About Us
Place an Ad
Submit a Letter
Send a Comment
Media Kit
Entertainment
Financial News
Health News
No publications or editions were found!
|
 |
|
|
DPS trooper to retire after 25-plus years
Posted: Monday, Aug 11, 2008 - 08:03:37 am CDT
by Margaret Palermo-Staff writer
 | | 25TH ANNIVERSARY - Jose Camacho, general director and counsel for Texas Association of Health Centers. |
|
Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Wayne Whiteaker is retiring at the end of this month after 26 and one-half years with DPS, more than 20 of those years spent in Uvalde.
That's a lot of years for a career that originally started as a joke.
The way it happened, said Whiteaker, was he got cornered in a coffee shop in Richmond, Texas, where he was working as a patrol officer and was forced to fill out an application. While I was in Richmond, the local DPS officers kept hammering at me about becoming a state trooper and I told them I didn't want to be a traffic cop, he said. I told them I enjoyed family disturbances and fight calls and couldn't see myself writing traffic citations.
As it turned out, that application changed his life. I did it as a joke, he said. A little over a month later, I got a call from the DPS Academy in Austin to tell me I had been accepted as a recruit.
A native of Alpine, Whiteaker grew up in Wink, where he graduated from high school, then left to attend college at Sul Ross State University in Alpine on a full scholarship. During his freshman year, he played lead trumpet in the university band and was freshman class president.
But there was a war going on, so Whiteaker finished his first year of school and joined the Army in July 1970 just a few days before I received my draft notice, he said.
In the Army, he was assigned to the old First Armored Division in Erlangen, Germany, as a tank commander and also served as physical fitness instructor for the entire military base. He also served as music director for the post chapel. On my off-duty days, I played with local German polka bands, he said. The Army flew me all over Germany to play 'Taps' at funerals and other ceremonies.
But there was one job he did that might have been a pre-cursor to his eventually winding up in law enforcement. I was the bouncer for the U.S. Army base roller-rink, he said.
There was a lot of alcohol involved, and back then I was young and in good shape and chucked many a soldier out of that joint by his hair and the seat of his britches, Whiteaker said.
After four years in the Army, Whiteaker returned to Sul Ross to finish his education. He once again became the lead trumpet player in the university band and settled down to study industrial arts, with minors in music and police administration.
Then I entered law enforcement in 1980 as a city patrolman with the Uvalde Police Department, he said. I went through the Law Enforcement Academy at Southwest Texas Junior College. I left Uvalde PD in June of 1981 and went to work for Richmond Police Department.
The DPS Academy, when Whiteaker started in Mach 1982, included 13 weeks of boxing. The first four weeks, we lost a lot of recruits, he said. DPS was mainly concerned with whether or not you would give up on the side of the road if you got in a fight. He said the academy also taught that no matter how tough one is there is always someone tougher out there. Basically, if they couldn't whip us, they'd find someone who could, he said.
After the academy, the new trooper was stationed in Lamesa, where he served for four years. When I left Lamesa, the citizens of Dawson County gave me a set of tools and air wrenches, he said.
From Lamesa he went to Carrizo Springs for nine months before being stationed in Uvalde, where he has been ever since.
There were fun times and good times in my career, he said, but there have been sad times, too.
I never did like to see a little kid get hurt, he said, but one such incident literally left scars.
I worked a seven-fatality accident at the entrance to Garner State Park, he said, explaining that there were bodies all over the roadway when he arrived at the scene.
I found one little 2- or 3-year-old girl lying flat on her back on scalding hot pavement and the little girl was hurt so bad, she couldn't move and she couldn't even cry, said Whiteaker.
For a long time, I had scars left on my right arm where I laid down on the pavement beside her and gently brushed her hair and her cheeks with my fingertips, he went on. I looked at those big brown eyes and told her, 'You'll be just fine, sweetheart,' knowing she was going to die and then she passed away. When he got up, skin from his arm had burned and stuck to the pavement.
A few months later, the highway department decided to move the entrance to Garner State Park for safety reasons, said Whiteaker. Not too long afterwards, I worked a five-fatality accident at the new entrance.
Whiteaker said he has gotten a kick out of some of the changes that have taken place since he joined DPS. In the old days, my late partner Wayne Murph and I always carried a rope in our patrol car, he said. There's no telling how many people Wayne and I pulled out of the river. Before they built the high bridges on (Texas) Highway 55, we pulled a lot of people out of the river on the Nueces and the Frio.
Right before Murph retired, we used to laugh about how we pulled everybody out for years and never said a word, but now you've got the high bridge and they've got rescue workers and helicopters, said Whiteaker.
Murph was very serious about his work, said Whiteaker. He was a very fine man, a very good friend. A lot of people thought Wayne would give his mom a ticket, but that's not true.
Whiteaker explained his position. One night about 3 in the morning, Wayne and I were working together and there was zero traffic and I ran a red light in the patrol car. Murph looked over at me and said, 'You just ran that red light.'
I laughed and said, 'Well, we can pull over and you can write me a ticket or we can drink coffee,' said Whiteaker. Murph said, 'I think I'd rather drink coffee and forget what I saw.'
Whiteaker said he has thoroughly enjoyed working with the local judges and justices of the peace, as well as the county attorneys and chiefs of police over the years.
One time I lost a DWI case, he said. The defendant claimed that Highway 90 East was frozen solid and that's why he was weaving back and forth. He said there was no way the jury could smell the alcohol that the DPS trooper had smelled on the defendant's breath when he pulled him over.
The defendant had hired a high-dollar attorney out of San Antonio and, when we entered the courtroom, I saw a young woman with several young children sitting against a wall in the courtroom. I assumed this was the man's wife and children and felt somewhat sorry for them. So did the jurors. They found the defendant not guilty.
And that would have been the end of it except for what came afterward.
After the trial, the high-dollar attorney pulled me aside and told me the lady and the young children were a schoolteacher and some of her students he had invited to attend in hopes the jurors would think the same thing I did, said Whiteaker. He admitted that it was a pretty good trick.
The retiring trooper said his final official day of work will be Aug. 31, though he will probably not be going out in the patrol car after Aug. 20 or 21.
I'm in the process of moving to Montell and building a house, then I'm going to work on antique cars, hunt arrowheads and continue music with the First Baptist Church of Uvalde, he said. Through the years, I've sung and been asked to sing many times at funerals and weddings and many occasions around Uvalde.
Whiteaker has made many friends over the years, and he will miss seeing them as he patrols the roads.
I can't think of anyone in Uvalde County that I dislike. I will miss everyone, but I won't miss getting called out at 4 in the morning for a wreck.
|
|
|
|
|
