YAM #7 - Officer Moore
Still trying to get down more memories from my youth in Gary, Indiana. There was a policeman named Eddie Moore who was a friend of our family and he used to bring my brother and me neat things like spent cartridges and, once, a bullet that had flattened on the sidewalk after he had shot it through a rabid dog. For 1950's small boys this was really, really neat, but now I wonder that I didn't catch rabies myself.

Sadly, he and his partner were answering the call involving a domestic dispute. He went to the back door of the house and knocked. Coming up the basement stairs, was a man with a German Luger and he fired at Eddie, hitting him three times. Eddie immediately emptied his service revolver into the guy and, shortly after, they both died.

It was pretty sad for the whole city. His wake was one of the first to which I ever went and it was very ironic that the body of the man who shot him was in the next room of the funeral home, so that the families and friends of both men were grieving in the same place at the same time. I'll never forget looking at the killer's relatives and seeing the sadness and confusion in their eyes. I think that's one of the first times that I learned that things are not as simple as they are depicted in the news or on television; it's not always a case of just the good guys and the bad guys.

After his death, Eddie's widow was the crossing guard at the southeast corner of Wirt for many years . I remember that she used to always joke around with the kids, but, if any car zipped through HER crossing when she had signaled "STOP," she would curse after them while she slammed her wooden stop sign into the side of the passing car, leaving nice creases, scratches and dents (I saw this many times, but I never saw a car stop ... her demeanor always spurred them on to get the hell out of there ... FAST!).

There's a small bit of confusion (well, for me) in that Al Shanahan (source of many tidbits of history of those years in Gary) related several years ago that an Officer John Moore and his partner responded to a family disturbance at a home located on South Hancock Street, almost in back (East) of the old Miller Bowling Alley (Stack Bros). Officer Moore went to the back of the house, and then down a few steps to the basement apartment. He was shot through the closed door, without warning, and died almost instantly. His partner was Officer George Venture. That sounds real close to my recollection of Eddie and makes me wonder if perhaps Eddie was the middle name of John Moore (I go by my middle name, too, and sometimes causes confusion) or whether there were two Officer Moores who died under almost identical circumstances.

At any rate, it was a sobering experience for this young kid.