Oldest serving cop in US dies at age 84
Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 5:42 pm
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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – The oldest active duty police officer in the United States, who battled the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy and the chaos which ravaged New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, has died at the age of 84.
Sergeant Major Manuel Curry served with the New Orleans Police Department for more than 63 years until he became ill several weeks ago.
"He'll be buried as a hero," said William Trepagnier, a 44-year NOPD veteran who was among the generations of officers mentored by Curry.
Policing was Curry's life. New Orleans his only home.
And while hundreds of younger officers went missing and even joined in the looting as the city descended into chaos in August 2005, then 81-year-old Curry stayed at his post.
He used the same grit and determination that won him a Legion of Honor in 2004 for his role in the Normandy invasion that liberated France in World War II.
"The worst thing that ever happened (to me) was Omaha Beach," he told Agence France Presse in a 2006 interview. "(Katrina) was the second. I'll never forget Omaha Beach and I'll never forget this."
As the wind and rain pelted his city, Curry shuttled storm victims to safety, stopping only after he was hit in the shoulder by a falling tree branch and the rising water made it impossible for him to drive.
But he was soon back at work and slept in a car for more than a month until a cruise ship was brought in to provide temporary housing for the city's homeless police officers.
When asked why he didn't admit that he was too old to work amid the madness, he shrugged and smiled.
"Once you get this in your blood you like it," he explained.
Curry started walking the beat in 1946, when police officers didn't have radios and would tap their nightsticks on the pavement to call for help.
In the heady days of the 1950s, Curry broke up dice games along Rampart street where the jazz standards of the likes of Louis Armstrong could be heard spilling out of the bars that sat on every corner.
Things got tense in the 1960s when the civil rights movement began to challenge the segregation that had long governed this port city which had played a key role in the slave trade.
Curry was assigned to man the door when the first school in the city was integrated.
"We stood at the doorway to make sure she got in safely," he said. "They called us names -- nigger lovers and all that -- but we just ignored them."
The real problems came in the 1980s when the city was overwhelmed by drug addiction and the violence and crime that followed.
A year after Katrina's floods swamped 80 percent of the city, Curry said he was hopeful that New Orleans could rebuild itself but worried to see some of that same sickness creep back.
And in 2007, he cheerfully told a reporter he had cultivated several new informants, a reversal of fortunes from 2004, when he glumly concluded he had outlived all of his old sources.
Curry died at Touro Infirmary, a hospital located one block from his beloved Sixth Police District.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – The oldest active duty police officer in the United States, who battled the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy and the chaos which ravaged New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, has died at the age of 84.
Sergeant Major Manuel Curry served with the New Orleans Police Department for more than 63 years until he became ill several weeks ago.
"He'll be buried as a hero," said William Trepagnier, a 44-year NOPD veteran who was among the generations of officers mentored by Curry.
Policing was Curry's life. New Orleans his only home.
And while hundreds of younger officers went missing and even joined in the looting as the city descended into chaos in August 2005, then 81-year-old Curry stayed at his post.
He used the same grit and determination that won him a Legion of Honor in 2004 for his role in the Normandy invasion that liberated France in World War II.
"The worst thing that ever happened (to me) was Omaha Beach," he told Agence France Presse in a 2006 interview. "(Katrina) was the second. I'll never forget Omaha Beach and I'll never forget this."
As the wind and rain pelted his city, Curry shuttled storm victims to safety, stopping only after he was hit in the shoulder by a falling tree branch and the rising water made it impossible for him to drive.
But he was soon back at work and slept in a car for more than a month until a cruise ship was brought in to provide temporary housing for the city's homeless police officers.
When asked why he didn't admit that he was too old to work amid the madness, he shrugged and smiled.
"Once you get this in your blood you like it," he explained.
Curry started walking the beat in 1946, when police officers didn't have radios and would tap their nightsticks on the pavement to call for help.
In the heady days of the 1950s, Curry broke up dice games along Rampart street where the jazz standards of the likes of Louis Armstrong could be heard spilling out of the bars that sat on every corner.
Things got tense in the 1960s when the civil rights movement began to challenge the segregation that had long governed this port city which had played a key role in the slave trade.
Curry was assigned to man the door when the first school in the city was integrated.
"We stood at the doorway to make sure she got in safely," he said. "They called us names -- nigger lovers and all that -- but we just ignored them."
The real problems came in the 1980s when the city was overwhelmed by drug addiction and the violence and crime that followed.
A year after Katrina's floods swamped 80 percent of the city, Curry said he was hopeful that New Orleans could rebuild itself but worried to see some of that same sickness creep back.
And in 2007, he cheerfully told a reporter he had cultivated several new informants, a reversal of fortunes from 2004, when he glumly concluded he had outlived all of his old sources.
Curry died at Touro Infirmary, a hospital located one block from his beloved Sixth Police District.
