Howard not seeking 10th term as New Kent sheriff

New Kent Sheriff F.W. “Wakie” Howard Jr. intends to remove his sheriff’s hat and spend more time with his three grandchildren (two shown in desk photos). Howard is not seeking a 10th term as sheriff and is announcing plans to retire at the end of his current term, which expires on Dec. 31, 2015.

Alan Chamberlain photo

Sheriffs in Virginia serve four-year terms at the pleasure of the voters. Obviously, New Kent County’s electorate has been overwhelmingly pleased with the performance of their sheriff, F.W. “Wakie” Howard Jr.

Since first electing Howard in 1979, New Kent voters have returned their popular sheriff to the post in every election since. And in all but the first of those contests, he has run unopposed, polling thousands of votes on each occasion.

But Howard’s name will not appear on the ballot for the county’s next general election scheduled for Nov. 3, 2015. After nine terms totaling 36 years, he is opting to retire when his current term ends Dec. 31, 2015.

For now though, he ranks among the longest tenured sheriffs in the country. During a national sheriff’s conference a year ago, he was told he is number 22 in the nation in terms of seniority. On the state level, he is designated as a “senior” sheriff, according to the Virginia Sheriff’s Association.

“You just know when it’s time to do something different,” the 63-year-old law enforcement veteran said, explaining his decision not to seek a 10th term while he sat in his office inside the county sheriff’s department building that bears his name.

“When you have this job, you’re on call 24 hours a day, so I’ve been on call 24 hours a day since 1980,” he said. “When you have a job like this, you miss a lot of time with your family. Family plans can change because of calls, and my wife, Rose, has put up with this since 1980. We have some things we want to do, like traveling.

“And I have three grandchildren,” he said, pointing to photos of his son Farrar’s 3-year-old twins and his daughter Mary’s 1½-year-old son. “Over the years, I missed a lot of things my kids did, and I just want to spend more time with my grandkids than I did with my kids.

“I also plan on doing a lot of work with my church because we’re building a new church, and I plan to work with my brother, Bruce [Bruce Howard Contracting in Charles City]. I’ll cut grass and run errands a couple of days a week. I want no responsibility, but I think it’s important to stay active.”

Activity has been a hallmark during Howard’s tenure since on his watch the New Kent Sheriff’s Office has evolved from its Mayberry-like qualities of the 1970s to today’s state-of-the-art, technologically advanced department.

When Howard first came on board as a deputy in 1976, the sheriff’s office occupied four rooms on the lower floor of the county administration building. There were four deputies and a secretary on staff, and Donald McKay, the sheriff at the time, operated primarily out of his residence.

Today, the $3.2 million, 13,600 square-foot F.W. Howard Jr. Law Enforcement Building, which was dedicated in mid-2008, is home to 20 patrol and a dozen court security deputies, three detectives, three school resource officers, 10 full time and nine part-time dispatchers, and a four-person clerical staff. Also, the department includes three animal control officers and an auxiliary deputy contingent of five.

A department budget that numbered in the thousands in the 1970s has ballooned to the current year’s $4.7 million.

“As sheriff, when I did my first budget my jail bill [for housing county prisoners] was $3,000 for a year,” Howard said. “Today, it averages $75,000 per month and is the greatest portion of my budget.”

Back then, the county had no radio system, thus no need for dispatchers on staff. Calls to the sheriff’s office were routed through the state police.

“When I first started, we’d go sometimes two days and never have a call,” he said. “Compare that to last year when over 100,000 calls came into our 911 center. And then we would maybe have three or four court sessions per month. Now we have court almost every single weekday, and some days we have two courts going at the same time.”

Howard attributes the call volume increase to New Kent’s rising population from 7,000-8,000 in the mid-seventies to the current figure of almost 20,000. And then there’s Interstate 64, which had not been completed when he became a deputy but now bisects the county and brings in a multitude of criminal and traffic offenders.

“My goal as sheriff when I was first elected was to bring us up to standard,” he said. “We had no procedure or policy manual at that time, and I wanted consistency in weapons [deputies back then carried only a .38-caliber revolver], uniforms, and cars.

“Today, the technology is changing almost by the minute,” he said. “I don’t like it because you can get so involved with the technology side that you forget the human side.

