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Chambers County Museum at Wallisville

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Don Richard Langford

Called to Serve

There is a certain breed of mankind that leaves home for each shift, never knowing if they will return at the end of it. Male and female alike meticulously clothe themselves in a uniform of blue or “Texas Tan,” but regardless of the color of the cloth their mission is the same to serve and protect. They are the guardians of the communities they serve. The majority could certainly work elsewhere making much more money and some have done so. But those with a genuine heart for service, like Don Langford, find themselves returning to the job they were gifted to perform, that of public servant and protector. Each time they pin on their badge, buckle their holsters, and prepare to head out the door, many pray for strength to push past their fears, wisdom to carry out their duties of service justly and fairly, and grace to return home safely. January 4th marks the 50thanniversary of the night that was almost Don’s last. The following is his journey.

I Had a Dream

  

“We moved down here from Nacogdoches in 1952 when I was three years old. My dad was A. H. Atlee Howard Langford. His nickname was “Heavy.” My mom was Evie Eveline Roy. If you’re familiar with Lucille’s Beauty Shop in Anahuac, Lucille’s daddy, Gerald Roy, and my mother were brother and sister. That was probably one of the reasons we moved down here. Dad came down and went to work for Texas Gulf Sulphur where Uncle Gerold was working. He told everybody he stayed there long enough to learn how to strike an arc, then he went to Brown & Root and told them he was a welder, cause welders were paid a lot more money,” chuckled Don. “He had bought a couple of acres out on the Bayshore and my brother, Eugene still lives on one of those acres. 

“I met Kendon Clark when I was just out of high school at the old Roy Sherman Texaco Station at 146 and 10. It used to be the only thing there. You’d go down Interstate 10 and see that big ole’ Texaco sign up in the air and everything else was dark around it, not like it is now. Right after I left home, I rented a little house from them, it was right across the road from their house, and I stayed there for a while. Kendon and I got to be really good friends, and of course Genie, they were really great people. I had some good experiences over in the area and there were some really great people there. There was Leroy and Stevie Stevens and a lot of other faces that come to mind, but I can’t put the names with them anymore. 


“When I was in high school, I had chosen a career path in the military. Vietnam was going on and of course I’d seen all the John Wayne movies,” said Don with a smile. “I was very patriotic and wanted to go help our country. I had a low lottery number and knew I was going to be drafted, so I volunteered to be drafted into the Marines. They had a two-year hitch and I thought I can put up with anything for two years. I failed the physical, went back . . . failed again.  I had a little high blood pressure. I got three or four physicals, and they finally told me not to come back as they had detected a heart murmur. That was basically the only physical I ever failed in my life. Right after that. I went to work for Lubrizol and passed their physical,” laughed Don. “I stayed with them a year and a half, but I had a dream, I wanted to be in law enforcement. 

A Dream Realized

"My First Night I Was Scared to Death."

  

One morning coming off of graveyards I had a wreck on Cove Road, naturally. Joe Harlan was the highway patrolman there at the time and I got to talking to him about being a patrolman. He gave me some pointers and I put in my application, and I passed the physical,” laughed Don. “I always felt like I missed something by not being in the military, but obviously it wasn’t where the Lord wanted me to go. Paul Miller, an old Korean war veteran who lived on Hankamer Loop, had helped me get on with Lubrizol and he told me, ‘That’s like going to the gates of Hell and the Good Lord pulling you back.’ He was probably right; it wasn’t for me and it wasn’t my time. I got on with the Highway Patrol and turned 21 years old at the Academy. I didn’t tell anyone it was my birthday because they had to always do extra PT when there was a special occasion. Tom Carey was my sergeant and when he interviewed me to get on with the Highway Patrol, he asked me why I wanted to join. I told him because I wanted to help people.  I had good references from Mr. & Mrs. Albert Watts, Mrs. Alice Wilcox, the school secretary at the time, I forget who else, but they all gave me glowing references and I passed the interview board. They put me in Beaumont because not many people wanted to go to that area. There’s a reason I changed my name from Richard to Don. I was born Don Richard Langford, but I always went by Richard. When I first went to Beaumont, Captain Bob Russell introduced me to all these old highway patrolmen as the newest highway patrolman and he introduced me as Don Langford. I was too intimidated to tell him I went by Richard, so it was easier for me just to change my name, ‘cause he was a tough old hombre and we were really in awe,” laughed Don. “I was broke in by some really good experienced WW II and Korean War veterans. As a matter of fact, my first partner was Alfonso “Poncho” Mendiola, a Hispanic officer., but my second training officer was W. T Clark, he was a Korean War veteran who taught me a whole lot. You talk about saving my bacon, he did one time. I had stopped an old boy who was a DWI and he got out on crutches. I was gathering his information and W. T. got out of the car and stayed in the background, which was his usual practice. This old boy was kind of inebriated, but he was on crutches and couldn’t walk. I was trying to decide if I was going to have a case for a DWI or is he safe enough to let drive home. I was leaning towards just writing him a traffic ticket and I had turned away from him to get some information off the car, registration I believe. The next thing I heard was a whop and I turned around. This guy had long hair and W. T. had grabbed him by the hair and thrown him on the ground. He said, ‘Partner, don’t ever turn your back on anybody. He had that crutch halfway up in the air fixing to come down heavy on you.’ The guy didn’t realize W. T. was there behind him. 


