the time I was ready to graduate from high school

I think that we had our very first school bus. And, from

then on why it's just been, the kids didn't have to worry

about getting to school. There was always a bus out there

to take them. But we either rode a bicycle, walked, or got

there the best way we could.

CW: How many in your graduating class?

PAGE 4

AF: There was about 64, 64.

CW: What, what was the population of Marion County back then.

Do you know?

AF: Around, yeah, I would say about 7500.

CW: 1-75 obviously wasn't through Marion County back then was

it?

AF: No.

CW: How many paved roads did you have?

AF: Paved roads were like this, they were, they were lime rock

roads smoothed out oil topped. Sometimes you might see a

little gravel put on top of it. But that was about it.

CW: What did you do after you graduated from high school? Did

you stay here?

AF: Yes, I stayed here. This was right in the middle of the

depression. And people don't know how bad things were

unless they lived at that time. A dollar an hour was, oh

that was tremendous pay. And I got a job working with a, a

store in town as a meat cutter. I had grown up in my

grandfather's store and my father, and I learned how to cut

meat. So, it helped me to be able to make a living. And at

the time why then my father became Chief of Police and I

became more and more interested in police work than I was in

PAGE 5

anything else because I felt that there was a need. I had

seen so much go on before I got on the Patrol and I saw so

much happening by the various counties of the state and what

was going on that shouldn't be that way.

CW: Did you go to college?

AF: I have credits up there from the University of Florida

extension division that enabled to me be able to get other

jobs at the same time that I made application for the

Patrol, and which I turned them down. One was to teach

school in Marianna High School and the other one was to be a

part of the department there in Atlanta, the federal prison,

to counsel and guide prisoners to become better fitted for

life when they got out.

CW: Obviously back then to apply for the Patrol you had to be 21

years old.

AF: Right.

CW: What, what did you do. Did you work in a grocery story,

just kind of worked your way and took your college courses

until you were 21?

AF: Yes.

CW: Did you apply for the Patrol when you turned 21?

PAGE 6

AF: No, no, I was, I was around 28 I think it was. Because the

Patrol started in 1939. And that would have made me 28

years of age when I went to the training school.

CW: How did, how did you find out about the Patrol when it was

going to be formed? You were in the first class. Did they

advertise in the newspapers or.

AF: Yes, there was, 'there were publications in the paper about

the activity taking place in the legislature and of course

we always had a lot of support from the junior chamber of

commerce which was one organization that really did push it

an awful lot. The, the various editors of the newspapers

were behind it. And, they felt the need for some safety out

there on the roads. The counties were somewhat coming to

the idea that they needed to do more. I know, I'd forgotten

to mention that Marion County here had decided to put on a

road patrol in the form of motorcycle. And they were only

going to put on one. Well, I made an application for that

just prior to the FHP application. And I was second pick on

that. And there were quite a few applications. I was told

that the, that whenever they put on the second motor out

there on the road that I would be the one that would fulfill

the job. The first one was the Assistant Chief of Police

under my father.

CW: What was his name?

PAGE 7

AF: Roger Lyles. He was quite a heavy man. He weighed close to

300 lbs. That poor motor just groaned when he sat on it.

He was a good motorcycle rider and a good officer.

CW: Where did you have to apply? Did you have to call

Tallahassee and get them to send you an application down in

the mail?

AF: I wrote a letter and addressed it to Governor Fred P. Cone.

Because that was the instruction that we, to do that. And

of course I sent in with it supporting letters from people

that could recommend my character and what type of person

that I was, my background. They were people of influence.

But.

CW: Who were they, do you remember?

AF: Yes, I sure do. I had numerous letters which I have in my

envelope here. I don't know.

CW: Just do you recall the names?

AF: Yes, I had the Honorable Dr. Therrell who was quite

prominent with Governor Cone. There was Mr. Harry Stein who

was one of these recognized people here locally. I had, oh

numerous ones, I'd have to go in, I have the supporting

letters that I could get out of this bag here.

CW: Sure.

PAGE 8

AF: My letter that I wrote myself is dated June the 28th, 1939,

where I wrote it to Governor Fred P. Cone stating my desire

to be accepted as applicant to the Patrol.

CW: Why don't you, why don't you read it onto the tape, Al.

AF: Well, I wish to take this opportunity to present my

application as patrolman on the new state Highway Patrol.

I'd like to first state that I am married, 27 years of age,

and a property owner. I graduated from Ocala High School

and have a rating of Corporal in a Reserve Officers Training

Corps which I gained at Riverside Military Academy,

Gainesville, Georgia. I might just hesitate right there and

say that upon my completion of schooling up there they

wanted me to come back to that school as a student teacher

of military science and tactics. And there would be no

tuition whatsoever. Everything would be furnished to me

free if I would consider such a thing. Well, I, I kind of

liked being back home so I came back home here and shortly

thereafter I married. I've had experience riding

motorcycles for the past ten years during which time I owned

three motorcycles. I did all of my own mechanical repairing

and feel that I understand motorcycles sufficiently to be a

capable rider as well as being a mechanic when necessary.

I've had equal experience with automobiles having driven and

repaired many types of cars. I've had access to a library

on police work and crime prevention and feel that I've

gained much knowledge on it. My father was Chief of Police

of Ocala for six years and is now Chief of Police at Camp

Roosevelt, Florida's ship canal central base. Having spent

PAGE 9

much of my time with him and his men while on duty, I feel

that I've gained a vast experience. Recently Marion County

put on a motorcycle patrolman picked from 20 applicants.

These men were required to take an examination similar to

civil service and I was second high on the list. I was put

on, to be put on patrol duty as soon as the county budget

would allow a second patrolman. I would like to say that if

appointed I would do my very best to be most efficient and

competent. You earnest consideration would be deeply

appreciated. Yours very truly.

CW: You say you have some other letters in there of

recommendation? Just to try to get a flavor of some of the

people that, that you got to recommend you.

AF: Well I have one here dated June the 19th 1939 to Governor

Cone. It's from Harry A. Stein who I knew the family very

well. Mr. Albert Fausett whom I have known for a number of

years, the son of Chief Harry Fausett of the Police

Department at Camp Roosevelt, is desirous of obtaining a

position on the state Highway Patrol. He is an excellent

rider of a motorcycle and young man with good moral habits.

And I feel sure would efficiently perform his duties should

he be appointed. And this one of course here is from Dr.

Therrell who formerly lived in Ocala and was connected with

banking circles. He became Superintendent of the Florida

State Hospital in Chattahoochee and I kept in touch with

him. He wrote a letter to the Governor. Let's see if I can

-find it. Understanding, this is to Governor Cone. It says,

understanding that Mr. Albert G. Fausett of Ocala is

PAGE 10

applying for position in the motor Highway Patrol created by

the legislature, I would like to say that I have known this

gentleman for the past twenty odd years. I have known his

father and his grandfather and they come from one of the

oldest and best families in the county. His father was for

many years the Chief of Police of Ocala and has since been,

has been since Camp Roosevelt was built, the Chief of Police

for the federal government of the federal reservation at

Camp Roosevelt. I believe that if this young man rates

among those eligible after examination, which I understand

is required, that he would make you a most capable man.

Cordially yours, P.H. Therrell, Superintendent.

CW: Did you, did you say that you had to take the civil service

exam? The written exam?

AF: For the County of Marion.

CW: But not for the, the state?

AF: No, we, we did take IQ exams there of which I was second

high at that time. There was one other person. My points

then was 128 and there was only one other one ahead of me

and that was Jay Wallace Smith. And, it was just a matter

of a few points. I don't remember how much it was.

CW: How long did it take you from the time that you applied to

the Patrol that you got word that you were gonna' be hired?

PAGE 11

AF: To give you an exact time on that I can turn to a letter

from Fred P. Cone, Governor, addressed to me the 29th of

June. Enclosed are the necessary papers to be executed by

you as a prerequisite for a position with the proposed state

road patrol. They told me to answer the questions in my own

handwriting and execute it before a notary public. Return

with my photograph and a health certificate completed by a

physician. Return all the papers in one envelope. All

right, I did that. And then on, let's see, the 30th of

October, 1939, Bill Reid, who we, as we call him, W.F. Reid

who was the appointed Director of the Florida Highway

Patrol, he sent me a letter on the 30th of October and said,

in connection with your application for a position on the

Highway Patrol, Florida Highway Patrol, you're advised that

this department will conduct a training school at

Bradenton. Well, it just goes on to say that I had been

accepted for the school. And of course it would be up to me

to pass it. And it tells that you're further advised that

your board and lodging will be paid while you are attending

this school. Laundry, pressing, etc. will be the expense of

the individual. You will be paid on a basis of $75 per

month during the time that you attend the school. And

before you travel to Bradenton by bus or train, secure

receipts in duplicate covering the cost of your

transportation in order for reimbursement. In the event you

report for duty at the training school it will be necessary

for you to report to Patrol headquarters, Manavista Hotel,-

Bradenton, between the hours of 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM,

Sunday, November the 5th, 1939. And of course they wanted a

prompt reply. And as I have mentioned to you previously

PAGE 12

there, I couldn't quite make up my mind just what to do, but

I got a telegram from Director Reid to make up my mind, that

they needed to know something. So I sent him word right

away that I was accepting an application and would be there.

CW: So you went to Bradenton. How many people reported in the

Patrol school? Do you recall?

AF: Yes, 44.

CW: Forty-four.

AF: And 10 of them washed out.

CW: Well, what did they, how did they wash out?

AF: They couldn't take it.

CW: Was discipline pretty heavy?

AF: Discipline was nothing new to me, having been in military

school. I accepted discipline with respect for what its

purpose was. But a lot of the fellows thought it was just

going to be something you'd just go there because I've done

this or I've done that I can go right on through. It would

be no problem. But this getting up at daylight, being out

there and taking your physical exercises and taking your

drilling and going through your first aid training school,

PAGE 13

they couldn't quite see the necessity of all these things.

But later on the benefits of that proved their worth, I'll

tell you.

CW: The letter mentioned the Manavista Hotel.

I
AF: Yes.

CW: Is that where they housed you?

AF: Yes.

CW: Or is that where the whole school was?

AF: That's where they housed us and the school was there in the

dining room.

CW: Was it, was it an old resort hotel that had been, did they

still use it as a hotel from time to time or was it strictly

just for that purpose?

AF: Oh yeah, it was used but the Patrol had access to it

completely. I think they probably made arrangements that it

would just close its doors during that time I don't think

there was anybody else there because we had our dining room

there and we had our classrooms at the municipal pier.

There, we did on one occasion go to a theater. I remember

that. I think it was the time when the Attorney General

came there to address us.

PAGE 14

CW: How long was your, how long was the school?

AF: A month.

CW: A month.

AF: Yes.

CW: Was Bradenton a very, very populated town back during that

time?

AF: Bradenton was a small little town. Water conditions there

were terrible. The drinking water was something else for

people to have to drink, I'll tell you. But it was a nice

little town, quiet as most of them over there on the west

coast of Florida were. But not too much activity.

CW: Give me a typical, a typical day in recruit school back

then.

AF: Okay, a typical day was up first thing in the morning. You

got into your coveralls and we were right down on the, I

would say, I can't call it parade grounds, but it's on the

street where we were like a parking lot and we immediately

started our exercises. And it was done through proper

conducting and each one had to do it. I mean you just, you

got sweated out, that was just something else. You don't,

you had to participate if you expected to make it. After

that we would usually go back to our rooms and briefly to

clean up, go downstairs, have breakfast. And, then we would

PAGE 15

have our classes afterwards. We'd have lectures, we'd have

FBI and jujitsu. We took a lot of that. And they taught us

how to disarm people with guns in our stomach and our back.

And to, how to use our firearms. We were out on the pistol

range. The ways of squeezing off a pistol, or jerking it so

that you don't get it. The proper use of shotguns, the

proper uses of self defense. As we went into first aid we

learned that. And of course I had no problem there with

that because I was an instructor, I have cards here for two

years, two cards that I had received already before that

from the American Red Cross. And then of course I got an

additional card when I was at Bradenton and I also received

another card from Lt. Lauderdale in Broward County. I

became active in it. In fact, prior to the Patrol I'd

taught convict guards first aid as to how to take of

incidents that occur out there on the right-of-ways wherever

they were.

CW: What time of the morning did you get up? Like before

daylight?

AF: At the crack of dawn we were out there on the pavement ready

for exercise, yeah.

CW: How long did you go to class?

AF: The-amount of hours in a class is something I couldn't tell

you exactly this except it was just like any other military

thing, ten o'clock was lights out time.

PAGE 16

CW: Were you allowed to leave the hotel at all at night?

AF: I never had the occasion to do it.

others that were granted that.

I don't know of any

CW: How was the food?

AF: Excellent.

CW: Really?

AF: The amazing thing there that tickled me, I'm glad you asked

that, was one time when Ted Reilly who was one of the cadets

there, he was a Catholic boy and he knew that they were

serving fish that day. And of course he said on Friday

you're supposed to have fish. But he took the menu and he

held it up to the waitress there and he pointed to a nice

steak there. He said I want this flounder right here.

CW: Ha, ha, ha, ha.

AF: This one right here. I want it medium well.

CW: Ha, ha, ha, ha. Did you have a menu back then?

AF: Yes.

CW: You could order pretty much anything you'd want?

PAGE 17

AF: Yes, as long as you stayed with whatever the menu called

for.

CW: Who were, who were some of the instructors that you can

recall?

AF: Oh yes, that's, one of my favorites was George Mingle from

Ohio. He was Captain of the Highway Patrol in Ohio.

CW: Where did he teach?

