| Notes |
- -
MAJ. JOHN CLOUD
Journal Closeup
What saves lives and traveled the equivalent of 26 trips to the moon and back last year to do it? The answer is Maj. John Cloud and his Alabama State Troopers.
Since Cloud became chief of the highway Patrol Division in 1963 the policy of exemplifying safe driving through the troopers and cracking down on hazardous drivers has begun to reduce traffic fatalities.
In 1966 the patrol rode the roads of Alabama a distance of 12,474,754 miles. There were also 80 fewer deaths on the highways.
Cloud has not always been in law enforcement, but he evidently should have been.
"I was always interested in police work," admits the major. "There is a lot of glamour in it. Besides, I wanted to help people."
The major was born in Barnesville, Ga., 52 years ago. His family moved to Tallassee four years later. There he stayed until after he finished high school in 1935.
After working in the Tallassee mills for seven years he joined the Navy in 1942. He married his home town girl, Helen Brown, in 1939 and stayed in the service until 1945.
He began selling insurance and operating his own service station before becoming a trooper. His first son, Michael, was born in 1946.
The eventual major joined the Department of Public Safety in 1947. His career was begun in Anniston.
Several towns and one son later, with the birth of David, in 1951, he came to Montgomery as chief of the Administrative Division in 1961.
Besides being a working officer Cloud is a student of police work. In 1957 he studied police personnel supervision at Northwestern University. In 1960 he received a comprehensive course of law enforcement at the F.B.I. Academy.
Perhaps it is this training that has induced the major to scorn television's version of the highway patrol.
"T.V. highway patrol is just too unreal," says Cloud. "You just don't go screaming down the highway with your sirens screaming and no other car in sight."
For professional law enforcement advice see Major Cloud and family at 3402 Milan Dr.
-CHARLES BLACKLEDGE
The Alabama Journal, Montgomery, AL, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 1967
-
|
1915 - 1993 (77 years)