“My first night in the Highway Patrol, I went to meet my new partner on patrol. He said, ‘get in the car, we gotta go, we have a wreck on top of the Rainbow Bridge.’ I wasn’t familiar with the Rainbow Bridge at that time. We got on the bridge; it was just a two-lane bridge then and traffic was lined up on it. He jumped over into the oncoming lane and sped up there and I was holding on for dear life. Once we got up there, he jumped out and started getting the traffic moving. When those cars and trucks would rumble by that big old bridge was shaking, so I was scared to death that first night,” Don laughed recalling that night.

MatchMaker MatchMaker Make Me a Match

“While I was in Nederland I roomed with Bill Dingley. We rented the back half of a house from two widow women. He was going to Lamar College to get his engineering degree, I needed a place to stay, and we were both broke. The home was next door to my future wife,” Don said with a smile. “One of the widow women was a matchmaker and she told me Debby Frederick wanted to meet me and she told Debby that I wanted to meet her,” laughed Don. “After we met, we went together about six months before we got married. They wouldn’t let me move back to Anahuac at the time, but they had an opening in Mont Belvieu. Just after high school when I was working for Lubrizol, I had bought just over an acre of land from Vane Clark out on Cove Road, so I wanted to get back over there. We had a little 12 x 40 trailer house; it was our first house to buy and it was very small. Later on, they let me make an inner-sergeant area transfer to Anahuac. We had been living in another trailer house at that time, and when the wind would blow you could feel it going through the walls, we were on the prairie at the time. I told Sgt. Carey, ‘If I can get out of this trailer house I’ll move to Anahuac. Luck would have it, I found a house that originally was another highway patrolman’s house, Gladman Henry and his wife Margie. It was on Oak Street in Anahuac.”

The Shooting ~ Turning Point of My Life

Nothing Matched This

“It was a cold morning on January 4th, 1974, when the incident happened. I was still living in Cove at the time. Everything preceding the day of this event was usually pretty routine. I say routine, they always tell you there is never a routine stop but there wasn’t anything that matched this. There were always some fights with belligerent drunks but nothing that put the fear of the good Lord into me like this did. In 1973, when they had a big push on DWI’s, my partner Rick Rose and I talked Sgt. Carey into letting us work graveyards. I think we were the first Highway Patrol shift in the State of Texas to get to work graveyards. We’d work until one or two o’clock in the morning when the bars closed, and then we’d go home. 1973 is when the oil embargo came on and we had the energy crisis when Richard Nixon was president. Rick and I filed over 200 DWI’s between us in Chambers County, believe it or not, in one year.” 