AF: He taught general Patrol work. The things that you're

confronted with out there on the highways. He taught you

how that you should have your information gathered properly,

particularly on the scenes of an accident. How you can be

negligent or how you can come out with a good report and get

convictions whenever you made an arrest. He set an example

in first class appearance. He was always neat. He was

always sharp. I have pictures of him. And I suppose you

have seen his pictures. But there's one of him right there

on the. And that was George Mingle.

CW: He also taught firearms?

AF: He taught firearms a lot and we had others to assist him on

that, but he was what I would call the number one instructor

of the school.- I felt very honored because you see on the

wall up there where I have, the second one down there, the

certificate of honorary commission to the state of Ohio

PAGE 18

issued to me. And I have a letter verifying that. He later

became not only Captain of the state of Ohio, but he became

the Director.

CW: Who were, who were some of the other instructors that?

AF: Well, you had in addition to him there was was, let me see

just a moment, I, I have, Sheriff Hutches, C.J. Hutches of

Manatee County. He was there constantly, and I have his

picture too where he was there, and that's him right here.

That hat, that black hat. He was there to inform us of the

various laws of the state of Florida as far as he knew about

traffic as best he could and to just to be part of the

instruction for us. And Jay T. Lowe was loaned to us by the

city of Jacksonville for the instruction of riding

motorcycles. Now Jay T. Lowe's not in this picture here but

I have a picture of him.

CW: Did everyone have to learn how to ride motorcycles?

AF: This is Jay T. Lowe right there with the dark glasses on in

uniform and that Hutches right beside him.

CW: Did everyone have to learn how to ride motorcycles or just

those who were going to be assigned to the, to the motor

squad.

PAGE 19

AF: Well, no one knew who was going to get a car and who was

going to get a bike. And so the, the course was rugged for

those particularly that were afraid of these things. I

don't know of anybody that went to that school that didn't

have to know how to ride a bike. And that was me of course

there in that white coveralls.

CW: Who were some of the other instructors that you can recall?

AF: Well we had an officer there from the city of Bradenton that

was connected with the radio department. He taught us about

the things that we'd have to know about radio and so on

which I got a certificate there to operate. Of course back

in those days you were on 2440 KHz if we happened to have

radio. But we started out with nothing. No radio. Which I

later on was able to get a one-way receiving radio on my

motorcycle to operate off of Ft. Lauderdale WAKO and city of

Miami police WPFZ. I could receive them, of course they

didn't know whether I got it or not. So I had to be chained

to that thing at all times and they knew when I was in

service and when I wasn't.

CW: Who was the commandant of the Academy? Who was the first

commander who kind of oversaw the training?

AF: Well that would be Captain Neil Kirkman.

CW: So this is during the time that Bill Reid and.

PAGE 20

AF: Bill Reid was the Director.

CW: How long did he remain Director?

AF: This was the situation. You had to know Fred P. Cone to

understand the politics of those days. The training school

was one that was overseen by executive administrators of

which the governor was the chairman of the commission and

under him was Arthur B. Hale, chairman of the State Road

Department. And next also in line was D.W. Finley who was

the commissioner of the Motor Vehicle Department. That was

your governing board of the Florida Highway Patrol. You had

no civil service or anything else at that time. And it was

at that time to when the Patrol did get out on the road that

we had what we called the Broken Spoke Club. I don't know

whether that's still in effect or not.

CW: Yeah.

AF: But I was one of the charter members of the Broken Spoke

Club. And that was formed and I have my old original Broken

Spoke Club card somewhere here.

CW: What were the dues back then?

AF: Whenever, yeah, there's my original card. As you can see

who the officers were. And this was a picture, you asked

about the dues, the dues were, the only thing that we had to

PAGE 21

worry about in those times were ten dollars a person for

anytime there was a fatality.

CW: Like an assessment?

AF: Yes. And see there's old Governor Cone. And this is Arthur

Hale. And this is Finley. This is Captain Kirkman who was a

Major in the Army. And that was Bill Reid, the Director.

That's the way the cookie crumbled in those days.

CW: So actually you worked for the State Road Department for the

most part, didn't you?

AF: Well, like I say, there were 33 that went on the Patrol but

there was a 34th one by the name of Tony Maseda that got

behind of the wheel of the Cadillac that Arthur Hale rode

around in. So he was assigned to him all the time.

CW: Did he go to Patrol school with you?

AF: Yes.

CW: When you, you graduated from Patrol school you said it was

four weeks long, is that when you got your assignment to

where you were going as far as an assignment in the state?

AF: Yes, I have a clipping here that tells and their first

stations. This is so old the paper is hard to handle but it

tells you there where each patrolman went to and it

mentions, too, I think on that sheet that two of the

PAGE 22

personnel were made what they call Acting Sergeants. One

was of the north zone and one was of the south zone. Now,

Tobe Bass was made Acting Sergeant of the south and this was

George Watts was Acting Sergeant of Section Two. What they

called Section One and Section Two. It was a very short

time after the Patrol went into effect that the name that

you do see on there suddenly became a Lieutenant on the

Highway Patrol. And that was W.M. Green, known to all of us

as Pig Green.

CW: Why did they call him that?

AF: Well, the picture that I have here of him might show you.

CW: I want to copy this down before I leave.

AF: Yes, okay. I can get this stuff photostated for you. Pig

Green was a heavyset boy from Pinellas County. He'd been in

law enforcement over there and the report that I have is

that he was the Governor's nephew. So the front door was

wide open apparently and he walked right in as a

Lieutenant. And it was shortly thereafter he was second in

command. Rated second in command directly under Kirkman.

This wasn't a very comfortable position but the American

Legion and the Jaycees that I mentioned awhile ago, they

were the ones that really pushed the Highway Patrol back in

those days, and of course we had other civic clubs. But,

Pig Green before 1940 got underway very well, he became the

Captain commander in place of Kirkman. This was on June the

PAGE 23

17th, 1940 that W.M. Green was elevated from Lieutenant as

second in command to Captain succeeding H.N. Kirkman who was

discharged.

CW: From the Patrol?

AF: From the Patrol. Period.

CW: What, what motivated his discharge? Was it somebody with

more political clout?

AF:. Nothing else. Nothing else. There wasn't performance.

There wasn't character. I'm your nephew. You owe me. And

if you knew Fred P. Cone back in those days, you could

understand very well. Off the record I can tell you

something but I don't want it to go on tape. About May 1940

I received a telegram from Captain Kirkman. He told me to

be on the watch for a certain car with a certain Arizona

license on it. There should be three men in it and they

were wanted for bank robbery in Arizona. That same night,

even though it was raining, I encountered this car on US 1

south of Ft. Lauderdale on Banyan curve. I was on my bike

and wearing a raincoat when I saw this car going too fast

around this wet curve. Before stopping them I noticed the

license tag was on the car wanted in Arizona. I knew the

odds were against me so I made a plan as I walked to the

car. I apologized for stopping them on a rainy night but

since they were from out of state I felt they were due some

southern hospitality. I told them our Sheriff, Walter

Clark, being a native son, was always anxious to give our

PAGE 24

visitors souvenirs. Since they were headed that way I would

be privileged to escort them to the courthouse and introduce

them to him. They took the bait well and were glad to

follow me thinking they would get the key to the county. On

arrival at the Sheriff's office we all went in and I said I

would go get the Sheriff from his private office and would

they wait at the counter. I showed the telegram to the

Sheriff and asked him to come out where they were but give

me time to get behind them. When he appeared I was behind

them and pulled my gun and ordered them to put their hands

on the counter. After searching them, the Sheriff then took

them upstairs to the jail and held them for Arizona.

CW: How long was, how long was Colonel Kirkman gone from the

Patrol?

AF: This I will have to go back to tell you some reasons why it

was as long, if you can give a little time here. I don't

want to run your tape too long until I find that.

CW: You found what they call the activity report.

AF: Yes, this is from the, this is almost for a month because it

was dated January the 1st, 1940 (1939-40, one month), that

this report came out. And I have it there. There were

4,935 light corrections.

CW: Light corrections, taillights.

PAGE 25

AF: Headlights, that's right. We paid attention to those

things. Twelve arrests for improper lights. Two hundred

and seventy-nine requested to obtain proper license plates.

We requested that they get them. Fifteen arrests for

improper tags. Seventy arrests for reckless driving.

Fifty-one arrests for DWI. There was no DUI in those days.

Forty-seven for no driver's license. Sixty-six

miscellaneous. A hundred and nineteen revocations of which

107 of them were for DWI. There were 7,027 hours of

service. Seventy-four thousand four hundred and sixty miles

travelled. Six thousand four hundred and ninety-five cars

stopped. Two thousand six hundred and forty-seven

commercial vehicles stopped. Two hundred and 73 brake

corrections. Three hundred and ninety-two weights and

measures. Those were the little hand scales that we used

out there.

CW: Portables.

AF: I want to tell you something about that, how I saved Jay

Wallace Smith's life one night. I'll get to that. Don't

let me pass it up.

CW: Okay.

AF: There were 360 assistance of people out there on the road.

Seven thousand four, hundred and fifty-five verbal warnings.

Forty-four acts of first aid. Sixty-six accidents

investigated. Thirty school buses inspected. Two stolen

cars recovered. The law back then provided a revocation for

PAGE 26

one year and was not eligible to receive another for one

year. And that the judges and the city, of the city and the

county were agents to act for the Department at that time.

It's quite a record. The fines for 20 days were $4,536.12.

CW: What did, what did a reckless driving ticket cost back then?

AF: Oh, maximum $20, $25. If you took a person into court, and

I took many of them in there. If you take them into the

Sheriff's office to book them they could sign a guilty plea

if they wanted to and they'd pay the cost of court, say $19

or something like that.

CW: When you could put people, you put people in jail, you could

put them in jail for any traffic violation.

AF: Oh, yeah. You took them in. Because we didn't issue

citations out there on their own recognizance. Any person

that you had to write up an arrest citation on, you took

them to the courthouse and let the Sheriff decide, so we

weren't the mean little kids there. We took them there to

the Sheriff's department and the deputy there on the desk

would tell them what they had to pay as a bond or they could

sign a guilty plea or they could use the phone there and

call somebody to keep from going to jail. If they couldn't

do any of that, upstairs they went. And that was the way

that went on.

CW: Getting back to your, we need to back up a little bit.

Getting back to your graduation from Patrol school. And

PAGE 27

then you got your first assignment which I think the paper

said was Broward County.

AF: Right.

CW: There were no Patrol stations there, obviously.

AF: Ha, ha, ha, ha.

CW: You just worked wherever they could get ahold of you?

AF: What we had to do, the first thing was to report to the

Sheriff's office. And I went right in. You know what?

We're still on 1939.

CW: Go for it. You reported in to the Sheriff.

AF: Well, I went into the Sheriff's office and I met A.D.

Marshall who was the jailer in charge there. And he lived

in the courthouse. And told them where I'd be living. Gave

them my telephone number which I was then living in a little

hotel. 'Cause I left my wife up here in Ocala and she was

teaching school and couldn't leave right in the middle of

the school year. So, I let them have my telephone number

and I knew I was assigned to the given area which was

northern Dade County. Arch Creek Bridge was the end of the

line which was about Miami Shores. Clear up to the far side

of Boca Raton. And that was all of Broward County out all

the way up to .the Palm Beach County line on US 27 out in no

PAGE 28

man's land. The roads back in those days were something

else. US 1 was the paved concrete road. A1A was an asphalt

road. 441 was a loose gravel road where you dodge beer

bottles on Saturday night on your motorcycle from the joints

along the road there. When we went out in service I also

kept in touch with the different police departments and we

picked out various filling stations along the roads that we

would be working as far as the Sheriff's department was

concerned. So that if they did have to get in touch with us

we could always pull in there, and any messages. Check it

out. The lack of radio was something back in those days

because everybody was on their own. And sometimes those

Saturday night deals out there could be something else. Out

there all by yourself at night. And lighting wasn't

anything like it is today. You didn't have all these

mercury vapor lights or the sodium lights up and down the

roads. It was black as the inside of a stove. And we

patrolled 12 hours a day, rain or shine. And to ride a

motorcycle in the rain with your raincoat on backwards,

that's the way you had to do it to keep.

CW: Why'd you do that?

AF: To keep the rain from coming in through and wetting your

uniform so much. Because the lower half of your raincoat

would make into like pants, would snap. And of course you

had boots on. And when we first started out we had these

big old windbrakes on the front of motorcycles that did

help. But it became critical at times when you had to go.

I remember the very first fatality that I had out there on

PAGE 29

US 27 was the fire chief of Palm Beach itself. He

apparently went to sleep and went off the road and down into

the canal and it killed him. Knowing that road out there,

it's strictly no man's land. No communication except by

what you can get somebody to go down the road and help you

out. I've taken my own personal car and gone on these

accidents because I knew that on a motorcycle I couldn't

carry sufficient equipment that might be needed out there.

If somebody was there and you don't have a radio to get hold

of an ambulance or anything else. You don't know what

you're going to need until you get there, to start with.

And you're 40 miles from nowhere. So I've used my own car

many a time. My own gasoline, no reimbursement. But it was

for my own protection and it still afforded me the chance to

do the job.

CW: What kind of motorcycle did you ride?

AF: Harley Davidsons. They were 74s and 61s.

CW: How fast would they run?

AF: Well, I had no desire to see how fast they would run, but I

know that I chased one car that we were sitting on 100 mph

all the way for 15 solid miles. But I could get, at times I

was able to get 110 sometimes 115 depending on atmosphere.

CW: What kind of patrol cars did you use back then?

