Charles Dickey, Fallen Sheriff

http://www.odmp.org/officer/4070-deputy-sheriff-charles-h.-dickey-jr.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20080226/ai_n24351266/

Charles Dickey

Charles Dickey was a member of the Elders Quorum IN Hyrum Second Ward after I returned from my mission.  He was also a police officer for Hyrum City and worked with Kim Cheshire who was also in our Elders Quorum.  Hyrum City Police department contracted out to Cache County Sheriff’s and both Kim and Chuck, as he was called, went to work for them.  Chuck was always very pleasant and very involved.  He had a big smile and a large mustache.

I went away to school in Salt Lake and lost contact with his family for a time.  He and his wife could not have children and decided to adopt downs syndrome babies.  During the summer of 1982, I traveled with Cliff Elmore to New York for the North American Council on Adoptable Children conference.  Cliff and I had dreams of establishing an international adoption agency at the time.

Chuck and his wife Patricia were there at the conference.  While they were there they also met a new baby with downs syndrome who was going to become a part of their family.  As part of the conference, we took a tour of New York.  This included taking the Coney Island Ferry across the river, which afforded a view of the Statue of Liberty.  I sat by Chuck and his wife during this excursion.  They had a baby with them.  I am not sure if it was a newly adopted baby or the one they had adopted previously.  They adopted two babies.  I enjoyed spending some time with them.

A couple years later, I had gotten married and moved to Nevada.  During this time, Charles Dickey, while responding to a domestic violence call, missed a curve in his police vehicle, rolled the car, and was killed.

His wife remarried, and raised the two Downs Syndrome Children along with another child.  She too met a tragic end just a couple years ago.  She was sleep walking, which is a problem she had for some time.  However this time she got outside and a winter's night.  She succumbed to the elements.  Her children were going to be taken care of by family.

My Poetry: Humpty Dumpty silliness

Chorus:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again

They brought out the tape

And wrapped him up tight

His blood flow was cut

Humpty screamed with fright: Oh! Oh! Oh!

(Chorus)

Next they tried glue,

The super stick kind,

They plugged up his nose,

He went out of his mind: Oh! Oh! Oh!

Chorus)

So next came the stapler,

It just had to work.

But the pain was too great,

and it made his head jerk, Ay! Ay! Ay!

Halloween 2002

Party at work.  I am the lovable bunny, Hue the bloody butcher, Carol with him, Elizabeth the blow up whatever, I am not sure who is Sponge Bob.  I think Anne is the witch.  This is the courtyard at DLP.  We have moved since then.

My Poetry: There is no love in Paradise

I think I wrote this after and argument with Sheri. It is sort of stupid, but conflict makes better poetry.

There is no love in Paradise

There is no love in paradise

Only pain, heartache and cries.

What should have been heaven on earth,

Is instead of little worth.

Coal dust, where diamonds are sought.

Hate not love, the latter ought,

But no, life squeezes like a vise.

My quest for love, avarice.

Booify, Halloween lyrics

(chorus)

Boo! Boo! Boo! Boo!

Boo! Boo! Boo! Boo!

We’re here to boo-i-fy you

We’re here to boo-i-fy you

Scary and eerie, wary and dreary

We’re here to boo-i-fy you

 

On a Halloween night I took quite a fright

When I went out to prowl and howl

You see, I saw a witch in flight

On her face was an ugly scowl

She spied me and dived at me

But I managed to escape,

At that is why I’m here today,

To join in this Halloween growl.

(chorus)

On a Halloween night I took quite a fright,

When I went to the trunk or treat,

You see, I saw a ghost in white

And me he did want to eat.

He chased me and ran at me

But I managed to escape

He couldn’t find me amongst his friends

For I was hid under a sheet.

Boo (in round)

(chorus)

Kim Chang

Kim Chang, his father and younger brother

                 

Kim Chang was on the soccer team I coached after coming home from my mission.  It was a time when soccer was new, and I was coaching 12 year olds.  We had a fast stopper in the back (Mark Wengreen) and with him a couple kids who could kick the ball a long ways; (one was Steve DeHeck) but the focus of the team was Kim Chang.  We wanted to get the ball to him, and let him do his magic. 

He could score and distribute and create better than anyone else on our team, or in our league for that matter.  We road his shoulders to many victories, and he did some incredible things with the soccer ball—at least for us who had never seen such play.  I know he had several games with multiple goals, and three in one game.

I didn’t know how to coach any way but offensive.  I would put most of our players forward, and we would control the ball most of the game.  It was just a matter of time until we scored, and keeping the ball at our end, the other teams had few chances except for an occasional counter attack.

The only time we had a rough game, playing one of the better teams, they put somebody on Chang the entire game, with the idea of pushing him and playing rough with him so as to knock him off of his game.  It worked, and that game we lost 1-0.  It was a rough game because the opposition scored their only goal on an indirect free kick that went directly into the net untouched.  In those days all the refs were new and inexperienced (as well as the players) and there was no way to get it corrected.

But the Chang family was something more to our community.  I grew up in a small rural Utah town, where everyone was white.  As I was growing up, a minority in our town was someone who wasn’t Mormon.  I think we had a couple of Catholic families, and sometimes people who were affiliated with the university would spill over into town with different religions.  There were also a few people of Mexican decent who worked in the agricultural industry, but not many.  The Chang family represented the first family from Korea to live in Hyrum.

At the time, I did some writing for newspapers, and I wrote an article about this family, and their culture.  I was thrilled with the different types of food they ate, and how they were adjusting to a new lifestyle, and their experiences that landed them in rural Utah.  Kim Chang’s younger brother (who also played soccer and often practiced with us) was also named Kim Chang.  I couldn’t understand that.  But I imagine it was hard adjusting to a new culture.

But Chang always seemed happy, popular and content with life.  But being the first at anything can be hard.

I moved on with my life, and so did Chang.  I guess he had some problems becoming an adult.  I don’t know if the stress of being from a different culture, or just the beginning of a mental illness had anything to do with it, but the way I understood the story, is that he was becoming paranoid and delusional.  He was arrested for being in someone’s house.  I think he had been hiding in the closet.  He had become parnoid.  It wasn’t his first arrest.

While he was in jail, he hung himself with a sheet and died.

I loved to see him playing soccer.  I will always remember him on the soccer field. 

My poetry: The Peace of Home

The Peace of Home

                                      Dedicated to my mother        

When I was young, I often marveled

That the world could torment and trouble,

But when I arrived home all was peace,

As if I’d curled up in a blanket of fleece.

I always took that peace for granted,

As if for free it had been planted…

But not for free, but a mother’s work

Created this peace apart from a world gone berserk.

And now that I’ve become a father,

I’m still confused.  I wonder.  I ponder.

Is there some magic code to release,

That special, loving feeling--feeling of peace?

So it can permeate in my home,

And call to my children when they’re gone,

“Here is a place free from worldly cares.

Come, be refreshed.  Here is peace, free of briars.”

And it dawns on me, there is a key,

A Christ centered man I need to be,

Like my mother; full of love, quick to pray,

Bearing all things, giving kind service each day.

If I can exemplify these traits

In my children’s eyes--I will be great.

Not because of me, no I’m not the one,

Just love God, as my mother also has done.

                                                Billy Wardle