“January the 4th 1974 was my first day back to work in the New Year. Rick was taking some time off, so I was by myself,” stated Don. “This was the first car I stopped after the holidays, as best I can remember. It was about 1:30 in the morning and he came up behind me with bright lights on. He didn’t dim his lights and naturally you suspected a DWI. I pulled over and let him pass and then followed him. He bobbled a couple of times, so I pulled him over at I-10 and Highway 61. I got out of the car and the young man was nice when he first got out. It was cold and back then we had real goose down filled parka coats. I’m left-handed and we always tucked our jacket behind our holster so we could get to our pistol. In those days we didn’t have the really safe holsters we have now, we just had one with a little strap that went up and down. As a courtesy I asked the young man to get in the front seat of my car, as it was cold, and asked him for his driver’s license. He didn’t have it and said, ‘let me go check and see if it’s in the car,’ so he went back to his car, he had four ladies in the car with him. After talking with the girls, he came back and gave me an alias. I ran the name and date of birth, and naturally, nothing came back. I could smell alcohol on him. I didn’t know if he was just intoxicated or high too, but I knew something wasn’t quite right.” 

From Calm to Chaos

Photo Left is Don's 357 Service Revolver

“At that point, he hadn’t offered any signs of resistance. We talked and I told him, ‘Look, I’m going to have to take you in. If you will just lean forward and put your hands behind you, I’ll just cuff you in the car, we have to do that.’ That’s when he just really lost it. He threw both arms out and just hollered, then pushed the door open and tried to get out. I reached over and pulled him back on top of me, this way,” demonstrated Don, indicating he had pulled him across himself at his waist. “He was trying to get out and I was trying to get his arm behind him. He pushed himself forward and got on my holster and was able to get my gun. He said, ‘I’ve got the gun,’ as he was getting out, I grabbed the revolver by the barrel. We were struggling in the car, and I pushed us out on the ground, all the while holding onto the gun by the cylinder. We fought and he hollered at the girls to come and help him kill this $@#. (Don respectfully did not use the language the guy used.) One of the four girls got out with a pair of scissors to help him, but the other girls talked her back into the car. I always kept three hollow points and three armor piercings in my gun. I had the hollow points cycled where they would come up first in case I had to shoot somebody and I had the armor piercings as the last three in case I had to shoot out a tire or shoot through an engine block or a radiator on a car.” 

Struggle for Survival

Photos of Wounds Don Received from Shooter

The red mark below Don's ear is the exit wound of the bullet.   


“While we were struggling, I would lose my grip at times. The first bullet he fired had hardly any scratch on it and it didn’t go off. The second round had a little more of a scratch on it but still did not detonate. About that time, he grabbed my ear and bit off the bottom part of it. We went to the ground, and I pushed the barrel of the gun into the ground. When I did, he pulled the trigger and that was the last hollow point to come up. I had my hand around the cylinder, and it just numbed my whole left arm and hand, as it was a 357 magnum. He pulled the gun out of the ground and got up, I was on my back, and he just looked down and aimed at my head. Just as he fired the armor piercing round, I turned my head to the right, which saved my life. You can still see a little scar here where the bullet went in,” Don said pointing to the scar on his lip. It hit the jawbone then it circled around and came out here,” said Don showing me the scar on the left side of his jaw. “If it had been a hollow point,” he continued “it would have blown my jaw off but thank the good Lord it wasn’t. Where you see the little black spot here on my lip that’s still a little gunpowder spackling, its now fifty years old. It’s there as a reminder of that night every time I shave,” Don softly said with a hint of sadness in his voice.  In my opinion, he should consider it a badge of honor.  “When he started back to his car I got up and got my shotgun from the back seat of the patrol car. I always kept one in the barrel on safety, but I had trouble getting it off safety ‘cause my hand was numb. Back then we had carburetors on the cars, and he flooded the car as he was trying to escape. That gave me time to get in position for a shot. 

