Sons of the sheriffs share their tales

There was a time in Flathead County history when the sheriff had to buy his own car, feed his own prisoners and live in the same house with the very criminals he caught.

Ty Robinson, Pat Walsh and Larry Wilson remember those days all too well. All sons of a Flathead County sheriff, the three recently shared stories about the early days of law enforcement during a talk at the Central School Museum in Kalispell.

Robinson’s father Cal served as sheriff from 1934 to 1942, in the depths of the Great Depression when neighbor helped neighbor. Ty grew up in Columbia Falls and attended Flathead High School. The school was so poor they didn’t have a yearbook and graduates didn’t have caps and gowns.

When Cal wasn’t performing sheriff duties, he was hunting and fishing, including excursions with painter Charlie Russell. They once returned with five deer and hung them up in a barn so folks could come by, cut off a slice or two and have some meat to eat.

Cal made $125 a month as sheriff, and his wife was paid 75 cents a day to feed prisoners two meals a day. They lived in the same building as the jail — a screaming prisoner meant no sleep.

Cal once had the unenviable task of collecting $2,000 in back taxes, paid with bad checks. But with an election coming up, he let it slide until afterward — lest he lose his job, Ty recalled.

Cal also saved a man who killed Ty’s uncle. The uncle was serving a warrant when the man shot him dead. A mob was about to lynch the criminal for his dirty deed when Cal stopped them and took the man to jail to await justice. Ty said his mother didn’t like that idea.

“I wished you’d let him hang,” she said. “Now I have to feed him.”

Pat Walsh’s father Dick served as sheriff from 1947 to 1963. They also lived in the same building as the jail. Dick was a World War II veteran with the U.S. Army 163rd Infantry Division. He got malaria while in the Pacific and was sent home in the middle of the war.

Dick attended the FBI academy and became a fingerprint expert. He was sheriff during the building of the Hungry Horse Dam when there were 39 bars in Martin City alone — and more than a few prostitutes as well.

Dick would round the women up, have them photographed and fingerprinted, and then let go. He did the same with the johns. It was proactive law enforcement, long before the Miranda decision, but if any fingerprints matched criminal records, they were shown the door out of Flathead County in a hurry.

As a child, Pat recalled having the run of the office. He even locked his sister in jail once — and forgot about her. The jail also had a “trustee” named Bill. A volunteer of sorts, Bill was a big man and a drunk but also somewhat handy.

Pat and a friend once brewed a jug of rhubarb wine and forgot about it for several months before showing it to Bill. By then, the jug had layer after layer of multi-colored mold floating inside, but Bill glugged it all down and never got sick.

Pat went on to become a deputy and distinguished detective. His first duty was resident deputy in the Canyon. He wasn’t a great driver, however — his first year, he hit three skunks, a deer and a juvenile delinquent. The boy had stolen a car, and Pat pursued him, hitting the young man when he jumped out.

“I was parked on his left heel,” Pat recalled. “I handcuffed him before I backed the car off.”

Deputies back then provided their own cars and were paid mileage, but a deputy could put a 100,000 miles on a car in a year.

Larry Wilson’s father Ross beat out Dick Walsh in the 1962 election. The two were friends before the race and after Ross left office, but not so much in between.

Times were different back then. If a transient was giving them a problem, they’d show him to the county line and tell him not to come back.

Larry recalled the time his sister got a hold of her father’s pistol, which was on his dresser. The shot went through two walls in the house and stopped at the brick. No one was hurt, but years later when Larry took a tour of the building, now the county juvenile detention center, the bullet hole was still there.

Sheriff’s kids were a lot like other kids, but they were expected to be good — at least not get caught drinking beer.

Once Larry returned from a National Guard outing where they’d had a few beers after duty. His mother smelled the booze on his breath, and Ross yelled at Larry for a good 20 minutes before whispering, “If you’re going to have a beer, stay away from your mother.”

A lot has changed since those days. All three men recognized the great strides in communication. There were no cell phones in those days. Ty, who is 97, said oftentimes there were no phones at all, and when there were, they were the hand-crank type.

Pat recalled that during a pursuit, one deputy would stop at a telephone pole with a phone attached to call for assistance while the other continued the chase.

Deputies also worked at the complete discretion of the sheriff — if he didn’t like you, you were gone. And many deputies had no law enforcement training — they were regular citizens. It was considered a good idea to hire bartenders as deputies — they knew the drunks and how to handle them.

Times have changed. The Flathead County Sheriff’s Office today has nearly 60 deputies and more than 120 employees — and sheriff Chuck Curry doesn’t feed the prisoners out of his pocket, own his own patrol car or live next to the jail.