“Today, there’s no answering service in the New Kent Sheriff’s Office. When the public calls, there should be someone answering the phone. It’s just my old-fashioned way.”

The manner in which Howard rose to sheriff is a story in itself because law enforcement did not figure into his future plans when he finished college. Born in neighboring Henrico, he moved with his parents, Farrar Sr. and Jeannette Howard, to Charles City when he was four years old. A product of the Charles City school system, he attended the University of Richmond, graduating in 1975 with a bachelor’s degree in history and minor in government. He returned to Charles City where he landed a teaching job.

“I had wanted to teach high school and coach, but I couldn’t find a job in that field,” he said. “Everybody was coming back from Vietnam on the G.I. Bill so the teaching market was flooded. I ended up teaching seventh grade social studies.”

After a year, he returned to exploring the job market, seeking his desired post in either Henrico or New Kent. One morning before leaving home, he told his wife he was going in search of a teaching job. When he returned that evening, he was wearing a New Kent deputy sheriff’s uniform and driving a patrol car.

“That really blew Rose’s mind,” he laughed. “But it all happened in one day. I went to work the next day with no training, no nothing.”

What had transpired was a chance encounter with then New Kent commonwealth’s attorney Kendall Lipscomb who told Howard about a deputy’s position open in the sheriff’s department and strongly urged him to apply.

“I wasn’t interested in that, but he encouraged me to do it,” Howard recalled. “So I went down and talked to Sheriff McKay. There was no real application process. I just talked with him, and then he took me over to circuit court and Vivian Anderson [the court clerk at that time] swore me in.”

Howard became New Kent’s fourth deputy on staff and served for several months before attending the Peninsula Academy of Criminal Justice where he received his first formal law enforcement training.

“It was very basic back then, and you worked by yourself a lot,” he said. “At night, it would often be just you and one state trooper who also worked Charles City. And if you were on the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, you were still on call until 4 a.m.

“When we did get a radio system, there were no portable radios so that when you left your car, you were on your own,” he added. “Back then, there was no 911 system so people often called you at your house if there was a problem.”

Law enforcement, however, differed in those days, too. Howard said a deputy’s primary responsibility entailed serving civil papers, answering what few calls arose, and some traffic work aimed mostly at inspecting vehicles for up-to-date county decals.

“But we also had to work the courts as bailiffs,” he said. “Even though you might work the night before, there were so few of us you often had to double back and work court.

“We didn’t have the drug problems we now have,” he said. “There was a little bit of marijuana use, but it was mainly stills and illegal alcohol. You knew just about everybody in the county so quite often if you had a warrant on someone, you’d call that person and have them meet you at the office.”

Law enforcement work suited Howard just fine, and he never looked back toward resuming a teaching career.

“Once I got into it, I liked it,” he said. “I had been in the rescue squad and the fire department since I was 15 years old and this just kind of fell into it.”

And he benefited from a superior mentor in Sheriff McKay, who had held the New Kent post for close to 30 years when Howard came on board.

“Sheriff McKay was one of the older sheriffs, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but he taught me a lot about dealing with people,” Howard said.

McKay, however, died while still in office, just months before the county’s 1979 general election. His passing left the door open to potential successors, and five names, including Howard’s, appeared on the ballot that November. Needless to say, he won, embarking on a stellar career and, at that time, receiving a hefty pay raise from a deputy’s $7,500 salary to a whopping $13,500 per year.

“State code gives me four major responsibilities: courts, law enforcement, civil process, and jails,” he said. “That means that anybody arrested in New Kent, whether by us, the state police, or fish and game, we have to pay to house them even though we don’t have a jail per se.”

The county forged an agreement with Henrico County for housing local prisoners when Henrico-owned Jail East was built near Barhamsville in New Kent during the nineties.

“The biggest change during my time as sheriff has to be the sheer volume of calls, and that shows up in the court system and jail,” he said, also noting that rapid advances in technology runs a close second. “There’s a lot of bureaucracy that sometimes slows you down from actually being out there and helping people.”

An example on the technology end, Howard said, is the MDT or Mobile Data Terminal that is standard equipment in each deputy’s patrol car. The device basically is a computer that allows a deputy to run vehicle tags, obtain information on suspects, and file reports without having to return to the office.

