Thursday's Internet Edition, August 28, 2008.

“But the hardest part of the job was knocking on someone’s door to tell them they had lost a son or daughter in a traffic accident,” he said. “It’s the toughest thing I ever had to do.”

But those aren’t the first things that come to his mind as the recently retired Spencer police chief looks back at his career.

In fact, this is the second time Williams has retired. He served almost 22 years in the State Police before retiring in 1994. The next 12-1/2 years were with the Spencer Police Dept., where he retired again this month.

Williams, now 56, grew up in South Charleston, where his father worked for Union Carbide and his mother for the state teachers retirement board.

He was one of three children, all boys. His identical twin, Larry, is an optometrist in Buckhannon, while his younger brother, David, works in hospital equipment sales in Florida.

“Larry was the star student and David was the star athlete, and there I was in the middle,” he recalls.

After graduating from South Charleston High School in 1969, Williams enrolled at Morris Harvey College, now the University of Charleston. In college he decided police work was the career for him.

“I did an internship with the Charleston Police Dept.,” he said. “It was pretty exciting.”

Instead of hanging around the station, students in the internship actually rode around with officers for a full eight-hour shift, getting involved in ways that wouldn’t even be allowed today.

“I remember one night I was standing in the middle of Washington Manor (a housing project in downtown Charleston),” he said. “An officer gave me a shotgun and told me not to let anyone past. I was only 18 and I thought I was going to get shot.”

Williams also worked for an ambulance service in college and was in the first class of certified EMTs in the state. His co-workers and classmates included Mike Rutherford, currently the Kanawha County Sheriff, and Jim Akers, now deceased, who both joined the Kanawha Sheriff’s Dept.

“My dad had a couple of friends in the State Police and they pointed me that way,” Williams said.

The entry age for the State Police Academy had been lowered from 21 to 18 during the Vietnam War, and Williams was only 20 when he told his parents of his decision.

“I sat down with my parents and they told me they would support me a hundred percent, as long as after I got out of the (State Police) academy I would finish my college education,” he said.

Williams entered the six-month training course and was one of the smallest and youngest members of the class.

“Probably a third of them were veterans who had already been in the service,” he said. “I was just a kid.”

Some 53 started the class, and Williams was one of 45 to finish. He said about 20 ended up retiring from the State Police.

His first assignment was in Parkersburg. But to keep his word to his parents, two nights a week he drove to Charleston to continue college.

In January, 1974 he was sent to Spencer, a town he had visited only once before. Little did he realize it would be his new home.

“I thought it was a nice little town, but I didn’t know a soul,” he said.

The first people he met were his co-workers at the Spencer detachment, Sgt. Carl Wilson, Cpl. Stanley Rexrode and Tfc. Ken Beckett.

“We had a good detachment,” he said. “All those guys were really concerned about the people of Roane County.”

Williams said his average workweek as a young trooper was 65 to 68 hours, with night calls two or three times a week.

“You’d come in at 9, usually take lunch from 12 to 1, and go home at 5, have some dinner and rest a little,” he said. “You’d come back out about 7, and, if things were slow, you could go home at midnight. But some nights you were out until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning.

“Every day was exciting,” he said. “During the day we would work criminal investigations, and at night we would work the road.”

Williams said the lessons he learned from his fellow officers were invaluable.

“Those three guys were great interviewers,” he said. “They taught me how to do it.”

He also continued making trips to Charleston, until he finished college in 1978 with a degree in sociology and a psychology minor.

“My mother wanted all three of her boys to get a college degree, and she got her wish,” he said.

After 13 years in Spencer, in 1987 Williams was promoted to corporal and assigned to the Big Chimney detachment.

“A lot of people on the Elk River have relatives from southern Roane County,” he said. “It was just like working in Roane County.”

Williams said he continued working the same way, too.

“One thing we were big on in Roane County was community-oriented policing,” he said. “The troopers were able to interact with the community.

“It was nothing for me to be working on a Saturday afternoon and see some teenagers playing basketball,” he said. “I’d pull my cruiser over, put my gun in the trunk and play basketball with the kids for an hour.

“I even coached youth basketball at halftime of the high school games wearing my uniform,” he said. “We lived in that uniform.”

Williams also learned from city and county officers. He said longtime city officer and Spencer Police Chief Ralph Miller was invaluable when he was looking for someone.

“If you were looking for anybody, he knew their third cousin once removed,” Williams said. “If they were on vacation, he knew where they went and when they’d be back.”

Although Williams would go on to other detachments, he continued to live in Spencer, where he raised his family.

He was promoted to sergeant and in 1988, when Big Chimney closed, he was sent to the South Charleston detachment. The next year he became commander of the Grantsville detachment and in1992 he was promoted to First Sergeant and named district commander of detachments in Weston, Glenville and Sutton.

He retired from the State Police in 1994 and the next year went to work for the Spencer Police Dept. In 2001 he was named police chief.

He found his new job a lot like the police work he knew when he started out.

“You have more contact with people on a daily basis,” he said. “That’s what I like.”

With the Spencer force, Williams recalls the day an elderly woman called after a snowstorm to say she couldn’t get out for her groceries.

He picked the woman up, dropped her off at the store and asked when she would be finished.

“I came back in about half an hour, took her home and even helped her carry her groceries in,” he said. “Those are the little things that stick with you, and that’s what I like doing.

“Society has changed, and police work has changed,” he said. “With all the 911 technologies and the calls they get, the officers don’t always have the time to spend with people like we did.”

But Williams said that technology also has its upside.

“At the Spencer Police Dept. we have laptop computers in the cars with wireless Internet. It’s unbelievable,” he said. “But even with all the equipment and the training we have access to now, the one-on-one personal contact with people is still the best way to operate.”

For Williams, one thing will never change, and that’s the memories.

Williams recalls while he was working in Kanawha County, the same elderly woman would call every month to say that she thought someone had tried to break in her home.

Williams would go out, check her locks, and sit down and have a cup of coffee with the woman.

“She just wanted to know that someone in a uniform was around and she was safe,” he said. “It’s wonderful when you can do things like that for people.”

Williams said he plans to take it easy for a few months, hitting the golf course and spending time with his family. He may go back to work again, or he may not.

But he’ll always have the memories of the people he’s met.

“That’s what being a police officer is all about,” he said.