To the editor:
Several weeks ago, I received a text message from our washing machine telling me that I was using to too much detergent. My first thought was whether I was supposed to respond to the text message. However, it was that technology that triggered a memory of Stockbridge’s loss several weeks ago of Sergeant Louis J. Peyron Jr. and his 45-year career with the Stockbridge Police Department. We worked together for 34 years, starting in 1971. We were two analog officers soon to be working in a digital world. Record-keeping back then was carried out on a black manual Remington typewriter. Several bottles of White-Out often rescued us as our two-finger typing went awry. In the 1980s, the advent of computers created no small degree of distress for both of us.
Sergeant Peyron has gifted us with a rich legacy and was the personification of community policing. Sergeant Peyron became a patrolman the same year that Dwight D. Eisenhower was in his last year at the White House. I, on the other hand, was 11 years old and halfway through Miss O’Brien’s fifth grade class at the Stockbridge Plain School.
Lou, a Vietnam-era Army veteran, was a military police officer in New York City and faced a rough-and-tumble setting in Manhattan dealing with many drunk and out-of-control Army personnel. Lou’s first job after the army was with the Stockbridge Highway Department at a time when, during the winter months, several men stood on the back of a truck shoveling off sand onto ice-covered town roads.
In May 1971, the totality of my police training consisted of two days on the day shift with Chief Obanhein and two days with Lou on the evening shift. The first thing that Lou said to me was, “You are here to help people.” It was a time when the police academy was optional for a job that most people did not want. You learned as you went, sometimes the hard way. Lou always had sage advice, and I called him frequently in my early days at the police department.
Lou knew the importance of training, and in January 1979, after pestering Chief Obanhein for months, and some 19 years after he came on the job, Lou, at age 44, attended the Mass Criminal Justice Training Council academy at Springfield. He did well both academically and during physical training. Lou was very much respected by the other cadets, even though he was old enough to be a father to most of them.
A life-long resident of Stockbridge, Lou joined the fire department as soon as his age allowed, eventually rising to the rank of fire chief. Working the day shift, Lou would occasionally ask me if he could stop at a cottage on Lake Mahkeenac and perform a quick inspection and issue a permit. I, of course, said yes, as he would be patrolling that area anyway. His salary as fire chief was a very small stipend that did not begin to cover the evenings and weekends he worked in that capacity. The town charged 50 cents for the permit, which Lou would collect and turn over to the town treasurer. People who moved to Stockbridge from a more urban area were amazed there was no “extra charge.”
Not having a detective—never mind a detective bureau—the police department’s unwritten policy was that if you answered the phone, the investigation was yours. Some officers developed special skills and would ask to do an investigation or be assigned to it. The day shift received the brunt of those calls, and Lou was on the front line. In addition, traffic on Main Street, especially during the summer, called to Lou, as he enjoyed directing it and enjoyed people. A town resident said to me that seeing Lou walking on Main Street or doing traffic was a comfort, a feeling that all was right with the world.
Lou had a sense of humor. With a serious look on his face, he told me there was a woman in Glendale who wanted to talk to me about a bank robbery. Turned out the bank robbery happened in Stockbridge in 1935. She was a teller, who the robbers tied up with a vacuum cord and left in the basement of the bank. The issue, I later learned, was that the other teller was my grandfather, who was out to lunch when the robbery happened. Even as she approached her 90s, she had the time and inclination to call me on a regular basis asking me to stop by so she could talk about my grandfather and again tell me that he had the nerve to go to lunch leaving her to deal with the bank robbers. Lou said she lived alone and just wanted a little company. The second bank robbery in Stockbridge happened in 2014, two weeks after I retired.
Of course, much has been made of Lou’s 45 years, where twice a day, in front the Stockbridge Plain School, he was orchestrating school traffic, to ensure the safety of children in the crosswalk, helping parents weave in and out of parking places and traffic, while assisting school buses into and out of the school yard into the tangle of traffic on Main Street.
Lee Bank’s Penny Saver front page advertisement with a photograph of Lou crossing a young student with the following words: “When standing at the crossroads of history, at the intersection of the past and the future, we think it best to look both ways. Although it’s been ten years since we first took this photograph of a school crossing for one of our ads, the image continues to illustrate the timeless quality of our hometowns. Thus, one generation makes way for another.” The true test of his commitment to the cross walk and the safety of the children, for those of us who knew Lou, and knew of his love and passion for the fire department, was reinforced when the fire whistle blew; he wouldn’t leave the school unless someone came and relieved him. That crosswalk was, each day, the embodiment of community policing, a symbol of stability, an act of caring.
William Wordsworth said, “The best portion of a good man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.” It would be fair to say we were able to catch Lou in the act. Lou was honored with the Police Officer of the Year Award from the Western Mass. Chiefs of Police Association for all that he gave to the Town of Stockbridge over so many years. Sergeant Peyron’s gift to us was a quality of life. So many times, in so many ways over 45 years, Lou touched our lives and made them better.
Rick Wilcox
Glendale
Click here to read The Berkshire Edge’s policy for submitting Letters to the Editor.
