Late sheriff's daughter recalls life in county jail

The intoxicated prisoner was concealing something under her blouse.

The sheriff suspected it might be a gun. He called his wife in to help supervise as deputies searched to see what the woman was hiding.

"The lady pulled it out, and it was a baby rabbit," said Laverne Schwab of Jackson, who lived at the Cape Girardeau County Jail for nearly two and a half years in the late 1940s, when her dad, Herman Sewing, served as sheriff.

"When they got back, they were laughing so hard they could hardly tell it," she said of her parents' reaction to the furry contraband.

Schwab was in fifth grade when her father was elected sheriff. When Sewing took office in January 1945, the family moved from its farm on Route KK to the jail in Jackson -- a big change for a little girl who was used to attending classes in a one-room country school.

Then-Sheriff Herman Sewing stands in the kitchen at the Cape Girardeau County Jail while his wife, Celia, prepares a meal for the prisoners in this photo from 1945 or 1946. The Sewings' daughter Laverne Schwab said the small panel in the door behind Celia Sewing was actually a small window through which food could be handed to trustees for distribution to the other inmates. (PHOTO COURTESY LAVERNE SCHWAB)

"It kind of scared me at first," Schwab said. "I didn't want to move to town. I didn't want to leave the farm."

She eventually adjusted to the change and learned to enjoy it.

"Every day was just a little different. Nothing was ever the same," she said. "There was not much routine to it -- you know, you never knew what the next day was going to bring."

Schwab's mother, Celia, cooked for the prisoners, and Schwab occasionally ran errands for them -- usually to Jones' Drugstore for sweets.

"I did go get them ice cream or doughnuts or something," she said. "If they got ice cream, then I got ice cream. That was my fee."

Her status as the sheriff's daughter had a certain cachet, too. After all, Schwab was the only kid in school who could spy on criminals through a hole in her bedroom wall.

"There was a little peephole in my bedroom, just about as big as my thumb, and you could look into the jail," she said. "One night, I guess the trusty started tapping on the wall. … I had to convince myself that he couldn't get through that little hole."

Schwab eventually worked up the nerve to find her father and tell him something was wrong in the jail. As it turned out, a prisoner was ill, and the trusty was tapping on the wall to alert Sewing, she said.

"I sure was one scared little girl," she said.

Sewing once invited his daughter to ride along while he transported a prisoner from Cape Girardeau to a mental hospital in Farmington, Mo.

"He picked up this man in Cape. He thought it wouldn't be any problem," Schwab said.

Wrong.

"West of Jackson, he threw up in the back of the car, and then he cussed my dad all the way to Farmington," Schwab said, laughing.

Some of Sewing's responsibilities were even more unpleasant than dealing with a sick, angry man in a patrol car.

During World War II, the military sent telegrams to the families of fallen soldiers to tell them a loved one had been killed.

If the bad news came in after the Western Union office closed for the evening, it was up to Sewing to deliver it, Schwab said.

"Eventually, we got that word for my brother," she said.

Dale Sewing was 19 when he was killed in action Feb. 21, 1945.

"That was really hard on my dad, because that was his only son," Schwab said.

Schwab's sister, Frances Stark of Perryville, Mo., compiled a book of newspaper clippings about their father and the cases in which he was involved.

One of the clippings details a whiskey theft that occurred during Sewing's tenure.

Herbert Blake of St. Louis was involved in the heist.

"He was paroled to my dad, and my dad got him a job at Brennecke's [a Jackson automotive dealership], and he lived with us," Schwab said. "I actually went home with him one time to see his wife and daughter. … He just wanted me to go along to see where he lived, and my dad just trusted him."

Schwab said her dad's trust paid off: Blake eventually straightened out his life, went home to his family, and, as far as she knows, never got into trouble again.

"We kept in touch with him for a little while," she said.

Sewing, a former teacher, often talked with prisoners and tried to help them reform, Schwab said.

"I think he tried to see the good in people," she said.

Sewing's tenure as sheriff -- and his life -- came to an abrupt but heroic end on a rainy night in 1947.

According to newspaper articles of the time, a veteran named John Sample Jr. was driving May 24, 1947, on Highway 25, near what is now Forest Acres, when he hit a culvert and became pinned in his car.

Sewing was working to free Sample from the vehicle when a tractor-trailer came over a hill, jackknifed and hit him.

Both Sewing and Sample were killed.

In that instant, Schwab's family lost everything, she said.

"Basically, I not only lost my dad; we didn't really have a home," Schwab said. "I went to church camp the week right after that, and when I come back, all the furniture is gone."

Her mother found an apartment two blocks from the jail and went to work for a restaurant.

"She couldn't really go back to the farm, because my sister lived there, and my mom didn't drive, so she needed to be someplace where she could be close to work of some kind," Schwab said. "That was a hard time, because I always felt like I was the only person in school that didn't have a dad."

Schwab remembers her father as strict but outgoing -- a man who could keep his children in line with a look.

"I don't really remember anybody ever getting a spanking," Schwab said. "I don't even really remember him fussing at us. We just knew when we got that look."

epriddy@semissourian.com

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