PAGE 30

AF: They used Fords with Mercury motors, high speed rear ends,

and the old, thick bulletproof windshields that were really

a hazard to the person's eyes.

CW: Were they particularly purchased to be bulletproof or were

they just what Ford put in all of them?

AF: Yes. No, they were special for that reason. It was a thick

glass that really stuck out. It was almost an inch thick.

And you had a waving situation that you could look off to

the side and you lose your sharpness of visibility. It

would stop a bullet and all that, but at high speeds and so

on it could be very dangerous, to me, become distorted,

wavy.

CW: Where, where did you get your, where did you get your

maintenance and your work, all your work done on your car

and your motorcycles back then?

AF: Well, they, first time I had a motorcycle to give me trouble

I talked to various governmental agencies that had a

mechanic around and tune up this or tune up that. And then

the state decided that when you have too much trouble with

your vehicle come in to Tallahassee with it. That was a

beautiful ride in the middle of the winter to get out of Ft.

Lauderdale and ride all the way to Tallahassee in the

freezing all night weather. It wasn't anything to look

forward to. But once in awhile you'd get a motorcycle there

that was a lemon and you just couldn't do anything with it.

So you'd have to take it back to the dealer, all the way up

PAGE 31

there. Then they began to have mechanics by the state that

would go around and tune up the various vehicles and see

that they were properly maintained.

CW: You spent 12 hours a day on that thing at least.

AF: Twelve hours a day, subject to call 24 hours a day. You

never had a vacation time off on holidays. And you got two

days off every two weeks. And that went from noon to noon.

That's the way your days were. I have slept on the benches

in police stations many a night on Saturday nights that I

wouldn't go home because I knew that the minute I got the

cover pulled up around me in the bed I was going to get a

phone call.

CW: Did they make you have a telephone at your house?

AF: Yes. And they paid for that.

CW: What do you suppose the population of Broward County was?

AF: Well, the city of Ft. Lauderdale I know for sure was 18,000

people when I first got there in 1939. A beautiful little

town, it wasn't a concrete jungle like it is today.

CW: And you were the only trooper within how many miles?

AF: Well, Tobe Bass was stationed there with me but he had like

we said previously there, he was Sergeant of the, what do

you call it, zone one I think it was. And he had to more or

PAGE 32

less keep up with the different ones in Broward I mean the

other counties of the south part of the state. But I had

the responsibility of running the northern Dade, all of

Broward and south Palm Beach.

CW: What was, what was the primary objective of the Highway

Patrol back in 1939? What was your first and foremost job?

AF: One thing was to eliminate accidents as they call them. I

call them wrecks. Because nothing is an accident as far as

I'm concerned, there's always a cause for it, and it's human

error. If you have a collision out there and a tire blows

out, well, if you'd a been taking care of that tire like you

should have it probably wouldn't have blown out,,unless you

ran over something that punctured it and you didn't see it.

The majority of the cases are human error, carelessness.

But it was to take care of that, eliminate the injuries that

were on the road, the property damage. To get the drunks

off the road. To assist people who were in trouble out

there on the road, showing courtesy at all times. Helping

people, particularly those who were stranded and didn't know

how to look after themselves. Conduct first aid wherever it

was needed until such time that you could get transport to a

hospital, because we had lots of that in those days. We

used splints and things like that which the trooper doesn't

have to use too much today. But first of all the ambulances

weren't paramedics. They. were strictly hearse drivers.

They'd come running out there as fast as they could, get

your, but you'd have the injured already in transporting

condition, and get them to where they could go. And then

PAGE 33

you follow up through. I helped many a time in the hospital

and in the emergency room on all kinds of injuries. One

time particularly a doctor was going to cut a man's leg off

because of the injury. And I told him, doc, not this

Saturday night. Don't you do it. This man is unconscious,

his wife is unconscious. You cut off his leg. I tell you

no because he is not able to tell you yourself to go ahead

and do it. You are supposed to do everything in your power

to try to save this man. He listened to me and the man's

leg was saved. And there was a quite a story about that.

CW: Of course, did you write a lot of speeding tickets back

then?

AF: Well, in the beginning we didn't worry about speed as long

as it wasn't reckless. Because there wasn't any law

covering it.

CW: There was no speed limit?

AF: No. No speed limit. No speed limit, just reckless driving,

willful and wanton disregard for life and property. Things

like that. And if you saw somebody that got weaving in and

out of traffic and endangering somebody else's life as well

as his own, then you go grab him. And depending on the

nature of it, how bad it was. I mean if he was, got

somebody in there that was sick and needed to get to the

doctor, well you'd loan him assistance and help him get

there. But if he was just out there carousing around,

PAGE 34

cutting the fool, taking fenders off of cars and so on, you

took him on down to the cross bar hotel. Ha.

CW: We still call it that too.

AF: Do you?

CW: Of course, I had heard from a couple of others that I have

spoken with that one of your objectives of the Patrol was

also to keep undesirables out of the state of Florida. Have

you ever heard that?

AF: I heard it, but it wasn't the FHP it was the county

Sheriffs.

CW: County Sheriffs.

AF: I know that from observations. I know that every time a

tramp got off the train in Broward County there, Walter

Clark's men, either Virgil Wright or A.M. Whitcamp, or some

of those other people, Earl Sharp or Bob Clark, the Chief

Deputy who was the brother of the Sheriff, after they got

through with the individual they put him in the car and they

started relaying him on up the line. Don't come back, see.

The FHP stayed clear of those things. But we saw a lot of

that going on. We saw a lot of things going on.

PAGE 35

CW: What are, what are some of the other jobs that you were

called upon to do in addition to traffic duties and accident

investigations. Did you have any strange requests?

AF: Yes. I was all, was very very green at the time but very

sincere with my work. I never will forget the very first

time that something happened there to me, and that was when,

well, I mentioned awhile ago about Jay Wallace Smith. He

came down to Ft. Lauderdale because he was assigned to

Weights Division. And in him car he carried these little

portable scales that you carry like a briefcase. They were

heavy. But you would take these things and, are you

familiar with them?

CW: Yes.

AF: And put them in front of the wheels of a semi or behind it

depending on what you're able to do. And he put this thing

in front of the wheels of this one semi. I was there to

help him. This was at Ft. Lauderdale at the forks of the

road at Andrews Avenue and the Federal Highway at the south

end of town. I was a little bit skiddish about the driver

of that truck. Well, Wallace Smith told him to pull up on

the scale slowly. And I could see that this fellow had it

in his mind to let that thing drop and he would have crushed

Jay Wallace Smith. And I pulled out my gun right quick and

told him, you let that thing drop and I'm going to drop

you. And I would have at that time. But it shook Wallace

PAGE 36

Smith up quite a bit, it made him very very nervous after

that. Of course you can imagine what happened after that.

CW: What kind of guns did you carry then?

AF: We had, I wish I had that gun today. It was a number 7 FHP

issue. It was a 38 Colt on 41 frame. They were nickel

plated. They were a four-inch barrel. And I had mine

honed, and honed and honed, and whenever I pulled it out it

would go off. Very smooth operation on that thing.

CW: Did it have a hair trigger on it?

AF: I mean.

CW: Ha, ha.

AF: I mean. Because I'll tell you, working where I was it

didn't take me long to realize that I was in a very hot

bed. I knew that the activity of my area was more than it

was anywhere else in the whole state. In fact, I would say

put together. Because we had all kinds of racketeers down

there. And the, Myer Lanskey and Jake Lanskey the

gangsters, the Purple Gang was there. Those people were

around, but.

CW: What was their, what was their, their big.

AF: Gambling.

PAGE 37

CW: Gambling.

AF: Gambling.

CW: How about moonshine running?

AF: Moonshine was trivial. Moonshine was there. I remember one

time I smelled on my motorcycle riding into Pompano north of

Lauderdale, I could smell mash cooking. And I told the

Sheriff you better check on that out there. Because that

wasn't my problem. I, I didn't have the jurisdiction when

it's out in the woods there.

CW: You didn't have jurisdiction to get off the highways?

AF: Not anything like that. I told him, well I know that he's

done nothing more other than to tell him to be more careful

with it, you see. But traffic violations whatever the

nature was out there on the highway, well then we were able

to take care of that. But not off the road. We didn't have

a right if we saw two people killing each other off the

road. We were strictly out there on the roads.

CW: How many highways did you have to patrol in your zone?

AF: Oh gracious. Well, if you know how many highways there were

in Broward. Your main arteries were A1A along the coast.

There was US 1 which was a fairly new highway there then.

And that was only 18 feet wide, concrete. Parallel to it

was 441 which was also known as State Road 7 but it was only

PAGE 38

a gravel road up to the Palm Beach County line where it

worked over into Military Trail. US 27 came out of Miami.

It wasn't accessible too well until they developed State

Road 84 out of Ft. Lauderdale. That was a mess. They built

that on sponge muck. And I've seen people clear up to their

neck in the muck while they were building it and they had to

use drag lines to pull them out of the muck because they

just stuck in there. They filled that in with pit rock,

years went by when hurricanes hit there, I've seen the road

just wash right out. Water has been clear to the tops of

the road on both sides just lapping at the pavement. And to

the point where the pavement was like riding on a wet

sponge. And you, we had to set up barricades. This was

later on in the picture, I'm getting ahead here. As it

comes to my mind I tell you about it. But we had to stop

all traffic on these roads and let only trucks go out there

that were cattle trucks to get their cattle. Because they

were out there drowning. What couldn't get on a little high

bit of land they were just out there and drowned, that's

all. And houses were being inundated by high water, people

getting up into the attic. We got them out of the attics by

boat. Killed snakes. I killed 18 snakes in a 20-mile

stretch, big ones, with my pistol. And things like that.

But I'm sort of getting away from the time that we were

originally talking about. But when I mentioned about Jay

Wallace Smith and this one particular incident, you asked me

about other incidents.

PAGE 39

CW: I think one thing that I guess we maybe we better back up a

little bit. We were talking about your Patrol duties and

the areas and so forth. Were there, were there divisions in

the state. Was it divided into certain areas of

responsibility and command structure?

AF: Yes, the, while Governor Cone was there it seems that about

1940, July the 1st, and this is just six months that had

gone by that now we had a different chairman of the State

Road Department. A man by the name of J.W. Perkins. And of

course W.F. Bill Reid was still Department of Public Safety

head. They created three districts for the FHP. The first

one was the north and then the south and the central.

Fitzhugh Lee was made a Lieutenant of the northern division

to be extended to Gainesville from the state line. Then

H.C. Red Martin was made Lieutenant from Gainesville to

Sarasota area. Stuart Senneff was to be commander of the

south division, southern division as we called it, which

extended from Sarasota to Key West. And that's when we

really started clamping down on driver's license tests. I

should say driver's license checks. The Patrol became

active and we started getting the Deputies out there with us

so we'd have more manpower that we could to stop cars.

Because we didn't have enough manpower ourselves to do it.

So they were out there with and we could just find somebody

that didn't have a driver's license and turn them over to

the Sheriff right there. Didn't have stop and pull into the

courthouse.

PAGE 40

CW: What all was involved in getting a driver's license back

then? Was there any kind of test that you had to take?

AF: Not until a little later on. We started having them.

CW: Up until that time you'd just go down to the courthouse?

AF: Yeah.

CW: Someone even told me that you could buy a driver's license

at Sears and Roebuck.

AF: It depended on who the judge had set as various agencies.

CW: But there were some private stores that you could actually

buy drivers' licenses?

AF: Oh yeah. The thing that I liked about the old license in

one sense of the word was this. It was a paper folded

license with three sheets. One was for warnings, one was

for arrests. And if you stopped a fellow and he went on

down the road a hundred miles and got picked up again, if

you examined that license you found out that, well heck, he

just, he didn't pay any attention to the warning. So you

don't write him a warning ticket. You take him on down to

the place of remembrance. Ha, ha. And too, it was about

then that we were thinking about faulty equipment because

stopping them out there for driver's license we found many

many cars that come along with headlights out completely.

No light there. And you'd find them with bad wiring', wires

PAGE 41

hanging dragging the ground and you knew it'd been like that

for a long long time. Bad brakes, car you'd go to stop and

it'd go off this way or that way. So, that's when faulty

equipment card, the FHP 9 I think it was, was a little card

that we got in. We wrote it in carbon copy. And we issued

it out to the individual and he was to take that card and

that vehicle and get that corrected. And he had 48 hours to

get it done. I don't know whether they still use them or

not.

CW: Some, some things never change, Al. Ha, ha, ha.

AF: They still got the DL 4s the same way. That was the

driver's license application?

CW: I don't know. I think the numbers may have changed.

AF: I'll show you one in a minute. I got one in here when Paul

Daniels got killed. The first trooper that ever got killed.

CW: Was, was he killed down there in your area?

AF: He was. He was using my car the night he got killed. But

the thing that happened too that upset a lot of us was that

on the 11th of July we had our color change on our

uniforms. This was something. We wore caps on the bikes

and they were a dark blue like city police had with a little

bit of orange trim in it.

PAGE 42

CW: Sort of like, like the bus driver, what we'd call the bus

driver cap?

AF: Yeah. And the hats were no longer the Stetsons. Because

our original hats were the original Stetson hat. They got

them from the Surprise Store right there in Tallahassee. I

don't know whether that place is still there in business or

not.

CW: Surprise Store.

AF: That was the name of it. Everything that we got came

through the Surprise Store. Boots, shoes.

CW: Was it a uniform supply company or.

AF: I guess so. I don't know. I've never been inside the place

but I know that's where it came from.

CW: Ha, ha, ha.

AF: The hats and this is it is the old Frank Buck hats like you

see a mail carrier wear sometime.

CW: Okay.

