Memorial honors fallen police officers

Sgt. Robert Guilliams didn't have to respond to the call that cost him his life.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol officer already was working overtime and was about to go home when a call came in about an injury accident nearly 50 miles away on Interstate 55 near the Missouri-Arkansas state line. Rather than call another officer out of bed in the wee hours of a stormy February morning, Guilliams volunteered to handle the accident.

Driving through heavy rain in Pemiscot County, Guilliams lost control of the patrol car and hit a bridge abutment. The impact of the crash split the car in half; Guilliams' body was found in the part of the vehicle pulled from a water-filled ditch.

"Sgt. Guilliams decided to handle the call himself to keep a fellow man who was closer from having to get up out of his bed and go to the crash scene," said Jim McNiell, chief of the Houston, Mo., Police Department and a retired Missouri State Highway Patrol lieutenant.

Guilliams was among 48 fallen officers honored Friday morning at a memorial service at Cape Bible Chapel.

"This is not a job; it's a calling. It's something that we believe that we need to be doing," McNiell said.

Doug Austin, secretary of Seniors and Lawmen Together, which sponsored the memorial, spoke about the effect of officers' deaths on their loved ones.

"We want to pay the honor to these people that is due them," he said. "We want to honor that one person that meant so much to these families. We want to honor that one husband, one father, one son, one nephew, one cousin, one friend."

Cape Girardeau County Sheriff Herman Sewing was killed in the line of duty May 24, 1947. Nearly 66 years later, his daughter, Laverne Schwab of Jackson, held a white rose presented to her during the "Final Call," in which each officer's name and department were read, followed by "10-42," the radio code that signals the end of an officer's shift.

"He went to investigate a wreck," Schwab said. "It was pouring down rain, and a trailer truck came over the hill, and it jackknifed," striking Sewing as he directed traffic around the accident on Highway 25 south of Jackson.

Beyond losing a beloved husband and father, Sewing's family lost their home, Schwab said.

"It was very hard, because there wasn't any type of retirement or anything back then," said Schwab, who was 12 when her father died. "We lived at the jail. My mother did the cooking. We had to find another place to live."

Schwab remembered her father as a strict but fun-loving man who got along well with the prisoners he was supervising.

"He communicated a lot with the prisoners, and he would go in there and talk to them for hours," she said.

Schwab said it didn't occur to her to worry about her father when he was working.

"You know, things weren't as dangerous as they are now," she said. "You didn't have the drugs," and violent offenders were rare.

Today, the risks may be more obvious, but police still have to remember to keep their guard up, said Chief James Humphreys of the Jackson Police Department.

"There are no routine calls," he said. "Most police officers know that, but like anybody in any job, you can get lax, and it's so important that law enforcement goes to and takes every call knowing it could be your last one."

epriddy@semissourian.com

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Pertinent address:

2911 Kage Road, Cape Girardeau, Mo.