Giving Chase

Those Red Lights Never Looked so Good

“When I fired, I shot through the back of the car. I was trying to shoot through the back windshield at him ‘cause I could see his head but it went just above the windshield through the back of the car which saved his life momentarily. Three pellets hit him in the back of the head, but the worst ones were no more than a half inch deep, so it would not have been a fatal wound. He finally got the car started and sped off. According to some witness statements later he said to the girls, ‘come on, let’s get out of here, I just killed a cop.’ As he sped off, I got in my patrol car and gave pursuit. During my scuffle with the guy, I had dropped my ticket book and when I went to give chase, I ran over it. One of the officers found it later and returned it to me. It is in my collection of memorabilia from that awful night. I called dispatch and told them to send me an ambulance and to send help. As I was driving, I tried to feel my wound, I thought the whole side of my face was gone as my hand was numb and so was the side of my face. He drove a short distance to the rest area on the south side of I-10, and I pulled in behind him. The two closest police officers to arrive were David Matlock and Doug Nix, deputies from Winnie. They had heard the call and when they arrived on the relief scene those red lights never looked so good. As they were coming, I had my flashlight on the car. We had air force landing lights on our flashlights and how he got out of the car without me seeing him I’ll never know unless I blacked out again for a while. I was standing beside my car with my shotgun waiting on assistance. Whenever the deputies pulled up, the car started pulling off and I said that’s him, so the deputies opened fire and I shot one more time. The car stopped and when we got up there only the four girls were in the car, one had gotten behind the wheel. He had told the girls he was going to circle around and finish the job. I don’t know how close he ever got to me or if he just took off and ran, or if he planned to come back for me then saw the two deputies and he saw he couldn’t do it. He ran across the rice field right behind the rest area back where Mrs. Ethyl White’s house was on Barrow White Road, in that area.” 

Sheriff Buck Echols of Liberty

One Thing That Really Impressed Me

“One of the things that really impressed me,” declared Don emotionally, “and it’s impressed me more over the years, is all the help that came out that night. During the earlier years there were so few of us that we depended on each other. We were a close-knit group. We didn’t have a whole crew, one person did more than one job, and when one of us was in trouble the others showed up” 

Sparking the Pavement

“The first highway patrolman was John Kemp, I believe John was his first name. I went through patrol school with him. He was over by the Red Bluff Theater in Pasadena patrolling when he heard the call. Back then we had long whip antennas on the back of our cars. I’m sure he was exaggerating but he said when he came through the Baytown tunnel the whip antenna was sparking the pavement behind him,” laughed Don. 

He Had My Gun

"Buck Echols brought bloodhounds from Liberty County, I forget what other agencies but I know there were several of them that were involved. District Judge Dub Woods and assistant District Attorney Carroll Willborn were out in their vehicles patrolling the roads too. It makes you feel real good knowing the people were out there to help you. Sheriff Otter and Wesley King were on the scene, Chief Deputy Don Schauberger was there, I mentioned David Matlock and Doug Nix. I don’t know if that guy was still trying to come up behind me and they kept him from doing that or what. But they were awfully brave knowing that there was an armed person, and they still came in like they did without disregarding their own safety. There was a host of other people who showed up to help, ‘cause they knew there was a bad guy with a gun and someone else could get hurt. That was the biggest thing I thought about after I got shot, he had my gun, and he could shoot someone else.”  

He Chose His Fate

“Mr. Herman Rivers was very supportive. The dogs were barking and baying on the shooter’s trail and then they stopped and just lay there. Sgt. River’s said, ‘that’s where he’s at. There’s no need for anybody else to get hurt, let’s wait until daylight, cause he still has the gun and it’s safer to approach him in daylight.’ I hate to think that was the guys last thought, laying there and listening to the dogs bay. He was dead when they found him and he still had my gun in his hand. He had been running and had lost a little blood, it was near freezing, and he just ran himself out. The autopsy report stated he died of hypothermia. I feel for his family, ‘cause he’d been in some trouble before. He was a twin, and it was his 21stbirthday. It was just a tragedy all the way around. Dee Clark from over on Gou Hole Road said, ‘he chose his fate, he could have stayed there and gotten help and he would have lived.’ That helped me feel better. I grew up in the Church of Christ and I took ‘Thou shalt not kill’ very seriously. It really bothered my dad; he was a very pious man. He didn’t go to Church often, but he read his Bible daily. He said one night while he was sleeping, he had a vision, or a dream and was told ‘Richard didn’t kill that man, he stopped the devil.’ That’s not to say the man was a devil, but he had the devil in him that night.” 