AF: I have some pictures there of Joe Gallop out there on the

road with those, with that kind of hat on his head. And the

pants, they were blue with an orange wide stripe down the

side. Shirts, they were gray. I have a picture of me

PAGE 43

somewhere here that I can show you where I was in a, on one

of the causeways going out of Miami heading towards Miami

Beach. We were in a driver's license check and I had that

uniform on. But that was the uniform of the day although it

wasn't long before it reversed itself. I don't know, we may

have worn that six months. The hats did come back into play

there. We had the campaign hat like, like.

CW: Smokey Bear.

AF: Yeah, Smokey Bear hat. They were nice. They were good.

They weren't as comfortable I don't think, to me it wasn't,

as the old Stetson hat. But everybody to their own likes on

that.

CW: What were the uniforms made of? Was it comfortable?

AF: A great, I suppose you would call it that.

CW: Was it washed and pressed and starched and all that?

AF: I had them dry cleaned.

CW: Did you?

AF: Yeah. Now the breeches that we wore on the bikes sometimes

they would even be a gabardine, whip cord type, because they

had the knee reinforcement and the seat reinforcement. I

PAGE 44

was wearing a brand new pair the time that I broke my knee

on January the 1st, 1946. But, I'll get to that later.

CW: Okay.

AF: But it was the first of July 1940 when Tobe Bass who was as

I said the number one Sergeant of the southern, well the new

districts were created and Tobe was transferred then out of

Ft. Lauderdale over to Deland by orders from Captain Green.

We were getting involved at that particular time with the

Orange Bowl Parade, being a huge thing every year. And I

had a distinct privilege I guess in a way to lead that thing

on an FHP bike and it was, you had to know how to ride a

motorcycle to be able to ride that slow. And have a good

tuned up bike too that wouldn't conk out on you right, and

you didn't have electric starters. You had to kick that

thing by your foot and if you happened to have the spark a

little bit too far advanced you were liable to find your

knee up on top of the handlebars. Ha, ha, ha.

CW: Ha, ha, ha, ha. Is that how you broke your knee?

AF: No. No, but I broke it hitting a car while escorting him,

the Governor, and I didn't have my regular assigned

motorcycle. I was no longer riding, but I took a bike that

time. They brought one over from the fifth district and it

was horrible. It needed maintenance something terrible. It

was one of those kind you'd put your foot on the brake and

it didn't stop right then until you got down the road a

little ways. And then it would take hold. Or if you wanted

PAGE 45

to accelerate, it was slow on accelerating. What are you

going to do when you get in a tight with something like

that?

CW: Pray.

AF: That's right. Well.

CW: Let's, let's talk about the Orange Bowl for a minute. That,

that's, that's something that been tradition. When was the

first Orange Bowl Parade. Was it before the Patrol was

formed?

AF: Yes. Yeah, oh yes.

CW: Did you ride, did you ride, were you first trooper to ride

in the Orange Bowl Parade?

AF: That's right. That's right.

CW: Were there anybody else with you or did you lead the parade?

AF: I was on the bike. Because we didn't have that many. As it

went on the following year after that we had a contingent of

bikes. What we called the flying wedge. We made it into a

V shape. We'd start off with one at the point and then two,

three, four, and five. And we rode that at the pace and

speed of what the parade was travelling. Now the street

coming down Flagler is not that wide. Biscayne Boulevard on

that one side is not too wide either. So with people

PAGE 46

squeezing in on both sides we were boxed in there pretty

tight. And when you keep straight lines this way as you go

along and straight lines on an angle, you had to know what

you're doing. And your bikes had to be running right, too.

CW: This was later on when you had bikes that you could spare.

AF: The following year, the following year. Yeah, it was in

'41, the fall of '41.

CW: What, did they add a bunch of manpower on to the Florida

Highway Patrol?

AF: Well they just brought them in from other places.

CW: Oh, okay.

AF: I know that the 1st of '41 which was the following day I was

assigned to the Orange Bowl detail to help out on traffic

for the parade, I mean for going to the game, usually the

Governor was always there and you had to see to it that he

was comfortable wherever he was going to be. Ha, ha, ha.

CW: Ha, ha, ha, ha.

AF: I know that you ask about different things. On three

occasions I had some things assigned to me that were kind of

unpleasant disasters. I investigated an accident late at

night on June 15, 1941. I'd say in the early morning

hours. There was two semis hit almost head on out there on

PAGE 47

US 27 south of Southbay. Both drivers were killed. Well,

there was no evidence of drinking. The fog was heavy. And

both of them were blood brothers out of the same family.

Neither one apparently knew that the other one was anywhere

around. There was a horrible mess. Each one of them ended

up the the opposite ditches. It killed them outright. And

I got on the 5th of January of that year I, a driver hauling

illegal whiskey was killed just north of Lauderdale. His

arm was torn completely off and that's where the arm was

buried. Right there in the ditch.

CW: Who buried it?

AF: I did. Yep.

CW: Did you go back out after the thing later on, or did you do

that right after?

AF: No, I just let the grass grow.

CW: Oh, okay, ha, ha, ha.

AF: Because the man was killed right there, outright dead. And

he wasn't, he wasn't going to put it in his casket I'm

sure. And in those days they didn't worry too much about

that. There was another thing that did happen. There was a

train wreck in Pompano with injuries. That was on the 15th

of August 1941. It was necessary for me to have threaten

arrest and report to the Naval Department because a

passenger who was a Navy officer and was a doctor. And he

PAGE 48

was refusing to administer to the injured on this train

wreck. And it wasn't anything nice to look at. And he

wouldn't do it until help arrived. So I told him, well

either you're going to do this or I'm going to put you in

jail. I'm going to notify the Naval Department and find how

you can keep from being stripped. He changed his mind and

he jumped right in there and helped out. It shows you some

of the things that you're put to the test on. And whether

or not you're capable of meeting it. Well it was then on

the 18th of January that Jesse Gilliam took the place of

W.F. Reid as Director. He was appointed by Governor Leroy

Collins.

CW: Jesse Gilliam?

AF: Jess J E S S E. J. G I L L I A M. On May of 1941, I have

a beautiful picture here that I could show you, where Ray

Small and myself was, had gotten on the Patrol after we,

after I had. But he had become a Sergeant already. We took

two motorcycles and we escorted 16 Florida Motorlines. They

weren't Greyhounds then, they were Florida Motorlines. The

red and white buses. I've got a picture of them. This

consisted of newspaper editors from all over the nation.

And we escorted them all around south Florida until we got

to our border line and we turned them over to another

district. That was quite an ordeal.

CW: I'll bet.

PAGE 49

AF: Yeah. I'll say this, that the bus drivers in those days

were 100% friends to us, and so were 99% of the truck

drivers. Little things, I don't care to glorify myself on

any of this stuff I'm telling you, but if it's stuff that

you want to cut, why you can cut it.

CW: No, this is the stuff that we're after.

AF: But I can remember one night, July 1941, that a friend of

mine who was a Buick dealer in Ft. Lauderdale. They had

been to an occasion there and they were just a half a block

from the courthouse, and they were standing on the corner

waiting for traffic to go by. His mother was with them.

And around the corner came a black -fellow with a car that

had been in a wreck and his fender was sticking out there

like a can opener, and it caught her. And I mean it almost

just cut her leg off. Well, we got her to the hospital

quick. I don't know why I happened to be there. I got

involved in more things, I wonder how I ever happened to be

there. But there I was and Mrs. Bowers was her name, I got

a nice letter from them. But I found out that in Jackson

Memorial Hospital when the doctor in Ft. Lauderdale Hospital

told me that what she had to have or she wasn't going to

live through the night. And he thought that we could get it

in Miami. Well, we contacted them and I made a round trip

there and I made it in fast time, I'll tell you. But I got

it back and it saved the woman's life. And a beautiful

letter went to Tallahassee about it which I have a copy of

it. Well, after that (July 1941) we had a six-day short

course at the Lamar Hotel in Orlando. It was a gathering of

PAGE 50

personnel. I have a picture of that if you wanted to see

it. And, the Ft. Lauderdale Police Department had a school

(June 21, 1941) and they asked me to be one of the faculty

members to teach the rookies that they were putting on. So

I consented to that. I have a picture that I can show you

later of my last motorcycle that I ever rode.

CW: When did you finally hang it up on motorcycles and go to

cars, to a car?

AF: Myself, was in July of '41. Then we were using cars but

sometimes they wouldn't run fast enough. We tried all kinds

of things to do it. One time the Patrol give me an old

Hudson. I could get out and push the thing faster than it

could drive. It was awful to try to chase somebody that was

willfully trying to out run you and were drunk or either had

a stolen vehicle, and you just couldn't keep up with them.

Ha, ha. They saw us.

CW: But you could carry a lot of gas in a Hudson.

AF: Oh, yeah.

CW: About what, 50 gallons?

AF: Well, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't.carry that thing too long

when they finally decided we'd better get rid of this. So

we went back to Fords. But, we had a strike detail to come

up on the 30th of July, 1941, that happened down in Key West

where the Sheriff down there made us all deputies. We had

PAGE 51

to break up a strike. And I got a beautiful letter here

from the Navy thanking us for coming down there.

CW: What kind of strike was it?

AF: It was civilian employees working down there at the Naval

Air Station and the war was on, you know. I lost out on

something here that I should tell you about on Roosevelt,

but I can get back to it as soon as I finish this. But we

got all the way back thinking that we had got that thing

under control. Got clear back to Marathon. There was only

one building in Marathon in those days. Now it's a city

with airport and everything else. But there was only one

building, and that was a store. We stopped there to get a

cold drink and we got a message, go back and finish the

job. Well, we went back and we finished the job. Needles

to say, I put the Chief Deputy in his own jail.

CW: How many people, how many troopers were sent down on that

detail?

AF: If you cut that a minute I'll get the picture and show you.

I think all told if I look at the picture when I get it out

of my file there it seemed to me there was around 10 or 12

of us.

CW: That's probably about a third of the Highway Patrol, wasn't

it?

PAGE 52

AF: But we took care of that problem. And we had a platoon of

Marines behind us with fixed bayonets. And they had

instructions that whatever we couldn't take care of with our

nightsticks, they were to use those bayonets.

CW: You were the first Highway Patrol riot squad.

AF: That's right. Now I'll guarantee you, some windows went and

some heads got hurt. But they straightened out.

CW: What were they, you say they were contractors? What were

they building boats in the Naval Air Station?

AF: That's right.

CW: Well, okay.

AF: They didn't, you don't strike your government when you're at

war. You just don't do that. Ha, ha.

CW: You mentioned something about President Roosevelt that came

to town. You were involved in that detail?

AF: Yes, I was. Now this happened on December the 20th and 21st

of 1939. I was drafted by a Mr. Baker who was at that time

in Washington the Chief of the Secret Service. The Potomac

had pulled in to Ft. Lauderdale and Pt. Everglades and was

tied up in the main slip. While FDR was out there on that

boat, on the, we were not at war yet. But Great Britain

was. And there was a British cruiser just off shore between

PAGE 53

the port and the gulf stream. And they were after this

German freighter. This was a brand new freighter called the

Arauca. I have pictures of that. They ran him into the

port trying to catch him. Well, once he got into our

territory, they had to keep hands off. And, of course they

tied him up at port, at the slip right next to the Potomac.

Well that created a lot of blood pressure worrying about

these Germans. You didn't know just what was going on as

you will find out and I'll talk to you later about what

happened on our beaches as to torpedoes and things like that

where actually I was a witness to a lot of this stuff. But,

Mr. Baker, because of his shorthandedness, not expecting

something like this and at the beginning of a war which

they'd never experienced anything like it before, he drafted

me to be with the President for about 36 to 38 hours without

shutting my eyes. And I was as close to him as I am to you

all this time. There was one thing that I always remember

is how he always sat there, if you've seen picture of him

with that cigarette holder on an angle sticking up out of

his mouth. With that cigarette way out there. That was one

thing that he always had, seemed always kept it with him.

Nobody was allowed in the area unless Baker came to me

personally by himself. Not in the company of anybody.

Because you never knew if he was being forced to do it.

Then I would let somebody, whoever he said was alright,

could come aboard. And that happened to be certain special,

special press people that could come in there and interview

the President about the world situation.

PAGE 54

CW: This was on the yacht?

AF: This was on the yacht. I still, I was right there at ready

at all times. The whole times, I stayed there with them and

I didn't leave him until he was taken off the yacht by

Baker, put on the train that backed right in alongside the

slip, put him on the train, and headed him out to

Washington. Then I went home and got my razor and shaved.

Ha, ha, and got some sleep. But that was the situation

there. I meant to tell you about that earlier but we get

back to 1941 which is right after the strike detail. I was

assigned to south Miami from Ft. Lauderdale September 1941.

And I was to take care of all of the lower Dade County area

including down onto the Keys. But I was still an ordinary

patrolman. I guess you could call it acting like a PFC,

Private First Class, but there wasn't Chevrons or anything

or any increase in pay. But I had six rookies handed to me

from the school and I had to work with them, help them on

the road after coming out of the school, to make sure that

they knew what they were doing.

CW: Was this the second Patrol school?

AF: Yes, yes. It wasn't our school.

CW: Was it from, did they still have it in Bradenton, the second

one, or did they move it?