Howard lists four accomplishments that he labels the proudest moments of his career as sheriff. One is his participation in the Virginia Sheriff’s Association.

“I’ve always been active in the association,” he said. “In 1996, I was elected president of the association for a one-year term, and to be elected by your peers to head that group for me, personally, was one of the more humbling moments.”

Another is his department’s success in meeting criteria set by the Virginia Law Enforcement Professional Standards Commission. In 2007, the New Kent office became first in the state to earn a perfect score from the commission, a feat his department has been able to duplicate since.

“We’ve won a lot of state and national highway safety awards, but that one means the most to me because it looks at your department and sees if you’re following the standards you’re supposed to be following,” he said.

Then there’s the sheriff’s office building dedicated in his honor, much to his surprise, in 2008. County officials kept Howard in the dark with regard to the building’s name until the actual dedication ceremony in June of that year.

After that ceremony, Howard said, “I am just absolutely overwhelmed. I don’t feel worthy of it and I don’t feel deserving of it, but I’m extremely appreciative. It’s the greatest and highest honor I’ve ever had except when my two children were born.”

But topping his list is not a building or some sort of honor. Number one is the people he has surrounded himself with over the entire length of his career.

“I’m extremely proud of the people we have working with us every day,” he said. “I have the best people in the world. I am absolutely blessed with the people we’ve got working for us. Any success I’ve had as sheriff is because of the people I’ve had working for me. They deserve the credit.

“Not only are they professional, but they’re a very caring bunch,” he said. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten calls from people who’ve had their house broken into or lost a relative, and they’ll say I just wanted to call and tell you that I had deputy such-and-such out at my house and I wanted to tell you how compassionate they were. I get that all the time.”

Howard heaped praise on his number two in command, Chief Deputy Joe McLaughlin. It was McLaughlin, he said, who served as accreditation manager to lead the department to its perfect score from the state’s standards commission.

“I have a totally capable right-hand man,” Howard said. “I hired Joe on June 30, 1981, and he’s been running the operational end of this department for several years. He understands the human aspect of this work, and he’s a whole lot better on the technology side since I don’t have any interest in that part.”

Howard said he expects McLaughlin to make a run at succeeding him in the 2015 election. When contacted later, McLaughlin said he intends to throw his hat into the ring, but is holding off for now on making a formal announcement.

Being sheriff has its rewards, but as in all careers, times arise that test an individual’s ability to cope with setbacks and tragedy. Howard has faced those challenges on many occasions.

There are high profile unsolved cases including one of the infamous Parkway murders of the mid-to-late 1980s that occurred in New Kent. In 1999, the shooting death of a teenage driver took place during a road rage incident on Interstate 64, and that killer has never been brought to justice.

“Those are state police cases, and we worked with them and wanted to solve them, but overall our clearance rate is far beyond the state average,” Howard said.

Two horrific incidents that Howard would just as soon forget — an 11-year-old girl who committed suicide in the mid-eighties and the 1999 death of an infant placed in a microwave oven that drew national attention — are forever etched in his mind.

“Those two things still haunt me today because they both involve children,” he said.

In recent years, the economy has made Howard’s job much more difficult.

“The toughest years we’ve had as an organization have been the years since the economic downturn,” he said. “Budgets have been tighter, but they need to be. And calls rates have gone up because of the stresses people are under these days.”

But put all the trials and tribulations aside, and Howard doesn’t hesitate when asked if given the opportunity, would he do it all over again.

“Yes, I would,” he said emphatically. “I’ve seen a lot of bad things and a lot of times it’s hard to keep a positive outlook on life when you see some of the things I’ve seen in this line of work. But when you get to help somebody and work with the people we have in this department, I’d do it all over again.

“New Kent is a special place,” he said. “When a disaster strikes, everybody pitches in. Our county is just top-notch.

“I want to thank the people of New Kent for giving me the opportunity to serve,” he said. “It’s been an absolute honor, and I’m humbled by their trust and support.”

Howard leaves with little regrets other than the time missed with family as his career progressed and the fading of close relationships with his employees as the department expanded and staff numbers steadily climbed.

“I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done, and I’m ready to go,” he said. “I’ve been putting on this uniform every day since the mid-seventies, but I don’t think I’ll have any trouble adapting to it.”