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Hanging up his many hats

Once a cowboy, always a snake catcher, retiring bailiff Lewis T. Lord is frank about his 33 years with the Sheriff's Office. His next hat: music manager.

By COLLEEN JENKINS
Published June 5, 2005

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NEW PORT RICHEY - The directive came from then-Sheriff Basil Gaines. Sick of Pasco deputies driving dirty patrol cars, he instructed his sergeant to oversee the washing of every department vehicle and inspect them until they were immaculate.

Sgt. Lewis T. Lord, an image-conscious man with an always-pressed uniform, got to work.

"Clean the cars, boys," he told his men.

They did. Lord inspected. He flunked them all.

One deputy bet that Lord wouldn't be able to find any dirt on his car. Lord popped the trunk and rubbed his finger under the spare tire. His finger turned black.

"Park it for 30 days," the sergeant ordered.

And so began Lord's not-very-popular "white glove test," in which he literally donned a white glove to test a car's cleanliness. The test earned Lord a reputation as a hard-nosed stickler.

"Mr. Perfection," John McGill still calls him, though it has been nearly 20 years since the UPS delivery man worked under Lord as a road deputy.

Over the years, Lord has been many things: Marine, cowboy, snake handler, music manager, chauvinist, courthouse bailiff. He rose in rank to lieutenant, then got busted back to deputy.

On June 16, after three decades of wearing a Pasco Sheriff's badge, the agency's longest tenured employee will take on a new role: retiree.

"I just happened into it because it was a job," Lord said of law enforcement. "After a while, I said, "D---, you've been at this a long time. You better make this a career.' So I did."

* * *

These days, Lord, 60, a portly, jovial bailiff, keeps jurors laughing and inmates behaving in Circuit Judge Stanley Mills' courtroom. He places mints on jurors' chairs and occasionally dozes off when legal proceedings get long-winded. He dedicates time to several charities. He jokes that his middle initial "T" stands for "the," making him "Lewis the Lord." (It actually stands for Thomas.)

But "Louie," as most everyone knows him, earned his stripes on the road.

His initial stint with the Sheriff's Office was remarkable only for its brevity. It was so short - beginning in 1967 and ending a year later - that Lord doesn't even count it as part of his 33 consecutive years of service starting in 1972.

Gaines, Lord said, wouldn't send him to deputy school. So Lord went instead as a member of the New Port Richey Police department, before getting recalled to active duty with the Marines and sent to Vietnam.

The high school graduate spent two years on the professional rodeo circuit. But by May 1972, Lord was back under Gaines' wing. The move was more practical than passionate.

"I found out I wasn't a good cowboy at all," he said. "You need long legs, and I didn't have long legs."

The Ocilla, Ga., native did have the makings of a respectable law enforcement officer. He maintained an easy rapport with citizens and colleagues, his annual evaluations show. He was punctual and dedicated, knowledgeable about the law and calm in stressful situations.

His personnel file contains more than 30 letters of appreciation from citizens, community groups and officials, dating back three decades.

He also was skilled in catching rattlesnakes, water moccasins and gators with his bare hands, a tribute to his Southern upbringing. Pasco's 1970s building boom destroyed the animals' natural habitats, Lord said, leaving them to share the land with humans.

Meanwhile, he said, the Sheriff's Office was hiring a bunch of "Yankees."

"We were getting people from big cities who didn't know what a d--- snake was," he said. "They were going in there and shooting up people's flower beds and hitting up their water lines."

So Lord became the agency's licensed venomous snake handler, called on by every sheriff from Gaines to Lee Cannon "to give the others an education," he crackles with his smoker's laugh.

Catching the creepy critters was easy, he said.

"The hardest thing to do," he explained, "is figuring out what the hell to do with them when you got them."

Judge Mills first met Lord when their respective roles were prosecutor and road patrol deputy. Lord, the judge said, did not take kindly to an assistant state attorney saying he didn't have enough evidence to prosecute a case.

It wasn't unusual for the deputy to go out and get the additional evidence himself.

"When it was his case, I think he really felt that it was his case," Mills said recently. "I think he really took it personally."

* * *

Stubbornness sometimes got Lord in trouble. Particularly after Jim Gillum became sheriff.

The first blow came in October 1985. Exactly what happened proves tough to pin down. Sheriff's records show Lord got demoted from lieutenant to sergeant but don't specify why.