AF: I think, I'm not sure, I think that the next school, I don't

have the records, I burnt up so many records, I think it was

PAGE 55

Kissimmee, I'm not sure. I think the one after that was in

Lakeland which is one that I was there for awhile as a

part-time instructor. But I had six different ones there,

of which one of them was Paul Daniels, the first trooper to

ever get killed. And there was Ben Porch, there was Charlie

Gothie, who when the war really got going he got into the

airlines flying over the hump down into Africa and he just

did that constantly, he never came back to the Patrol. And

a boy named Stafford, another one named Telzer, Brantley,

who later on left the Patrol and became Chief of Police of

Homestead. He died there one night, ice pick. But on the

6th of December was my day off and Paul Daniels was one of

them. And I had told Paul I don't know how many times, you

are no longer a city of Key West. policeman. You're a

highway patrolman now and it's a whole new ball game. And

you play for keeps out there many and many a time. You've

always been too friendly with the people in the city because

you had closeness there of population, but when you're out

here on the road you never know what you're dealing with.

You're to be a gentleman at all times, but you're supposed

to be able to take care of yourself. And one of the things

that I told him was, don't ever stop a car at night with you

being in front of the car that you stop. And that's what

happened to him. He stopped this car that night that came

through south Miami at an excessive rate of speed. And he

took after him and he went clear down to Goulds at

Allapattah Road and US 1 where he finally stopped him. Well

the fellow stopped quicker than he did so Paul went ahead of

him instead of either turning around and coming back or

putting it in reverse and backing up. And left himself in

PAGE 56

the full headlights of the other car. He managed to go back

to the car and question this Byrdl Hudgins, a/s/a Elmer

Humber, and he was a 22-year-old tall boy. And he got from

him his driver's license. He came back, by that time my car

which I have a picture of the wreck of the thing, I had

radio operating out of the city of Miami, WPFZ. And, they

covered the whole county.

CW: Was that one you could listen to but you couldn't transmit

from?

AF: No, my radio then was two-way. And he used my radio to call

in to find out if there's anything on the car. There was no

information at all because it had just been stolen and they

didn't know it. Okay, as soon as he hung up the message

came in to the police radio dispatcher that this car was

wanted as a stolen car. Well they tried calling Paul but

they got no answer. In the meantime he was up in his car

and this fellow was back there with a 45 automatic. And the

reason he couldn't answer was because when he started to

hang up the radio he saw that gun. He put up his hands like

that and he got shot. And I found his body in the ditch

face down.

CW: How long after he'd been shot did you find him?

AF: I would say not more than an hour.

CW: Well did they try to call him?

PAGE 57

AF: Called him and didn't get an answer and they called Senneff

who was the commander and got ahold of him. He called me

and he told me he said, I've got ahold of Ben Porch. We

didn't have a radio. All we had was a car. And he come by

my house and picked me up. I had already gone to bed. I

jumped out and put my clothes on, Porch come by and picked

me up. We went heading on down south. I knew the territory

and when they told me about where it was we run a spotlight

in the ditch as we were going and there he was laying

there. But the car was gone. It so happens that the

Allapattah took off on a 45 degree from US 1. As soon as I

found him and I knew that he was dead because there was no

signs of life whatsoever, I looked down the road there and I

could see activity. And I knew it was another police car of

some kind. And so I fired my gun into the air once to let

them know where I was and who I was. We jumped in the car

and went on down there to try to get to a radio or see what

was going on and I was faced with the fact that there was my

patrol car which had turned end over end and then side over

side and then stopped upright. It was a mess. I looked in

the car to see what was going on because I had a lot of DL

papers all over the place and other things like that. But

laying on the floor in its plastic container was a driver's

license with a picture on it. And this was on the back

floor behind the driver's seat. And I knew it didn't belong

to me or any of my papers so I picked it up and I saw there,

state of Ohio, Byrdl Hudgins, six foot, picture of him. I

asked the Sheriff's Department to let me use their radio so

I called in and put out an alert on who we wanted. Didn't

think he had gotten very far, but anyway I got it to Captain

PAGE 58

Senneff and told him about it. Or he was still a

Lieutenant. And told him about what had happened and so we

started putting up roadblocks. I like to went to pieces

there for awhile because I wanted to get that guy because he

had killed not only a trooper but a father as well as a

husband. And I knew what a good guy he was. He was always

riding the motorcycle during the day, but on my day off he

used my car. And I felt the presence of that person out

there in the woods, but it was dark. There was no light.

Palmettos, pine trees, rattlesnakes, and everything else.

And I hollered out in the woods to him at his name, Come out

of there instead of us getting you, maybe you might have a

chance, but I don't think you'll have one if I face you. He

testified to that on the stand. He never did come out. But

when he did come out the following day, was over on the

highway and two civilians who had known about it picked him

up, got him in the back seat as though they were just

helping out somebody on the road. But we had a roadblock

set up and when they got to the roadblock they jumped out

both sides of the car and left the door open and said there

he is in the back seat. Well, there was an immigration

officer there and he ran over and as Byrdl Hudgins tried

coming out, he'd been hurt in that wreck, he had that 45 in

his hand, well he knocked it out of his hand with his own

gun. And took him on out. Because of my anxiety over the

whole thing they transferred me over to the far end of the

county stopping trucks and cars and everything else, because

they was afraid I was liable to really hurt him if I had a

chance. Or somebody else, I don't know which. But anyway,

we took him on to jail. And he was tried and executed

PAGE 59

shortly. I have a lot of information on that. That,

notifying his wife was a hard thing to do. Senneff called

my wife and wanted her to go and tell her what had happened

because we had become quite close knit, all of us boys down

there together. But she just couldn't do it so she called

Senneff back and he couldn't do it, but he picked up the

phone and called her and told her on the telephone. It was

the only way because he just couldn't come there and do it.

It affected him too much. We had a lot to do there in 38

hours we were out on this manhunt and everybody was pretty

tense. And I guess that pretty well covers it except for

the end of the year I was assigned back to the Orange Bowl

traffic control at the parade and that's when we had that V

formation I was telling you about in .the Patrol. And that's

just the first two years.

CW: All right. What about the funeral. Big one?

AF: Yes, it was a big funeral and we escorted the body all the

way down from the funeral parlor in Miami. It was, it was a

large funeral. It was attended by many police departments

too. But it was a rainy day. In fact they had to delay it

awhile because the rain was so bad. And you know the land

is not much height to the elevation of the land in Key West

as compared to sea level. So we had to think about that

too. I have a picture of his gravesite yet today. That

pretty much covered that, it was right at the end of the

year and the only thing we had after that was just the

Orange Bowl detail which we worked on traffic control at the

parade. This particular year we escorted the parade in a V

PAGE 60

formation of motorcycles. It was a very tight

organization. And we started out with one at the point and

ended up with I think there were five across the back. And

they were filled in solid there like a regular pyramid.

CW: That must have been, that must have been people out of the

second school.

AF: Well, we brought them in from the fifth district, they had

several in the, yeah, I would say there were some out of the

second school there.

CW: Okay, 1942.

AF: One of the things that happened in 1942 was Governor Holland

requested the legislature to increase the FHP to no less

than 120 nor more than 190 men. And to make four Captains,

eight Lieutenants and 16 Sergeants. This was when the

Driver's License fee was to go up to $1.00. And to require

exams for delinquents. And of course some of the facts

that, in 1941 there were 2290 licenses revoked and 389 were

suspended. But a revoked license restored to a person only

by a parole commission. I don't know whether that's still

in effect or not. But the suspension would be reinstated by

the director upon the recommendation of the sentencing

judge.

CW: Did you work closely with the Driver's License examiners

back then when they first got started?

PAGE 61

AF: I hired civilians when I became a ranking officer. And I

fired the first one I ever hired and Tallahassee wanted to

know why I fired him. I said because I felt that when I

found the man taking money on the side to pass the examinees

that I had the right to, and since you gave me the right to

hire him, I should have the right to fire him. And I heard

nothing more after that.

CW: Did you give Driver's License tests yourself?

AF: Oh, yes. Oodles of them way back as a patrolman.

CW: The test or the written?

AF: I gave written tests, I gave road tests. In the beginning

we just give verbal tests out of your own mind.

CW: What, what were some of the questions that you might ask

somebody?

AF: Well, if you are coming up to an intersection and there are

no stop signs and there was another car approaching the

intersection the same time as you were, which of the two of

you had the right-of-way.

CW: Okay.

AF: Well, it's always the one on the right. Things like that in

general. But of course it wasn't long before we began to

PAGE 62

get sheets of questionnaires. The first one we started out

with was on the DL 4 itself. On the back of it.

CW: DL 4 was what?

AF: The driver's license card.

CW: I'm looking at the DL 4.

AF: Yeah.

CW: And what it looks like an affidavit.

AF: That's right, sure.

CW: With all of the information and so forth on the front and it

looks like the actual written test for driving was on the

back.

AF: That's correct.

CW: And that became the driver's permanent file?

AF: That's right. That went to Tallahassee and there it was

kept supposedly in file cabinets alphabetically to determine

who was licensed and who wasn't. And it was as you say an

affidavit.

CW: And this particular test was given by Trooper Daniels.

PAGE 63

AF: That was, and this is the car there that he was driving that

night, my car. You notice on the side of the hood there a

little thing, black bar, that was neon lights that we had

stuck on the side of our cars. It wasn't official issue but

it was approved. We'd come up beside of a car and those

things would flash on State Patrol.

CW: I'll be.

AF: Yeah. They saw it right away at night. They knew it wasn't

somebody wrong. This is Paul's grave in Key West. I had

the gun that killed Paul, it was a 45 automatic and it was

promised to me to keep by the judge. That's a picture of it

right there. But it seems that that gun was involved in

another killing up in Ohio in Cincinnati. And the court

asked me if I would agree to let it go up there as evidence

and that I would get it back. That's the last I've seen of

it.

CW: Daniels' killer was in fact executed?

AF: Oh, yes, oh yes. I begged and pleaded with them to let me

go and pull the switch on it but they wouldn't do it.

CW: Where was this, up at?

AF: Raiford.

CW: Raiford. Old Sparky.

PAGE 64

AF: Yeah, I've seen executions.

CW: Is that right?

AF: Yeah.

CW: In your official capacity as a trooper?

AF: No. Before. But, Paul, it was a shame. That's him on his

motorcycle.

CW: What was the Broken, what was the Broken Spoke benefit back

then? What was paid to the next of kin, how much?

AF: I can find it out here for you. I have it in this file as

to exact how much money it was. But it was no money at all

to sit and speak of. Ten dollars and there wasn't that many

there.

CW: Up in 19 and 42 we started talking about 1942, did, did we

ever get the increase that was asked for in the legislature

for the 4 Captains and the 16 Sergeants. Did the

legislature approve all those positions?

AF: I have to assume that they did. I, I don't have documented

proof here to say it other than out of my own mind. So I

can't.

PAGE 65

CW: How about pay raises. Did you get any pay raises between

'39 and '41?

AF: Peanuts.

CW: Peanuts.

AF: Peanuts, yes. The system of civil service was set up at

that time and the only civil service really was

administration was changed to the Governor and six members

of the Cabinet. And that was J. Edwin Larson, the

Treasurer, Bob Gray, the Secretary of State, and Tom Watson,

who I knew real well with his red suspenders, an Attorney

General, and Colin English, Superintendent of Public

Instruction, Jim Lee was the Comptroller, and Nat Mayo was

the Commissioner of Agriculture. All good friends of mine,

real good friends. Nat Mayo goes way back, way, way back to

Governor Martin's day all in my family. Driver's License

Division I think I told you was transferred from the Motor

Division to Motor Vehicle Commission to the Department of

Public Safety. And I mentioned about Keith was now the,

sort of to administer it setting it up. But I knew they

sent him to different states to familiarize himself with the

operations that were required to do the job that he had to

governing the Driver's License.

CW: Clay Keith?

AF: Right. On the 26th of July, 1942, Dick Danner who was the

FBI special agent in Miami, he called on Tobe Bass and

PAGE 66

myself to assist in rounding up aliens. And this was during

the war. I have a clipping on that. That's where we went

in and we got, kicked down doors and everything else going

in, we were in civilian clothes. We didn't reflect FHP at

all. But we went in there to assist in rounding them up and

the Orange Bowl was a concentration camp for awhile.

CW: That, that seems like history repeats itself because they

used the Orange Bowl for the Mariel boat lift too.

AF: Sure.

CW: Where, where, where were the aliens coming from back then?

AF: They were peoples that were from these foreign countries

that were involved in the war.

CW: Trying to, refugees more or less trying to get out?

AF: No, people actually lived here, and so what we wanted to

find out from them was what did they have. What kind of an

agent are they or are they a citizen? A loyal citizen.

This occurred all over the country. Miami wasn't just one

of the places, it was all over.

CW: They had internment camps all over the place didn't they?

AF: Yeah, now you take out in Arkansas there, they had a lot of

Japs out there. But, I don't care to bring you up on any of

the commendation letters that I got from people, but like

PAGE 67

for the, well I mentioned a while ago at the riot down there

on the Keys. This Captain Crenshaw, he was a commandant at

the Navy base on Key West. A real nice commendation from

him as to how we functioned there in cooperation with his

contingent of the Marine Corps.

CW: Who else did you get commendations from?

AF: Oh, there's, I have letters all throughout my files here.

As you have time I can show them to you. They're numerous,

but like I say I'm not trying to glorify myself.

CW: No, this is good information.

AF: I remember one time in 1942 I apprehended a truckload of

slot machines coming south from Palm Beach to Miami. They

belonged to a fellow named Fry and I caught them and took

them in. It didn't make the Sheriff too happy. But anyway,

I did it because they were out there on the highway and I

had the right then to do it. I could see it.

CW: That was just part of the organized crime takeover down in

south Florida, the illegal gambling parlors and so forth?

AF: Oh they had been functioning long before the Patrol ever

organized. The old Purple Gang used to be there and they

had a place called Greenacres in Hallandale just east of US

1. It was a nightclub. You take Barbara, what's her name

on 20/20?

