A Famous Man

Stocky, cheerful W. O. Hodges, 45, was sheriff of Denton County (pop. 41,365), Texas for only four years, but he died last week a famous man. Before taking office, Hodges was just an ordinary sort of fellow; he grew up in a little cow town named Aubrey, spent a year at Texas Christian University, got a Depression job as a cop in the county seat, went to war as a coast guardsman, came home and started running for sheriff. He made it the second time out.

Seven days after he took office, a farmer named Joe Allen Goforth went crazy and started down the main street of a hamlet named Krum with a .22 rifle in one hand and a shotgun in the other. He fired his shotgun at a man who was painting the bank, and then ducked into a barber shop. When the new sheriff arrived, Krum residents called: "Don't go in there. He's crazy." But Hodges drew his pistol, walked up to the barber shop, and called: "This is the sheriff of Denton County. Come out."

The insane man fired his shotgun through the window. The sheriff fell, blinded. After a while he felt his bloody face and called out: "I can't stay here and bleed to death. Someone lead me away, and I'll walk behind and shield him with my big backside." An insurance man took the chance, and the sheriff tottered off to safety.

Since he could not see, most of his friends assumed that the sheriff's career was over. He did not agree; when he got out of the hospital, a deputy began driving him to work. He answered the sheriff's telephone, directed the work of his six deputies, and--apparently made more sensitive to the world about him--be came a cunning interrogator of criminals. He was elected to a second term by a big majority. He ran for a third term and was elected again.

For a few years he hoped to get his sight back and traveled around the country consulting eye specialists. But last November, resigned to his fate, he went to Morristown, N.J., got a fawn-colored seeing-eye dog, a boxer named Candy. Back in Denton, he started walking to his office every morning with Candy's assistance. Last week bad luck hit the sheriff again. He had no way of knowing, as he set out for work early one morning, that he was walking through a thick fog. A jeep driver, delivering newspapers, failed to see him until too late. The car killed both man and dog. The blind sheriff had one of the biggest funerals in local history; it was doubtful that Denton County would ever forget him.

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