Lord said he was accused of not passing on information about raises to his deputies. Three days before his demotion, he also failed a test regarding Sheriff's Office policy. But Lord said he never got a full explanation of the decision.

"They said I wasn't a company man," he said.

Another demotion in April 1991 returned him to the rank of deputy. A female deputy had gotten into a small accident. Her cruiser was barely damaged, Lord said, but the incident ensured she would get suspended without pay for a day. So Lord said he switched cars with her, traded out the door with another from a wrecked car and kept mum about the incident.

But a few months later, someone reported a door missing from the garage. Lord got written up for failing to report the accident and improperly supervising his subordinate.

The disciplinary actions took the wind out of his sail at first, "like someone kicking you in the groin as hard as they (could)," he said.

But he has had years to chew them over. And he stands by the decisions he made and the person he was. Being hard-headed, he said, ultimately helped him triumph.

"My feeling is, if you hang around long enough, the bastards will go," he said bluntly. "So I told them, "I was here when you came, and I'll be here when you're gone.'

"And sure enough, I outlasted the bastards."

* * *

He arrived as a permanent fixture at the courthouse three years ago, burned out from hundreds of miles on road patrol and looking to recharge.

With him came a confident swagger, a softened gruffness and the old-school black police hat that he had worn since bailiff Bill Tinny met him in the '80s.

"Every cop should wear a hat," Tinny remembers Lord preaching. "A cop without a hat is not a real cop."

Life as a bailiff has mellowed Lord. After his demotions, he refused subsequent chances to rise in rank. He came to prefer, he said, the less stressful role of being a deputy and interacting more with the public.

He remains opinionated, unafraid of authority or of holding firm to what he believes as truth. An evaluation once noted tactfully, "Lord is slow to accept change for what he believes is "change for change only."'

Lord has invited only two ex-sheriffs - Leland Thompson and John Short - and current Sheriff Bob White to his retirement party. He admired the men's leadership. Lord can't say the same for others. He won't comment on Gillum. He refused a promotion under Lee Cannon, he said, "because I didn't believe in his administration."

"The better part of valor says keep your d--- mouth shut," Lord said of his penchant for honesty. "And that's hard for me."

Cannon, now a Realtor, said it was Lord who sought a promotion from the former sheriff. He recalls the deputy stopping by his office frequently to chat.

"The better part of valor says keep your d--- mouth shut. And that's hard for me."

--BAILIFF LEWIS T. LORD, speaking of his penchant for honesty.

"I don't remember ever offering him a promotion," Cannon said. "I don't have anything bad to say about him. I felt Louie was doing the job he was qualified to do."

Sgt. Cheryl Yunker, Lord's current boss at the courthouse, points to her calendar during a recent interview.

May 4: L. Lord agrees with me.

"I don't know what it was about," she said, laughing, "but when he said he agreed with me, I wrote it down."

She takes it as a compliment when Lord names her among the best supervisors he has ever had.

"Twenty years ago, I would never have said that about a female," he acknowledged.

Why not?

"Let's not go there," he responded, immediately seeming to wish he had kept the comment to himself.

No, really, let's.

"I didn't think women belonged in law enforcement," he said. But he changed his mind a long time ago, he adds, "because I think they do a tremendous job."

More changes lie ahead for Lord. He will embark full time on a second career as music manager and promoter. Close friends with Charlie Daniels and other country music singers, Lord has built connections in Nashville. He's already working on stage presence, vocals and marketing with several young singers who have their sights set on recording contracts.

A husband for 34 years, the father of two grown children also awaits grandfather status; his daughter is expecting twins in late July. "Babysitter" certainly will be added to his resume.

He would like to travel across the Old West, maybe cruise to Alaska. He has the stamina; he just needs to find the time.

His last few weeks at the courthouse, Lord has strolled the halls carrying his "short-timer's stick." It's nothing special, just a carved wooden walking stick he picked up years ago at a garage sale. But when he starts painting it green from the bottom up for his final days, it will hark back to the custom of servicemen notching a stick for each of their remaining days left in Vietnam.

For a man of tradition, a fitting parting gesture.

--Colleen Jenkins covers courts in west Pasco County. She can be reached at 727 869-6236 or cjenkins@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 5, 2005, 02:15:25]

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