PAGE 68

CW: Walters.

AF: Barbara Walters. I knew her daddy. He had this big

nightclub down there on the causeway. Barbara was talking

about it one night when she was just a girl. I met these

gangsters. In fact one day the Fort Lauderdale police had a

torpedo man, for Dutch Schultz gang cornered in a car and

they were afraid to go up to him and get him out. I got

word of it. I just happened to be in the area and I pulled

in there in my car. I walked over to him and I found out

what it was and I saw he was just an ordinary guy, that's

all. So he had a gun, so did I. But, I walked over to him

and he was in this convertible. He was sitting there about

halfway between the seat. And I told him I said, you know

you can spill a lot of blood here but there isn't any sense

in it, why don't you come on and get out of here and these

officers want to get along with you just like everybody

else. I'd already flipped my holster loose. And, don't you

think it would really be better for you to cooperate a

little bit than it would to be creating a scene and maybe

get killed? He reached to the glove compartment but as he

did my gun hit his wrist. It didn't go any further. We

took him on out of the car. I turned him on over to the

police, got in my car and went on. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

CW: Ha, ha, ha.

AF: Those things happened, you know.

PAGE 69

CW: They still happen today.

AF: Yeah.

CW: Still happen today.

AF: Well, the Patrol you know they invested in rising machine

guns for awhile. 45 calibers. And I had one, and I had

tracer bullets. Did you ever fire those?

CW: Uh, uh. This is, this is history. This is history.

AF: Yeah, it's history. I mean you do things out there and yet

they fight you becoming a state police because the Sheriffs'

Departments did that an awful awful lot which I have records

on. At one time they didn't want this, but why weren't they

offering what the state of Florida could offer? See? But

you take different things like when the war came on there

was a very great shortage of rubber and we had to go to

these synthetic tires. And the speed limit had to be

dropped to 35 mph because if you went over 35 the tires

would blow out on you.

CW: About when did they start putting speed limits up, do you

remember?

AF: No, I can't say exactly, but I would say somewhere in the

year '41.

PAGE 70

CW: What was the maximum speed limit on an open highway before?

AF: 65.

CW: 65. And didn't it drop?

AF: 70, 70, 70, yes, it was 70 mph. And then they started

dropping it down. And of course during the war when it

really got on and then they put everything at 35 mph.

CW: Even the open roads?

AF: Everywhere, because they were on synthetic tires. Gasoline

rationing, you had to have coupons to get your gas. I had

so much gasoline anyway given to me because the airplane

crashes all around. It was not uncommon at all to see a

plane fall out there. I saw a plane one time do an

Immelman. That's an outside loop. The pilot didn't have

his belt on. He came out, the plane went on by itself. We

picked him up out of the ground. I picked up pilots out

there that were shredded like you'd shred lettuce. With the

aluminum structures of the planes had just when they hit the

ground they'd just bury into the ground, and just cut these

pilots up. I picked up bodies of them. Those were all of

the things that we did. But anyway, we gathered rubber. I

have a huge file on that, compliments of the Governor,

compliments of people. We took the proceeds when we cashed

in the rubber that we got and gave it to the Army and Navy

relief fund. But I had Indians out there helping me get old

tires and corsets and syringe bottles, anything you could

PAGE 71

think, out of the canals. I got pictures of the huge stack

of rubber tires and all that that we got. And the Chairman

of the Road Department came. I got Homer Rhodes who was

with the Game Commission to work with me. We went

everywhere that you could think of gathering this stuff.

Getting it in. And all this was going toward the war

effort. At the same time we weren't neglecting our work.

But you talk about Indians, they didn't want, if you were in

south Florida and had anything to do out there on Tamiami

Trail, they're a little bit squeamish back in those days

about being too friendly with a white person. But I was',

thought nothing of going into their chickee and sitting up

on the chickee with the, with the squaw and with the brave

together. I was welcome. I would take them into town with

me to the doctors and things like that, you know. During

hurricanes it was not uncommon to get them unwrapped from

around the trees out there afraid to turn loose and take

them back to the villages. We got along fine. I got lots

of pictures of Indians where they helped out with tires,

putting them in the back of my car and things like that.

Osceola, Corey Osceola who was the grandson of Osceola the

chief that you think about at St. Augustine, I've got a

picture of him in one arm, he and his wife, they were good

friends of mine. But that, it was some of the things that

the Patrol had an opportunity to establish. But, it was

about that time too that the Sheriffs were beginning to get

troubled. Because Walter Clark, who was Sheriff of Broward

County, was removed from his office then by Governor

Holland. There was quite a write-up on it and, but showing

you how things are, the state senate reinstated him. Put

PAGE 72

him back in office. Eddie Lee served as fill-in there for

awhile when Governor Holland put him there. But, I think

that when Governor Cone was there the one of the greatest

confusion and drop in morale started in the final years of

Governor Cone. Because it was obvious about favoritism.

CW: Who was the, who was the head of the Highway Patrol at this

time, in '42?

AF: Well now this was then coming, as I mentioned while ago

Jesse Gilliam.

CW: How long did he was he with us? About a year?

AF: No, he was longer than that. It was just when Caldwell came

in. And I can give you that. I'll have to go back to

this. This was in '40, it was in 45. Caldwell had taken

office and Gilliam would, let's see, it was in '45. I can

find a date for you as I go along here but.

CW: We'll probably pick that up.

AF: Yeah, you will. You'll pick it up. You know.

CW: But the morale was, the morale back then was going down?

AF: It was on a banana peel. And this was something that

climaxed under Governor Holland. Holland had a lot of

political favoritisms and the elevation in the ranks for

those who did not merit it was not uncommon to be seen.

PAGE 73

You'd hire men to go in there and make a Sergeant out of him

in no time at all. And put him over people who were really

dedicated, working their hearts out. And it, it affected

the morale.

CW: There was no written promotional exam or anything back then?

AF: None whatsoever.

CW: It was all appointed.

AF: Everything was appointed and that's the way it was. We had

even the Duke of Windsor came through once. This was in the

latter part of '42. He was in south Florida. I didn't have

anything to do with him. Mack Britt had him and some of the

Miami city officials. But I'm leading up to '43 here. I'm

getting into Harry Truman's situation. So I don't know.

CW: Let's, let's, we'll stop here and we'll go ahead and set up

another appointment and we'll finish off in 1942. We've got

a long way to go yet.

AF: Look at that. August 1, 1942, I was transferred back to Ft.

Lauderdale.

CW: Time is 1:15 PM September 18th, 1989.

CW: This interview is with Albert Fausett, the second interview

in conjunction with the Oral History Project for the 50th

Anniversary of the FHP. I'm Lieutenant Chuck Williams.

PAGE 74

We're at Mr. Fausett's home in Ocala. Today's date is

September 26th, 1989. The time is 10:15. Al we were

talking in the previous interview about some of the people

involved in the training at the first Highway Patrol school

down in Bradenton and I understand you've done some research

now insofar as those involved in the training of the first

trooper class. Who were some of those people?

AF: Well, first of all the school itself is housed at Manavista

Hotel, but their school work as far as auditorium space was

held on Memorial Pier. And the chief instructor was listed

as Captain George Mingle of the Ohio State Patrol. And of

course there was Jay T. Lowe, motorcycle officer of the

Duval County Road Patrol. And Sheriff C.J. Hutches of

Manatee County. He loaned his knowledge. And Bill Sheets,

he was a Bradenton police officer in the radio department.

He instructed us about radio and how obtain the radio

license we all received. And then there was Lieutenant Ben

Demby, D E M B Y, of the Miami Police Department, in charge

of radio down there. And there was Lieutenant O.W.

Whiteside of the Georgia Highway Patrol. There were FBI

agents there and they talked to us about fingerprinting and

the arts of how to preserve and gather information. And

there was the Red Cross people and National Safety Council

and of course the Attorney General was one of our speakers

at our graduation. There were other police officials there,

but that were competent enough to talk on Florida,

psychology.

PAGE 75

CW: The, the Red Cross, I assume, taught first aid back then.

AF: Yes. That was the limit of that.

CW: Okay. And the National Safety Council. Did you have like a

defensive driving course that you had to take through them?

AF: Well, they were trying to teach us more or less the, the act

of gaining proper information pertaining to accidents.

Because prior to that they had been very much interested in

factory injuries and things like that. But because of the

pressing demand of the highway accidents and injuries and

things they were wanting to really get into it. I forget

now the man's name but I do have it on file. But this was

one of their new fields that they were pushing on was

getting more statistics as to the cause of the accidents,

injuries, deaths on the highways. One of the things that

you talked to me about last week was about Paul Daniels and

his wife and how much did she receive. She received $1560

from the Broken Spoke Club. Because there was $10 apiece.

There was 156 members at that time according to the

newspaper clipping that I have.

CW: What, did you get an assessment every time somebody was

killed?

AF: Ten dollars per person, yes. See our original Broken Spoke

Club that we had, all of us that came out of the school were

classed as charter members. We didn't have an initiation

fee like they do today. But we were assessed $1 each month

PAGE 76

and in case of an accident or death or anything like that we

were assessed $10. In order to bring up, in case of an

injury why that was to bring up the injured person's salary

to the maximum level of what he was receiving then working

in conjunction with insurance.

CW: Broken Spoke did that as well as death benefits, then.

AF: Uh huh.

CW: Was there a board of directors of the Broken Spoke? Were

there folks in charge of it?

AF: Yes, we had three people that were in the Broken Spoke Club,

Stuart Senneff and I forget now, I can look it up, I don't

think it's that important. But I know that Stuart Senneff

was the secretary of it. He later on turned it over I think

to J.W. Hagans I believe, then became president of it or

something like that.

CW: Continuing on, I think, I think the last time we spoke we

left off with about 1942.

AF: Well, we still had the Orange Bowl facing us on the first

day there.

CW: Do you remember who played?

AF: No, I sure don't. I have no idea right now. I really

don't. But I know there always were some pretty good games,

PAGE 77

large crowds, enthusiasm for the old Orange Bowl. It, 1941

brought out a lot of things. We had Governor Holland in

there then. The legislature was requested to increase the

Patrol to no less than 120 and no more than 190. And to

make four Captains and eight Lieutenants and 16 Sergeants.

And I remember.

CW: Captains, Captains being what we now term the Troop

Commanders?

AF: Yes.

CW: They had more or less a region or district?

AF: Well back there the Captains had a division which had been

one third of the state. One third of the state. There was

the north, the central, and the south. That's the way it

was divided up. I don't know if you care to know about the

activities that occurred during the year in the courts and

so on. Statistics.

CW: Sure.

AF: The driver's license was increased to $1 and it was required

for exams on delinquents. Now there 2290 licenses revoked

in 1941 which was the previous year so we gathered this up.

There 389 suspensions. The revoked license was to be

PAGE 78

restored only by a parole commission. And the suspensions

were reinstated by the director on a recommendation of the

sentencing judge.

CW: Who was the director at this time?

AF: This was Gilliam. J.J. Gilliam.

CW: Were they testing for licenses at that point? There was to

be started there that Drivers License would require exams on

those who were delinquent. New ones that had not had a

driver's license, yes. But anybody who had a current, just

like today, all you did was renew it. What about the first

time licensee though, somebody just, just wanting a driver's

license for the first time?

AF: Well, in the early days they didn't require anything except

your money. You'd just go in there.

CW: They subcontracted to Sears and Roebuck, I think you could

buy a license in some cities.

AF: You probably could, I don't know about that. Most of us got

them from the county judge.

CW: When did they begin testing everybody for a driver's

license, do you recall?

AF: Well, I know that in '40, let's see when I was transferred

to Ft. Lauderdale in June of 1942 we were then giving

PAGE 79

driver's tests ourselves. We didn't even have civilian

employees. But it was shortly after that that as I will get

to it in the later portion of my statements here, that we

started having civilian employees doing that.

CW: What kind of driver's test, did you give the written as well

as the road test?

AF: We used that DL 4, the jacket that was put in the files in

Tallahassee after we had them answer the questions on the

back of that. And if they were able to do that and

satisfactorily show how to park and give hand signals how

they stopped, whether they stopped or just slowed down for

stop signs, and how they could back in to the curbing and

things like that.

CW: Did you have a, where there any patrol stations, Highway

Patrol stations in 1942?

AF: No. Only Division headquarters.

CW: Where did work, out of the local Sheriffs?

AF: Out of the local Sheriff's office. That's all.

CW: And I guess you conducted your driver's license operation

out of the same office?

AF: No, we managed to get the county commissioners to set off a

room within the courthouse. I know that in our particular

PAGE 80

case in Broward County we were expanding, and expanding, and

expanding and what little spaces we had became way too small

and we kept appealing to them for larger and larger. Which

they always did come around and give us additional space.

But we would use a room somewhere near the Sheriff's

Department. Because we felt that we should keep close to

them. We'd never know when we'd find somebody that comes in

that we'd need the assistance there of the Sheriff's

Department.

CW: How were the duties, how were the driver's license duties

spread out. Did you, did everybody take their turn or one

day a week or two days a week that you'd get the driver's

license function? Or how did you work that?

