By Marilyn Miller
Since graduating from Minden High School in 1963, Claude Minter Reeves has had two careers – and they couldn’t be more different. One involves law enforcement, and the other…well, let’s just say it doesn’t have anything to do with the enforcement of the law.
Right after graduating, Claude took a correspondence course administered by the Louisiana State Department of Embalmers & Funeral Directors. “I had to fly to New Orleans to take the final test…it was the only place the test was administered…a place called Delgado. But I got my license.”
Prior to that, Claude had dropped off an application at the Minden Police Department. Chief Harvey McClung and the Minden City Council gave him a call, and Mr. Reeves became Officer Reeves. He then dedicated a dozen years to the MPD.
Claude always worked nights because he drove a school bus for the Webster Parish School Board during the day (for 11 years). He had just reported for his first night when a call came in about a shooting at the corner of Martin Luther King and East Street. “We (WPSO Deputy Willard McClung was with him) arrived and there was a male lying in the middle of the street and another male on the side of the street…I don’t know what they were arguing about” but the defendant, a third man, had shot both of them.
“I’d been on the job for 10 minutes,” Officer Reeves recalled. “I had borrowed a uniform from Gary White, a gun from Dalton Shipp, and a flashlight from somebody. Everything I had on except my underwear was borrowed from someone else. I stood up on the street with a flashlight and turned cars and people away from the scene.”
When he got home, he told his wife, Betty, “if this is policing, I don’t know if I want any part of it.”
“I worried about him, especially with him working nights,” Betty, who was clerk of court for three different district judges, said. “And especially the night he had to put on special gear to face a Shreveport shooting suspect who was ‘holed up’ at Ramada Inn.”
“After 12 years, I became dissatisfied with policing and decided I wanted to enter the profession I studied for,” Claude recalled. “Darryl Walker was the manager of Rose-Neath Funeral Home, and I went in and talked to him, and he laughed and said, “You are one lucky man.” An opening had just come up. “I was hired, and I stayed there for 30 years. I retired the last day of 2007.”
“People have asked me over the years about some of the biggest funerals I have worked,” Claude commented. “Well, there were Newt and Erlene Brown, Nancy Burns, Lt. Gary White, H. O. West, Grady Madden, Michael Butler…I can’t think of more right now. But those come to mind. I probably left somebody out.” Claude learned a hard lesson when he scheduled two of those services on the same day. “There were flowers everywhere,” he recalled. “I never made that mistake again.”
People also ask Claude how he can do the job he does, comforting the bereaved. ”Well, I feel like I’m doing what the Lord wants me to do…and he gave me a talent for doing it,” he answered.
At the end of 2007, the day he retired from Rose-Neath, Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton approached Claude and asked if he would consider working for him. Claude replied that he was “Older, wiser and more tired. I’ve been up 30 years doing night embalming and I can’t do much (physically).” But Sheriff Sexton replied that he had something perfect for him.
So, the morning after he retired from Rose-Neath, Claude was on the payroll of the WP Sheriff’s Office, assigned as a bailiff in the WP Courthouse. He got the “politics” speech from his boss — “Claude, just remember to work every day like the election is tomorrow. We are running every day that we work. Everybody is looking at us, watching us to see what we do right and what we don’t do right.”
Lt. Reeves remembered that advice every day, and he remembered his training under Lt. Mack Garrett, senior bailiff. A bailiff is a court officer who enforces the rules of behavior in courtrooms. Only one time in 18 years did Deputy Reeves recall having to “drag” someone (in this instance, the brother of a murder defendant), from the courtroom for yelling and disrupting a trial. When Lt. Garrett retired, Claude became senior bailiff.
CIaude is the son of a preacher and his wife, Bro. and Mrs. Paul Reeves, who transferred to Minden from Stamps, AR to work for the L&A Railroad. He was born Dec. 3, 1945 at Minden Sanitarium. He has a brother, Wayne, who is a retired schoolteacher living in Mexico. He had four sisters (now deceased). He and Betty have two children, daughter Angela R. Lilly and son Kevin Reeves & wife, Judith. They have four grandchildren – Morgan Lilly, Peyton Lilly & wife, Mary; Katie Reeves, and Emily Reeves.
What does the future of a retired Claude Reeves look like?
“I haven’t wet a jig (fished) in years, but I plan to now,” he said, adding that he wants to work more for his church, Calvary Missionary Baptist.
Lt. Reeves is still working parttime for the WPSO, escorting Minden High School teams to “away” games. And he’s working two days a week for Rose-Neath Funeral Home.
“Yeah, I retired just to keep working,” Claude laughed.
Might as well put that jig back in the tackle box…