Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 15, 1990 TAG: 9004150129
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TAZEWELL LENGTH: Long
At 76, he has served nearly 40 years as a Tazewell County deputy, putting his personal stamp on local law enforcement.
"Why go home, sit down and draw a check off the government?" asks Harman, a slim, silver-haired man with a firm handshake and a reputation as a straight shooter.
He shows no sign of slowing down, despite being 11 years beyond the accepted retirement age.
As Virginia's oldest sheriff's deputy, Harman is an institution in his community.
"He can say things to people that I couldn't say," said Sheriff W.E. Osborne. "He could make you mad enough to kill him if you didn't know him."
Harman's unorthodox style isn't the textbook stuff of modern police academies.
Several years ago, a woman came to the sheriff's department complaining about her husband. The couple had been fighting every Saturday night and she asked Harman what to do.
Osborne said Harman advised the woman to go get a pick, take off the handle and set the handle by the door.
"He told her to `flail the hell out of him,' " Osborne recalls Harman telling her. "She did."
The sheriff's department never heard from the couple again.
Harman said most of his success comes from knowing about 90 percent of the people in the county. Even families with criminal histories have become familiar with his style.
"We had some kids in here the other day," Harman said. "This was the fourth generation I've fooled with. It's kind of like a disease. They just hand it down, I guess."
Harman said that familiarity can pay dividends. Occasionally, he has telephoned someone to come in and pick up his own warrant.
"You would a whole lot rather come up here and get this straightened out," he tells them. "If we come to your house, you'll have the neighbors wondering."
Harman said he has learned when that tactic will work.
"I certainly wouldn't call some big drug dealer unless I knowed who he was."
In fact, a case of mistaken identity nearly cost Harman dearly.
Several years ago, a pack of rustlers shot at him when he confronted them unarmed. He had been putting up hay on his farm and didn't have time to get his gun or his uniform.
Harman said there was no time to get scared.
"I didn't do nothing," he said. "I didn't have time to do nothing."
The rustlers later apologized, saying they wouldn't have shot if they'd known it was him.
The scrapes are less frequent nowadays, even though Harman continues to patrol with other deputies every Saturday night.
"The biggest thing you've got to worry about is people on dope," he said. "When you're messing with them, there is no reason to them."
As the county's chief deputy, Harman supervises 28 deputies, many of them less than half his age.
Harman claims that courts have handcuffed modern police officers.
"It used to be you go out and arrest a man, you didn't have to tell him he had this right and that right," he said. "In other words, when you go to courts these days, you're the one that's tried."
Harman remembers the days when deputies had no radios and had to furnish their own patrol cars. The state paid them seven cents a mile and $150 a month salary.
"You'd get a new car and wear it out and wouldn't get enough money to pay for it."
Still, Harman has not lost the enthusiasm he had in 1949, when he joined the department while keeping his job in the coal mines.
A fading memory is his only concession to age.
"I don't remember as good as I used to," he said.
The man they call "Sugar Bear" survives on his work and the pound cake and nuts he gets as gifts from co-workers.
"He's got a sweet tooth," Sheriff Osborne says. "This job is his life. His life is his job."
That has not always been the case.
Harman, who never finished high school, sent three sons through college. One works as a nuclear engineer, another as a safety director for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, while another is an electrical engineer.
"I never had problems with my kids," Harman said.
And about 12 years ago, his wife of 45 years, Mary, died. She was a school teacher in the county for more than 30 years.
"I'd miss her when I'd come home," Harman admits. "After a while, you realize they're gone and there is nothing you can do."
He said his life and work must go on.
His well-pressed uniform accentuates a slender build that defies the effects of his sweet tooth.
Those who know him joke that Harman might just be too tight to quit.
"He's a hard-line conservative when it comes to law enforcement and money," Osborne said.
Harman's stubborness is also legendary.
Eight years ago, he gave up a 50-year-old smoking habit cold turkey after waking up one morning and taking a puff.
"Hell, something tastes like that," he said, "I'll just quit."
He never smoked again, although he kept a pack of dried-out cigarettes in his shirt pocket for six weeks, when another deputy begged them off of him.
And Harman, like his grandmother before him, has remained skeptical of doctors' advice. His grandmother treated him with Indian remedies, such as onion poultices and herb teas.
Two years ago, he suffered a broken leg that doctors said would take a metal plate to repair. Harman was having none of that.
Fourteen days after the cast went on, he demanded it be taken off.
"I walked into this place," he told a nurse who had examined an X-ray. "I'm going to walk out."
by CNB