AF: Well, back in those early days we didn't have anybody to

spread it out to. It fell upon us ourselves. And we would

say, take one day a week and if anything happened on the

road why that's one reason why we were close to the

Sheriff's office. If a call should come in from a

distressed, from a scene out there, well then we just had to

pick up and go. But, 1943, as we increased the personnel

why then we were able to keep people on the road as well as

take one of them to give the driver's test. And that was

the beginning of starting to hire civilians which were put

into a uniform. I was transferred as I mentioned there to,

back-2to Ft. Lauderdale from south Miami in June of '42 and I

was placed under Sergeant Small. I was also sent to a

training school to assist and I forget now exactly whether

it was '42 or '43. I think it was '43 that I was sent there

PAGE 81

that I helped on teaching motorcycles. Had them riding in

and out of these tires and things like that and how to lay

them down in case you had to and how to protect yourself in

case you knew you were going to have a collision. I helped

out on first aid because I was a recognized instructor by

the Red Cross of first aid. And, did a lot of the drilling

because I was familiar with drilling having been in the

military school and was recognized by the Pentagon who sent

their generals down to inspect our school and they cited me

for my abilities there in the use of automatic weapons like

machine guns. I tied the all-time record for field

stripping when blindfolded. And, they wanted me to come

back to the school as a student the following year and teach

military science and tactics, so I felt qualified to help

there on the drilling and I guess the department did too.

And one thing too learned in the school that I knew how to

take care of equipment. And I was picked to that and while

there I did compose, I think this department still uses it,

but it's an equipment care report, where in going through

your territory you inspect your man to see how his

equipment, his car, and maintenance of his vehicle,

maintenance of his uniform, all of those sort of things.

CW: We still do that today. A few more things that we have to

check now, but we still do the monthly inspection.

AF: There was at this time the war was on, I had come very close

to Dick Danner who was then the Chief Special Agent for the

FBI in the Miami area. And he called on Tobe Bass and

myself to go in civilian clothes and to assist in rounding

PAGE 82

up aliens. We used the Orange Bowl as a concentration camp

down there. We did gather, I have clippings there that can

verify this, that it's not out of my head, I have proof of

it. We did collect an awful lot and we had to break down a

few doors here and there because the element of surprise was

the thing that we wanted to try to keep foremost. And not

just go up and knock on the door. We went in the we found

quite a few things although it's doubtful that they would

have been able to create much in the way of sabotage. As

those who came ashore from submarines later, which I can

tell you about as to when it happen and what really took

place. The FBI was having a war traffic school about then

and they invited the members of the Patrol in that area,

which I was one, and the various other police departments to

attend it. And it was really.

CW: What's a war traffic school?

AF: Well, it has to do with your responsibilities in the case of

movement of troops on the highways. It has to do with

security of the coastline, the enforcement of vehicles that

were being used on the roads, that they had blackout

headlights. Which meant that better than 50% of the

headlight was painted on the top half so that they couldn't

be seen from above. A light can be seen on the road, but as

to the vehicle itself it wouldn't illuminate so much. It

has to do with the governing of lighthouses even, showing

that their candlepower would be decreased. Because this is

something that I will be telling you about later how it

would make it perfect for a submarine to land offshore to
PAGE 83

pick out ships between them and the lighthouse. Which they

did. I know you get flashbacks every once in awhile of

things that did occur. It can go on and on and on.

CW: Obviously 1943 began with the famous Orange Bowl detail.

AF: Yeah. It always had traffic there at the Orange Bowl. The

Highway Patrol it just seemed that they were in demand to be

there. And there were two occasions that occurred in the

first part of the year that I was assigned to which I think

is worthy of mention. I got my assignments by radio, I

didn't have anything in writing. I was called to meet the

neighboring patrol car coming down. And the reason for

meeting it was that they were bringing who was then the

United States Senator Harry Truman, who was chairman of the

Dies Committee. Well, when he got there to me, I don't know

it seemed that we built up a pretty close relationship.

Because I had him on two different occasions and spent a lot

of time with him. When we got to Ft. Lauderdale he wanted

to go by Walter Clark's house where we did go there and

nothing was ever private from me at any time, the

conversations, what took place, and so on. Then, I'll show

how an ordinary person he is, he said I'm hungry, what about

us going out in the kitchen and getting something to eat?

So, okay, we'll do that. So he and I went out and left

Walter in the house there. He said I'm going to make the

sandwiches, how about you pouring the drinks? Well, of

PAGE 84

course this was not, this was soft drinks of course. And

things like that. Anytime he was in the area why I was with

him all the time.

CW: Did he ride in your patrol car with you?

AF: Right on the front seat. Right in the front seat. He'd

never sit in the back. He's just plain old Harry up there.

He was a plain individual. He did some wild things while he

was down there which I'll discuss at a later time when he

dedicated the Everglades National Park which is also in the

encyclopedias to back up what I'm telling you. It was

shortly after that the new Overseas Highway was being built

and was coming along well. That's when Governor Holland

came down and he inspected the, the highway which was a

great change from the old, old highways that we had there.

CW: Was this, was this Spessard Holland?

AF: This was Spessard Holland. Yeah. There was a call that

went to me, I don't know why they picked on me, but I guess

it was because I had been to the FBI School that they had

there in Miami as I mentioned previously about the war

traffic school that the city of Ft. Lauderdale was having a

defense for police training for recruits. And they were

working in conjunction with the home guard. And they called

me there to give a lecture to them, which I did. I can

never forget that one night a taxi was stolen by means of

armed robbery and I got the call on the radio and it was

stolen in Ft. Lauderdale and I was ten miles south in

PAGE 85

Hollywood. I got the radio call and it said it was a

sailor. Well, I knew right where he was going to be going

with that thing. It was just a hunch, and so I went right

straight to the Hollywood Beach Hotel where they were

housed. In comes the car, the sailor jumps out and goes

inside, and I go right to the duty officer, find out who it

was and he told me that it was a boy that just checked. His

name was Stewartz. And, Stewartz, that's just too

familiar. A thousand miles away, twelve hundred miles away

I knew this boy's family before he was ever born. And I

went on up there with the Shore Patrol right to his room and

I said, Cooney, that was his nickname, get up from there.

And, sure enough that was him. He was the one who had

stolen this car by means of firearms. He didn't shoot the

man or anything like that but he stole the car, so in the

brig he went. We were very cooperative with the military

and the military was cooperative with us. And whenever we

picked up a serviceman we usually turned it over to the

military courts and I would go to the courts as a witness if

necessary and so on. They got good punishment in the

military courts. And we, we had the freedom to go about on

their bases with our firearms on us. And I refused to go on

the base unless I did have it because I considered myself

out of uniform if I didn't have my gun on the side of me the

same as the MPs had. The people at the taxi company were,

just couldn't believe, but anyway they wrote a nice letter

to the department-about it and it was also in a magazine.

The state guard had a lot of volunteers and they were taking

on recruits as fast as they could. They had to drill them

with firearms and they called on me to come in there and

PAGE 86

help them with their firearms. Which I considered that an

honor. There was time too that the Sheriff, D.C. Coleman,

down in Dade County had his men pick up this Vincent

Christy, who was a murderer who killed a whole entire

Leopold family. That was quite a thing back in those days.

And they had him in custody and they, they had fear of

getting him to Miami without sufficient escort. So they

called on me to escort them, and I went with them all the

way to the Dade County Courthouse. Which I have a picture

of that. And then next thing after that may have not been

the first, but it's the first one I've heard about, I had to

shoot a boy down there one night. He was a soldier, he

stole a car. And he ran around the house, and I had an MP

and the Shore Patrol with me. I hollered at him to halt and

he wouldn't do it. I told him, I said if you don't stop I'm

going to shoot you. Well, when I said that he headed right

straight to my car which was setting there with the door

open because I was after him so fast so I just leveled it

out there and shot him. I've got pictures of it showing

where he was hit. In the hospital it shows the operation,

the removal of the bullet which I still have today.

CW: Did you kill him?

AF: No. I didn't intend to. But it was a very well delivered

bullet right into the shoulder, right shoulder, it went

right down his arm and stopped between the wrist and the

elbow. And I'll show you those pictures if you want to see

them later. Then we began to have technicians working on

our radios. Before that we always had to depend on local

PAGE 87

police departments to help us out. I have a picture here of

John Conyers who was one of our patrolmen who knew quite a

bit about radios but he got into the radio division of it

and started checking the radios from place to place,

different ones. It was during this year of 1943 that many

things occurred. World War II was exploding all over the

place. All vehicles were required to operate with the upper

half of the headlights painted black. As I mentioned awhile

ago, the lighthouse lights were reduced to at least 50%.

I'm thinking particularly about the one that was in my own

neighborhood there right close to the Gulf Stream called

Hillsborough Lighthouse at Pompano. And in the beginning

the FBI agents, Army and Navy intelligence, they rode with

me constantly. I never was alone anymore. And as they were

trained from time to time they had MPs developing the

knowledge of what they were to do and got the Shore Patrol

learning. Then they started replacing the military

intelligence people with me. Well, dealing with military

patrols on foot along Highway A1A which was the oceanfront

there at nighttime, it was a very ticklish thing at first.

They were all very green people and many of them were scared

to death. These young boys were fresh out of the farms and

off of plows and handed a rifle, and some of them had never

had such thing in their hands before. It was not uncommon

to come up on a patrol at night and have the CO, I can

remember one Lieutenant that was in charge of this squad,

platoon, and he'd stand there with his sidearm in his hand

and just shaking like he was having a severe chill. He was

frightened. He didn't know whether I was the enemy or not.

His men, I've seen them pull back the bolts on their rifles

PAGE 88

and shaking so that they couldn't even get it back into

place there. They were a brave bunch of boys. They were

actually scared that they knew that their area was being

patrolled along the Gulfstream by German submarines. There

had been landings by rubber rafts and they came ashore to

certain arranged areas. And I've had rockets shot right

over my patrol car at night. They were coming both from the

ocean and from the land. So I was able to contact the State

Road Department engineers and actually get a pinpoint as to

exactly where these things were coming from on the land

side. And this was given to my friends in the FBI at once

and they closed in on a Gulf Service Station that was

located on Oakland Park Road and A1A. Well right in behind

the station in a protected area there was a little small

homemade shack and it had six bunks in it. And these bunks

were found and had been occupied. And this operator was

posing as a seashell outlet, selling seashells there at that

service station just as a rouge. Information in quizzing

him revealed that he'd been making trips to the upper

Florida Keys and was charting the various channels for

submarine use. And since it had been established that the

saboteurs had been put ashore here, even one ran out of his

shoe when he landed, and it was sufficient to suspicion that

the Gulf Station operator as a contact for the enemy. The

fact too was that submarines were known to be in the area is

the ships were being torpedoed along the Hillsborough

light. That's by the lighthouse itself. And the area

proved that they were in existence out there. It also

refers to a story that I have on the back of a clipping here

about saboteurs on the Florida coast and the submarines, in

PAGE 89

the newspaper. I have a copy of it. The outline of the

ships that were passing the lighthouse even though reduced

in candlepower became a perfect target for torpedoes. They

could see them come through and break that light and get the

outline. The activity was confirmed on page 1 of the Miami

Herald dated July the 26th, 1942. Dick Danner as I

mentioned earlier was my friend. And I've had much

correspondence with him through the years since. My friend

and special agent in charge of the Miami FBI saw to it that

I was almost always accompanied by one of his men. The

information that we learned was what they call very

classified. So much so that it did not become known beyond

his office. In fact the department didn't even know a lot

of it. There was a case when a Navy blimp was searching the

waters off Hillsborough when a German sub surfaced right out

there in those shallow waters this side of the Gulfstream.

And it surfaced right underneath the blimp. Well, it used

its deck guns because they opened the hatch and came out and

got that deck gun and they shot down the blimp. But before

that blimp completely fell to the water they were able to

use their radio and they called in to the Ft. Lauderdale

Naval Air Station which was just a few miles away. It

didn't take them long to get their Grumman TBFs in the air.

And they were right out there and those waters being shallow

until you get out past the Gulfstream, and they found the

sub and they blew him to pieces. I had proof of that

because I had a mattress that came out of that sub and I

kept it for years and years. A bunk mattress like they use

on the submarines. -Well, all of this here caused an

activity on the. part of the Patrol in delivering blood. We

PAGE 90

used to have to go to Miami to Jackson Memorial and pick up

case after case of raw blood and we rushed it. This was in

the early days of those transfusions back there then. They

didn't have as much chance of doing much Pasteurizing or

whatever was necessary with the blood. And we had to rush

it by FHP from Miami to the vicinity of Vero Beach for the

merchant seamen who were on the ships that were torpedoed

just offshore. Well this struck home to me one day when one

of our own FHP was on one of those ships as a seaman. It

was long ago and I've lost his name. I think it was Johnny

Patterson, but I don't remember now. But I'll never forget

waiving goodbye to him standing there on shore and he was up

on the high deck there and waiving goodbye to me when he

pulled out from Port Everglades.

CW: Was he with the Patrol and then went to sea?

AF: Yeah. He went to sea because of the fact he was like others

in the Patrol that was not married. So consequently they

got drafted. The draft board refused to take me. I tried

my best to get them to take me but they would not do it.

Because I was married and had a family. No, I didn't have

family yet, I was just married. But they wouldn't take me.

But he was taken and he did like others, he enlisted. It

was my understanding that that was his first trip and his

last trip. Because I understand that ship was hit as soon

as they got out to sea. And, on the very first day. Well,

we had not only that to go by, we had visual proof that

things were happening because as much oil that washed ashore

on the beaches and lot of tar that comes out of engine

PAGE 91

rooms, difficult to get off your shoes. If you were out

there on the beach swimming and got it on your feet you

would have to take mineral spirits to get it off, because it

really stuck. The information that came back to the various

intelligence agencies revealed that happenings were

happening long before the media ever became aware of it. We

knew what was taking place on the battlefront. Well, that

pretty well covered '43. We got '44 coming up if you want

me to go into that unless you have any questions.

