Oral History Program Lue S. Birch Interviewed by Jordan Chavez 16 July 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Lue S. Birch Interviewed by Jordan Chavez 16 July 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Birch, Lue, an oral history by Jordan Chavez, 16 July 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Lue S. Birch July 16, 2013 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Lue Birch. The interview was conducted on July 16, 2013, by Jordan Chavez and Lorrie Rands. Lue discusses his experiences with 25th street. JC: I am Jordan Chavez and I’m sitting here with Mr. Lue Birch on July 16, 2013, at 3:00 p.m. here in his home. We are going to be talking about your life as a police officer here in Ogden. JC: Did you grow up in Ogden? LB: No, I was born in Idaho. JC: When did you move? LB: My family moved to Ogden when I was eight years old. JC: You joined the police force in 1949. What was Ogden City like then and did your beat include 25th Street? LB: Ogden had a lot of crime, mostly burglaries, but 25th Street was really rough. It was that way mainly due to the prostitution there. We walked the police beat back then, checking buildings throughout the city. We did so much walking we practically wore the sidewalks out! My partner and I cleared up 142 burglaries in three months and put 32 burglars down at the point of the mountain—I’m not bragging, that’s the truth! For five years I walked the beat and then they decided to put officers in cars because they could get around much faster and curb the crime a lot better in cars than they could walking. One of the drawbacks of walking the beat was some criminals would watch the policeman on his beat and find out what his habits were 1 and then make their move. By the time the officer got back to square one, they would have the burglary done and would be gone. They couldn’t do that as easily with officers patrolling in cars. Later I suggested that having two officers per car was a waste of manpower. I explained that it would cost the department two more cars, but that we would have better coverage of the city with four officers in four cars covering each corner of the city. If an officer needed backup they could get it in 2 ½ minutes by one of the other officers. JC: That is pretty good time. That’s incredible actually. Seems like a very impressive rate that you and your partner had with clearing the street in such a short amount of time. LB: Yeah, some of the crooks were even coming down here from Montana. They would have somebody case the area, come in and hit the jobs, and then head back to Montana, but we were able to run them right out of Ogden. LR: What are some of your memories of being a patrolman and 25th Street? LB: I can tell you a lot of crazy stories and things that happened while I patrolled 25th Street. I was involved in the cleaning up of the “houses of ill fame.” Sometimes we would sit in the main lobbies of some of the business to cut down on their business. A lot of the people that frequented these businesses would hear that we were sitting in the lobbies and would sneak in and out the back, to save their reputation. One night we arrested 35 people in a particular cathouse. The Madame would always try to give the on-duty officers coffee, cake, or liquor. I would always refuse. I told her “I don’t drink coffee, I don’t drink liquor, and I’m 2 skeptical on who made the cake!” I would never accept anything from them, knowing that they were wanting me to compromise my duty as an officer, in exchange for their gratuities. We arrested a Madame one time and were booking her into jail. She had rings on all of her fingers and the jewelry that she was wearing was documented at $40,000 dollars alone. She was worried that she would not get all of her jewelry back when she was released. I assured her that she would, but to be sure we would put it all into an envelope, seal it, and she could write her name along the flap, where the flap meets the envelope. That way she would know if the signature had been disturbed, the jewelry had been tampered with. When she was released her signature on the envelope was as she had written it and all of her jewelry was intact. After we cleaned up that particular group they headed for either Reno or Las Vegas because prostitution was legal there. There was one hustler that we nicknamed “Walk Your Dog” because he would be seen sometimes walking 15 dogs at once! He would walk the dogs of the prostitutes while they were “working.” One time I was walking the beat and I could smell something. There was a man smoking and I yelled, “Put that cigarette out!” I had smelled gas fumes and noticed that there was a gas leak on 25th Street and Lincoln. It turned out to be a big gas main that was leaking. Had I not been walking the beat, smelled the fumes, and noticed the guy smoking, there may have been a major explosion. I also remember getting on some of the elevators in a few places around town, like the Wilson Rooms, the Calico Cat, or the Rose Rooms and they would 3 smell of marijuana. As an interesting sideline, Rose Davies, owner of the Rose Rooms, owned a cheetah as a pet. We knew this guy that had a wooden leg. You could find him everywhere around town and he was always drunk. Usually if someone had passed out or was sleeping you could tap on their leg and it would wake them up. One night I was going around tapping some of the drunk patrons on the leg to wake them up and when I got to this particular man some of the other officers started to laugh because they knew I would never be able to wake up this guy, by tapping him on the leg, because he was the guy with the wooden leg! Then there was a judge by the name of Judge J. Quail Nebeker that we would come up against every now and then. He would be for the bad guys instead of on the side of the law. We would arrest the winos and he would say “Five or ten?” which would mean five days in jail or $10 and then he would let the offender back out on the street. We started to take the crooks to South Ogden because the judge there would hand down a real sentence. You know, we would hardly ever see the crook again after he had served the real sentence given out by the South Ogden judge instead of the “five or ten” sentence. Well, 25th Street was pretty rough. Sometimes you were forced to use your brawn instead of your brain, but I loved my job working with the kids and the safety program even better than being an officer on the beat. I worked with the school kids in the safety program for 15 years. I would visit the elementary schools and if it was recess or lunchtime, I couldn’t get down the hallway. The kids would mob me. I have a picture in my scrapbook that 4 shows a little kid grabbing me by the leg. Often a teacher or the principal would have to come out and rescue me. The kids always wanted