Every Day A Blessing Since

Seeing People Through a Different Lens

“Sid Desmoreaux and Joe Sandlin were both ambulance drivers at that time. They’re the ones who took me to the hospital that night. They took me to John Sealy Hospital in Galveston to get my ear sewed up and my wound fixed. TDC has a prisoner’s ward there where prisoners go for treatment. Someone got their gears mixed up and they put me on the prisoner’s ward. I was lying on a bed and this guy comes up to me and says, ‘I’ve got some information I need to give you on one of these inmates.’ They all knew I was a cop in there and I was thinking, I need to tell my side of the story, I didn’t do anything wrong,” chuckled Don. “I was getting a little paranoid. Finally, one of the nurses came by and got it straightened out, but I stayed in there a couple of hours before they realized their mistake.”


“I’m sure I’m leaving something out, but that was pretty much the story of that incident. I think it made me a better person as far as understanding where people are coming from, you meet a lot of good people under bad circumstances. Some of them get hooked up on drugs and they don’t want to be that way. I think that incident made me more compassionate toward my fellow man.” 



Remarkable Courage Honored

Cove Mayor Leroy Stevens Hands Don Proclamation Honoring Him


During that dreadful night of 1974, Don showed remarkable courage. When faced with the decision of fight or flight he chose fight. Pushing past his own fears and personal pain his skill as a well-trained highway patrolman took control   He continued to pursue his assailant never ceasing to fight until reinforcements arrived.


Friends and neighbors of Don in the West Chambers County community of Cove honored him in celebration of “Don Richard Langford Day.” Mayor H. Leroy Stevens presented him with the proclamation which said:


WHEREAS establishing and maintaining these peaceful and law abiding surroundings does not come without cost to those men and women who are involved in the law enforcement of our communities; and


WHEREAS Texas Highway Patrolman Langford is a part of this law enforcement and has served his state, his county, and his community in his capacity as patrolman to the best of his ability;


WHEREAS in a recent encounter while executing his official capacity he not only performed his duty well but went farther than duty demanded continuing the chase while seriously wounded showing the courage and bravery that has been passed down in our heritage from the very founders of our country –”


WHEREAS we at Cove, Texas would like to voice our support and appreciation for such dedication.


Don’s demeanor quickly changed as he mentally recalled the horror of that night. As his voice broke, he softly said, “Up until a couple of years ago, on the anniversary of the incident, I would go to the place it all happened and do a replay. I stayed in the highway patrol four more years after that, but it was hard. I was rather paranoid and pulled my gun on more people after that night. Back then they didn’t have counseling. It was just, ‘hey, you did a good job,’ and back to it. I had to go before the Grand Jury, they all thanked me for my service and the people in the community were very supportive, but I probably shouldn’t have gone back on the road. Nowadays, when officers go through traumatic events they go in for counseling because basically it’s PTSD. To this day loud noises unnerve me. I remember when I used to help work traffic for Chambers County when they popped firecrackers for New Years Eve. When they put out those big old booms it would just send a chill through me. I understand why they used to call PTSD “shell shock. That night was probably when the fun and games went out the window of being a police officer.” 


Don quickly took his emotions captive once again and said, “One night I was out on patrol in Anahuac and I stopped this guy, real nice guy. He probably wouldn’t care if I called his name, but I’m not going to. He was working for Exxon and I asked him, ‘what do you make an hour?’ That was in 1978. He said $15, I forget how much I was making but when I got out of the Academy in 1970, we were making $630 a month with once-a-month paydays. That’s when I decided I needed to make a career change and I applied at Exxon, Texas Eastern and Sun Oil Company. Exxon was the first one to call me, so I went and took their test. Jake Ducote, I went to school with his son, Steve, kept telling me they were going to hire me. I passed their psychological test and their physical, and that’s when I went to work for Exxon. While working there on December 20th, 1980, I was out pumping wells between C and A lease. I wasn’t supposed to work that shift, but I filled in so I could be off later that day for my little girl’s birthday, I never made it to that party. I was getting a sample off a well and a boat driver pulled his boat into the little pier on the wellhead. It was about 4 feet long and 20 feet wide and I was catching the sample when he put both engines forward and went back to get a cup of coffee, which was kinda normal. He didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done a hundred times before. A norther had blown in and a big wave caught the boat and the rear end spun around. With the gears going forward it just spun around and pushed grating into my ankle and foot on my left leg. He quickly backed away and turned around and I grabbed the handrails and hopped up on the boat. It was a thirty-minute boat ride back to Point Barrow on the West side of the county. From there they carried me to Methodist in Baytown. That was the first time I didn’t have Christmas at home. We had a family tradition started by my wife’s parents, we always had gumbo on Christmas Eve. This would be the only year I would miss my gumbo on Christmas Eve. On January the 14th Debby and I will have been married 53 years,” Don exclaimed proudly. “and Debby has stood by me through all of that, she’s a good wife.”