CW: Was, was, was the Highway Patrol involved in, in coast

watching and all, or just, I mean, you just more or less

took care along A1A?

AF: You took care of your own assigned territory. And where the

need was the most I felt in my particular case I had no

instructions one way or the other, but I felt that my public

safety was. Public safety, that's all. That's protecting

the people. And the Sheriff's department were quite nill in

those days. They were interested in trying to help out on

home guard and things like that but as far as being out and

patrolling the areas like we were. And it seemed that the

FBI had a choice in the matter too because they certainly

worked me over time. I was glad to be of service.

CW: 1944.

AF: Yeah, this was another year, we still had the situation

there to take care of. I was awarded a Certificate of

Achievement in Basic Procedure in Law Enforcement from the

PAGE 92

University of Florida right at the first of the year there.

The thing was necessary that these kind of polishings up is

necessary constantly, otherwise people can get real rusty,

they can get in ruts. But there was so much activity back

there then that there wasn't much of a chance to get in a

rut believe me. We were constantly being kept in pistol

practice. The FHP was. I have pictures here showing us,

quite a group of us, two different pictures where we were in

Port Everglades where the Ft. Lauderdale Police Department

had their pistol range there and we'd keep pretty sharp on

that all the time. Then about that same time too as the

military was around they have bivouac here and bivouac

there, I had an incident come up that's kind of embarrassing

to me. The Chief of Police of Ft. Lauderdale who is well

known there, well liked, in sports and in police work in the

community and everything else, he made a big mistake. He

went to Miami one time in a city car in uniform, came back

and he stopped by the country club out there and played a

little poker and took on a few little drinks to the point

where he was deprived of his normal faculties. And darkness

overtook him so when he headed for home his visibility must

have been quite obscured. Anyway a narrow little old street

coming into Ocala, I mean to Ft. Lauderdale, just outside

the city there was a platoon of, or company rather, more

than just a platoon of soldiers out there on bivouac. They

were marching single file along both sides of the road. And

they had their Captain with them. And he was driving down

the road there, the Chief was, meeting this car in the

opposite direction. He crossed over the center line and hit

this car and then bounced off of it and went over off the

PAGE 93

road and hit three of the soldiers. And he went out into

the sand there where it was quite sandy in that area and got

stuck. He kept trying to get the thing out of there and go

off and leave them. So the soldiers surrounded him and

stopped him. In the meantime the police department came out

there, which was out of their jurisdiction, and they tried

to help him in every way they could. But, the Captain of

the Army insisted they call the Highway Patrol. I just

happened to be in the station at the time and I got the

call. I had to go out there. Well, they had sobered him

enough, pouring chewing gum to him as fast as they could to

change his breath. To say that he was totally deprived of

his faculties at the time that I got there, I couldn't

testify to that. But the physical evidence warranted me

after talking to the prosecuting attorney that we had

sufficient grounds to charge him with willful and wanton

disregard for human life and property. Which we did. And

that went into quite a hassle, a jury trial, and it bounced

back and forth there for quite awhile. The jury convicted

him. The city fired him. The civil service board asked me

if I would accept the job as Chief of Police and I told them

no. So they appointed their assistant chief as acting chief

until they could make up their minds what they were going to

do. That was an ordeal that I didn't care to be a part of,

but I had no choice in the matter. Well, most of the year

was just involved with routine patrol work, court cases, and

awareness of the needs of the area but one of the needs that

I noticed with concern was the availability of ammunition on

the part of all the police officers up and down my

territory. I found like for instance in Hallandale there

PAGE 94

was one police officer didn't have but two bullets in his

gun. And he couldn't buy them. Hardware stores didn't have

them. It's because most of the ammunition was going to the

Navy in 38 caliber. 45 caliber was going to the Army. But

there was a friend of mine named Eddie Myers who came on the

Patrol. I had known him for years and he had served my

father who was Chief of Police in Ocala as a representative

of an arms company. And in talking with Eddie I was able to

get him to make contact with Peters Arms Company. And they

agreed to send me in case lots ammunition. Which I in turn

doled out to the police up and down the line. But it was

quite a situation there for awhile. When you see a police

officer out there with one and two bullets in his gun and

that's all he had.

CW: You didn't practice very much, obviously.

AF: I did. I practiced because I had ammunition but the police

themselves didn't because they didn't have the ammunition to

do it with. The department with Eddie Myers coming into the

scene started reloading, making wadcutters as we call them,

the blunt-nosed bullets. We did a lot of practice there and

I was able to get a lot of ammunition out of the military.

They had so much of it. And they would always invite me to

their ranges, and I stayed and practiced there with them a

lot. And so there wasn't any particular shortage there as

far as I was concerned. That's why I felt that anything you

could do to help a brother officer regardless of what

uniform he was wearing, I'd try to do it. -On occasions

after training school because of our marksmanship Red Martin

PAGE 95

who was a Captain of the central division later on, and then

Jay Hall who was up in Tallahassee for years, and myself and

there was one other, I forget who it was now. I don't

remember whether it was Homer Clay or who it was but we used

to demonstrate firearms and marksmanship. And this proved

helpful to me when I got called on by Captain Jack Fannon,

the home guard, to instruct his people in the home guard how

to train the recruits, how to use firearms. All those

things paid off. And because of the many military bases in

my area there was always troop movement as I mentioned

awhile ago. This called for much coordination between the

state and city and county police. It wasn't just a case you

get in front of a car and take it down the road. When you

have three, as much as one time I had four hundred plus

trucks and that included troops with full equipment. And

they were headed for ports of embarkation. The city police

were always kept on the routes more than anything else. And

the FHP usually did the escorting. And they were on the

routes to help us to keep people from running out in front

of us. As they would do it once in awhile. Some of them

would get impatient sitting there when you've got three and

four hundred trucks rolling through a city like Miami. They

get impatient and want to come out. Well, there were times

when this occurred and some of them just didn't realize that

we were at war, and that they had to stay there. Well, we

were losing men too, we had lost 20 of them all told in the

draft, or either by enlistment.

CW: Twenty troopers?

PAGE 96

AF: Yes, and Director Gilliam would not replace these men when

they were called into the service. I have a clipping that

backs that up. But that pretty much covers 1944. Things,

there were a lot more things happen but this could go on and

on. In 1945 as I had mentioned to you when I talked to you

last time that I had nearly a trunkload of correspondence

with records of all kinds that I had destroyed. I didn't

see the need of keeping them. I didn't anticipate this day

to come and that I figured that FHP would have a lot of this

stuff. I still got the memories of those things and

wherever I can bring it out, I'll be glad to do it. But

during this period things were in a turmoil in the Patrol.

And there was a lot of jealousy among the ranking officers

that had been friendly brothers you might say in the

service. And it was very obvious and this was being

reflected down through the ranks and was putting resentment

of one district against the other. And for an example on

that, you might be in the fifth district and you come over

into my district and I've got FHP issued gun in my holster

with the handle on there like they issued. But you'd be

wearing a pearl handle. Well, I couldn't do it because I

wasn't instructed to do that, or wasn't permitted to do it.

But these are some of the little silly things that were

occurring but it hit home with a lot of the fellows. Some

of them were having special little things on their patrol

cars. Different ways, little things on their uniform. And,

it, it was just one of these things that created a bad

situation. That it, the brother up there in Pensacola had

PAGE 97

to wear it a certain way, the one in Key West should wear it

the same way too. But it was not that way, it was beginning

to get.

CW: Go according to district?

AF: Yeah. And whoever the CO was there, he was allowing these

things, or either setting the example himself. Well, the

pot came to a boil between Director Gilliam and Captain

Senneff. It was quite a, I have quite a clipping on that

thing as to the turmoil that took place, and the Governor

discussing it and the Cabinet. And Gilliam resigned

effective August the 15th, 1945. Before doing so, he

preferred charges against Senneff. In the meantime, Tobe

Bass, who was one of the original troopers stationed with me

in Ft. Lauderdale from the first school, we'd had a lot

together. A lot of instruction one to the other, criticism

one to the other, what you would call beneficial

instruction. We worked together and we had a lot of harmony

and a lot of respect for each other. We became very good

friends and we remained respectful of one another from the

training school on and we kept discussing the unrest in the

Patrol. And what could be done to get who we figured was

the right man back in the Patrol, and that was Neil Kirkman

who was the one in charge of the old Patrol under Scholtz.

He was in charge of the Patrol in the beginning under Fred

P. Cone before he brought Bill Reid in and, and Pig Green.

I suggested to Tobe myself that my family had been host many

times and friends since and including way back when Governor

John Martin was the Governor way before Scholtz. And right

PAGE 98

here in Marion County. And right down to well including

United States Senator Park Trammell who was apparently a

very good friend of mine because he recommended me in an

appointment to West Point which I turned down. And I

figured there was influence down to Nat Mayo who was a

Marion County man who had known my grandfather since the

early days of each of them. And Claude Pepper himself. I

figured that something might be done to get Kirkman out of

the Army, where he was stationed in the Army. We knew where

he was and so we figured, I suggested that I write to him.

I wish that I had kept copies of that, but that was part of

the stuff in the trunk and that I had gotten his reply back

to see just how it was. He responded and he welcomed any

support that we could give him. And the one letter that I

have here in my file right now reflects his attitude about

me when he was writing to me when I got hurt that one time

later on in '45, or '46. But he wrote some very personal

things. He was anxious to get back to the Patrol. So

knowing that he was in Ft. George Meade in Maryland, why as

I say, I wrote to him and got his reply back. Well Governor

Caldwell had taken office and from all indications it looked

like he was just going to instill a little merit in the

Patrol. We felt very confident that this man was going to

make things straight down the road. So between Tobe Bass

and myself, we seemed through the families and friends to

help get Kirkman out of the Army and to appeal to Governor

Caldwell, which was successful. My side obtained Senator

Pepper's influence. He was the United States Senator then.

He wasn't just the Congressman after George Smathers had his

little set to with him. We were able to get Nathan Mayo, Ed

PAGE 99

Larson, they all with their votes and petition to Governor

Caldwell which apparently he favorably accepted it, because

with Bob Gray on the part of Tobe Bass he worked on him and

when you've got those kind of commitments and it seemed that

Caldwell was very anxious to make the change. Particularly

after what had happened. So he, he knew, I knew that

Kirkman was stationed in Ft. Meade and on August the 15th he

was officially offered the job as State Director of Public

Safety to be filled within 60 days. So Olin Hill who was a

good officer had been promoted temporarily as Captain and

acting as Director. And it was on that same day, let's see,

August the 14th it was, yeah, that same day Senneff resigned

as Captain of the southern division and also Sergeant Ray

Small resigned and went to the Ft. Lauderdale Police

Department. And Lieutenant Tobe Bass was transferred to Ft.

Lauderdale to take charge of the southern division. And

Lieutenant Mack Britt was assigned in charge of the fifth

district at Ft. Myers. October the 16th, 1945, Kirkman came

to Tallahassee to accept as Director. He not only had been

offered but he came now to accept it. It was early in 1945

that I was occupied with considerable accidents and arrests

and vandalism and car thefts and military personnel. And in

December I had, I don't know why, but they invited me, the

Railroad Commission invited me to their convention at Miami

Beach for services rendered to them during the railroad

strike that they had. And on the 4th, 5th, and 6th I was a

guest of J.M. Lee and Ed Larson at the 30th convention at

Roney Plaza. And so I was granted an assignment there to be

with them. It was on the first of December 1945 that I was

promoted to Sergeant after six years. And, my dates are a

PAGE 100

MILLISECOND	CLASS.METHOD	MESSAGE
0	sobekcm_page_globals.constructor
0	sobekcm_page_globals.constructor	Application State validated or built
0	sobekcm_database.verify_item_lookup_object
0	sobekcm_page_globals.constructor	Navigation Object created from URI query string
0	sobekcm_database.verify_item_lookup_object
0	sobekcm_page_globals.display_item	Retrieving item or group information
0	sobekcm_page_globals.get_entire_collection_hierarchy	Retrieving hierarchy information
0	sobekcm_assistant.get_entire_collection_hierarchy
0	cached_data_manager.retrieve_item_aggregation
0	cached_data_manager.retrieve_item_aggregation	Found item aggregation on local cache
0	item_aggregation_builder.get_item_aggregation	Found 'all' item aggregation in cache
0	system.web.ui.page.page_load (ufdc.page_load)
0	sobekcm_page_globals.constructor.on_page_load
0	html_echo_mainwriter.add_style_references	Adding style references to HTML
0	html_echo_mainwriter.add_text_to_page	Reading the text from the file and echoing back to the output stream
4	html_echo_mainwriter.add_text_to_page	Finished reading and writing the file

MILLISECOND

CLASS.METHOD

MESSAGE

sobekcm_page_globals.constructor

Application State validated or built

sobekcm_database.verify_item_lookup_object

sobekcm_page_globals.constructor

Navigation Object created from URI query string

sobekcm_database.verify_item_lookup_object

sobekcm_page_globals.display_item

Retrieving item or group information

sobekcm_page_globals.get_entire_collection_hierarchy

Retrieving hierarchy information

sobekcm_assistant.get_entire_collection_hierarchy

cached_data_manager.retrieve_item_aggregation

Found item aggregation on local cache

item_aggregation_builder.get_item_aggregation

Found 'all' item aggregation in cache

system.web.ui.page.page_load (ufdc.page_load)

sobekcm_page_globals.constructor.on_page_load

html_echo_mainwriter.add_style_references

Adding style references to HTML

html_echo_mainwriter.add_text_to_page

Reading the text from the file and echoing back to the output stream

html_echo_mainwriter.add_text_to_page

Finished reading and writing the file