to talk to Officer Birch, but then being in the safety program you have to practice what you preach because the kids are always watching you. One day I was crossing the street kitty corner and I heard this little voice behind me say, “Officer Birch, you’re jay-walking.” I said, “I’m sorry, I forgot. I’m glad you reminded me.” I went back and crossed the street the right way. Then the little girl said, “I didn’t want to see you get hurt.” Boy, those kids are so great. If you want the truth, ask a child. JC: Yeah, kids are very honest. LB: Yes, they are. LR: How did you get involved with the safety program? LB: Chief Shaw was having problems with kids getting hurt in the schools. He wanted to get the kids to and from school safely. He asked me if I thought I could take over the program and make it work. So, I wrote the guidelines for the state of Utah and it spread all over the United States. It was basically a program used by police to build safety awareness among children. The safety program would later change and go on to be known as McGruff the Crime Dog. Anyway, when I was in charge of the safety program I would go to the schools and teach children how to be safe. Sometimes it would be with a film to show the kids how to cross the street, bicycle safety, hand signals—anything to get the kids to think about safety. I just taught plain stuff and I would give it to the kids straight. 5 We had bicycle programs that taught safety and agility on a bicycle. We had one where we would blindfold the rider of the bicycle. We would then put a cardboard box on the grass. The rest of the children would start clapping as the rider came toward the box. If he got off course the kids would stop clapping. Once he was back on course they would start clapping again and lead him right to the box. This one little boy told me “Officer Birch, you know that bicycle safety program we had at the park where we had to get to the box?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “It saved my life. I was riding my bike down Jefferson and 24th Street and a car took the back fender off my bicycle. When it honked I knew exactly where it was so I pulled off to the side and it just took the back fender off my bike, rather than hitting me.” I said, “Boy, that’s really great!” We held bicycle rodeos and also had bike inspections where we would teach kids how to tighten loose parts on their bicycles. We would schedule dates at each park and then the kids in that area would attend them. The kids loved it and so did we. Then in the schools we got the little safety badges for the Triple A Safety Kids. I would go to the schools and swear in the safety patrol students that would be responsible for helping other children cross the street. I would swear them in just like a police officer and would teach them how to keep the children on the curb until the traffic was clear and then help them across the street. The kids really loved that. Then through the Chevrolet Company we started a green flag program. As long as the school didn’t have any accidents during the month they could fly the 6 green flag in front of their school. It was an incentive for them to constantly think about safety. Children would come up to me and say, “We’re flying the green flag!” That program was really great. At the end of the year Lagoon would give us free tickets for each of the safety patrols. We had about 160 of them. We would take them all to Lagoon. It was the highlight of the year. Area businesses would donate hotdogs, hamburger for sloppy joes, money—anything they could to help with the Lagoon safety patrol picnic each year. One year, I was able to get five buses and took the safety patrol to Hardware Ranch. I tried to give them an outing to compensate for the work they put in on the corners helping other children cross the street on their way to and from school. That’s what I miss the most—the kids, but I guess I had 15 whole years of that. JC: Tell me about Marshall White. LB: Marshal White? He was Detective Sergeant Marshall White, the best shot on the Pistol Team. He and I were hunting and fishing buddies. He was a great person and a good friend of mine. We called him “Doc.” He was trained as a Podiatrist, a foot doctor, but since he was black only the poor and people who couldn’t pay would go to him, so he joined the police force. JC: Were you there when he died? LB: I wasn’t with him when he was shot, but I was with him the night he passed away. JC: What happened? 7 LB: He had gone out on a call to arrest a 16 year-old boy that had escaped from the State Industrial School and the kid shot him. I wasn’t on the call with him but a few days later in the hospital I told him, “Doc, you’re going to get better, you’re going to get out of here and we’re going to go fishing and hunting again.” He said, “Lue, I don’t think so, I’m hit too hard.” An hour and a half later he passed away. He was a wonderful person. I sure liked him. He was only 54 years old. LR: I have a question for you. You mentioned last time I was here, that 25th Street didn’t have tunnels, but you had a story. LB: I only knew of one tunnel on 25th Street. You had to go through a tavern on 25th and Lincoln, right under where Willie Moore has his barbershop, and then you would go down to this tunnel that had a lock on the outside. When you passed through the door there was another lock on the inside. The tunnel ran under two buildings and they would hold the Chinese lottery in there. LR: I have one last question and it kind of starts back at the beginning. What prompted you to become a police officer? LB: I worked at the Defense Depot Ogden (DDO) before World War II, making $.86 cents an hour. After serving in the war, I came back to DDO where they held a job for me. I was now a hearse driver helping with the repatriation of the World War II dead. We brought back 2,400 dead, to the area, to their place of origin following the war. After that, I went to work for the Ogden City police force. I was making $222 dollars a month when I first joined the force. I became a police officer because I wanted to be on the outside looking in— not on the inside of a jail cell looking out. I wanted to be on the right side of the 8 law. I felt influential in the lives of kids. I would teach them about safety and they would listen. I’m sure that saved a few lives. I still enjoy hearing from students that remember me as Officer Friendly or Officer Birch. A couple of years ago when I was attending my great-grandson’s high school football game a current police officer recognized me and came up to me and said he became an officer because of my influence. That really makes me feel good. LR: Do you have any other comments to add about 25th Street or anything else we’ve talked about? LB: Well, I think I’ve about run out of gas and that’s a lot of gas too! 9