“One of the fond memories I have of Methodist Hospital is the Robert E. Lee choir came and sang Christmas carols. That’s a good memory,” Don whispered softly. “My leg was pretty mangled but the doctors at Methodist thought it was worth saving because I was a young bread winner. It’s kind of like they say, ‘the operation was a success, but the patient died.’ The grafts and the bone structure and everything was coming back but there’s oily barnacles and stuff on those well heads and they couldn’t get all of that cleaned out, it was so ground up in there and gangrene set in, so they had to go ahead and amputate. It all made me feel pretty low, but I also felt blessed that the good Lord had saved me . . . again! I’ve always felt the good Lord has kept me around for a reason. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not worth taking or if He has something specific in mind,” laughed Don heartily. I used to think He wanted me to do something great and grand, but I’ve decided it isn’t, He just want me to try and be as kind to people as I can. Recovery took a while, the prosthetic kept rubbing blisters on my leg ‘cause the ones back then were held on by leather straps and there was a lot more movement and friction. Now they’re held on my suction and that is much better, but I still have problems to this day because I’m very active After I recovered from my accident, I went back to work for Exxon for a while at Point Barrow then they sent me to school in Boulder, Colorado to learn how to give hearing tests. I drove a little truck around to the different oil fields in East Texas and gave those Exxon hands hearing tests. They’d all worked around compressors, and they were all deaf at certain levels,” laughed Don.  

Drawn Back to What I Love

“I got to where I was feeling pretty good and Chuck Morris, who was an old highway patrolman, was sheriff in Chambers County at the time. He gave me an unpaid deputy commission beginning in 1981. I just more or less just piddled and volunteered. In 1985 I told him, ‘Chuck, I think I want to go full time and be a deputy.’ He made me his chief deputy, I’m not sure I was qualified for that position, but I stayed as his chief deputy for four years until 1990 when Constable Jack Moorhead died. 

That's My Job!

"Jack had been the constable for about thirty years and was a former war hero from WW II. I told Chuck, ‘That’s my job, I’m gonna run for it.’ There were a half a dozen people who ran but I came out on top. The first two or three times I ran for re-election I’d get an opponent, but after that they quit running. 

I've Met Some Wonderful People

“I’m probably too soft hearted to be a police officer,” confessed Don. “I’ve helped people I had to evict, I loaded their stuff up in my patrol car and helped them move or find a place. One lady needed boxes, so I went and found boxes for her. I helped the city out with the ordinances they had to enforce. There was one guy who had a bunch of junk in his yard, he wasn’t really mentally stable. I got a bunch of his beer drinking buddies to help him load all of his stuff up, he collected bottles and cans and what have you. We made about three trips to the dump and I went and gave them all a beer as payment. That probably isn’t proper to do,” Don chuckled, “but they were happy cause that’s what they lived for and what he lived for. About four or five months later his yard was junked up just like it used to be, but I’ve had some good times and met some wonderful people here in Anahuac. 

Fifty Years a Lawman

It's not About Money or Prestige

“I served as constable for thirty years. I had five years paid time with the county plus another five unpaid prior to that and I’ve got two years as deputy constable under Dennis Dugat and eight years in highway patrol, so I’ve got 50 years as a commissioned police officer, not all of it paid. It doesn’t give you any money or prestige; it’s just a personal goal I wanted to attain and I’m glad I reached it,” concluded Don. Don retired as constable in 2020. When I asked Don to sum up his years in law enforcement he replied, “It wasn’t work it was more a calling. We were more than a protector in the community, many times we filled the roll as priest too, Not everyone gets the opportunity to contribute to the betterment of their fellow man. I’m blessed to have had a job where I made a difference,” concluded Don. And make a difference he did!


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