john ledford january 3,2001 rob amberg: marshall, north

John Ledford January 3,2001

ROB AMBERG: Marshall, North Carolina and it is January 3rd, 2001 about a

little bit before ten o'clock. John, could you just introduce yourself? I want to make sure

that we're picking you up, and tell me who you are, your age, and all those kinds of

things.

JOHN LEDFORD: My full name is Chauncey, C-H-A-U-N-C-E-Y John

Ledford. I am the sheriff of Madison County. I was born July 8, 1965, thirty-five years

of age.

RA: Great. John, what part of the county were you born? Oh, John you were

born in '65. What part of the county were you raised in and where?

JL: I was raised in the Forks of Ivy community of Madison County, which is a

small community that sits south of Mars Hill between the Madison-Buncombe County

line and Mars Hill. I'm almost probably a mile from northern Buncombe County.

RA: What did your father do? What did your parents do? And what was your

family background in county?

JL: We live on property that my Grandmother Ledford who was a neighbor of

ours had deeded off to my father upon his retirement from the US Navy. He at sixteen

years of age volunteered to go fight in World War II and left and made a career of it and

got out early '60s and came back. My mother is from the Spring Creek section of

Madison County, and she just has been retired a few years. She taught school in Madison

County for forty years. I have a twin brother, and actually the interesting thing is my

brother and I are adopted children.

RA: Huh.

Interview number K-0251 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

JOHN LEDFORD

JL: They adopted us when we were a little less than two years of age. So all my

life has been spent up to about the last two years except for what time I worked with

other law enforcement agencies in the Forks of Ivy community of Madison County.

RA: Were you born in this community? Were your birth parents?

JL: From what I know we were born in Madison County. I have never

researched. I never looked into that and the only parents I've ever known were James

and Nina Ledford.

RA: Wow. That's something. That's a good sign that you were comfortable

with that.

JL: Very comfortable with that. I have no desire. They were great parents and

are great parents.

RA: Now did your parents have other children too?

JL: I have one sister Laura who was born in 1968. She is a little younger than

us. She's now married and lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

RA: So when your dad then retired out of the Navy, he was still relatively young

at that point-

JL: He was.

RA: Probably forty or something.

JL: Right. When he came out of the Navy, his brothers owned a service station

and a grocery store called the L and M Supermarket. He worked there for a brief period

of time, and then my grandmother deeded him property and he went up the road and

actually opened up a small service station probably less than half a mile away from his

brother's service station and went into business against him. I don't know if you'd say

2 Interview number K-0251 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

JOHN LEDFORD

against him, but he went into that business as well. He ran that business from sixty,

probably '65 to--. He's retired now, but he still works, very active at seventy-five years

of age. So he's been in that another thirty-five years.

RA: Now he was a, there was a time when he was in business with Don

Anderson. Is that right?

JL: He was. Sometime around 1970, early '70s, my father opened a second

business. He kept his original service station but went up and opened a second business

on Highway 19, which was also a service station/garage/auto parts store. He went into

that business with Doctor Don Anderson who was a professor he had met from Mars Hill

College who's always been a life long friend of my father's. They were very close.

RA: Where was that original store down here that he opened?

JL: The original store was right beside my mother and father's house. It's there

in the Forks of Ivy section. There were three stores. At that time that was the old Mars

Hill Highway. See there was only a two-lane road that came from Asheville to Mars Hill

and the L and M Supermarket, that was Ledford and Marsh sat on the left. Then you

came up to my father's place which was Ledford's gas station, which sat on the right and

then directly above that-all of these were in eyesight of each other-was Thurmond

Briggs who ran another Exxon Station just above it. That's where Austin Heating and

Cooling is now if you're familiar with that. That was all on the main road. So

everything, it was a busy place early in the morning. I can remember when we would go

to school, all three parking lots would be full of people. That's, you could see both

directions from our house. It was interesting thing.

RA: Now did your family do any farming? Did your father farm at all?


JOHN LEDFORD

JL: They did growing up. That's originally, my father's father passed away when

he was about three years of age. My grandmother raised seven children. They came

through the Depression in a small probably one, two, three, four-room house, which still

stands there in Forks of Ivy. At sixteen my father decided he was going to, the War

broke out. World War II broke out, and he went to Detroit, Michigan and got my aunt

who had married and moved there - basically with a parent's permission somehow they

can sign you into the military early - so he got her to sign, I guess my grandmother's

name, and he went in to join the Navy to fight in World War II and ended up making a

career out of it.

RA: So when he got back then, he basically went into business.

JL: He did.

RA: He really didn't farm or anything.

JL: He did not. By that time he came back all. Like I said, my father was

probably late thirties. He was the second youngest. All of those had grown up and had

gone into business. They had opened up these type of merchant type trade is what they

all had gone into. That's what he went in to. He came in and originally worked for his

brothers and then opened his own business.

RA: What are your earliest memories of those kind of times, that period you

would've been real, real young obviously? But where did you go to school?

JL: I went to Mars Hill. My mother was a teacher there.

RA: At the elementary?

JL: At the elementary there. The things I remember most about those businesses

then is that I could remember those type business as opposed to these bigger businesses


JOHN LEDFORD

like Ingles and Advance Auto Parts and whatever may be. We were dealing grocery

stores and parts stores and gas stations were the community hangouts. That's something

that I remember because I can remember every Sunday morning a lot of people, a lot of

the men in the community, their wives went to church and they came down. Dad had a

pot of coffee, and they would be at the store. It was an amazing thing because it was a lot

of the community leaders and all. I can remember being there, and I grew up at that time

by 1970, my father had entered politics. There were a lot of high-powered political

meetings took place over a pot of coffee at a service station. That was just the way it

was. It was very interesting because myself and my brother always worked in those

businesses at a young age. We had the responsibilities. We came home from school and

ran the cash register or swept and cleaned the bathrooms or stocked oil on shelves. That

was what, the way we were raised to work. My father had and has a very strong work

ethic. He worked for many years I would say probably in excess of thirty years, he

worked seven days a week. Usually opened up around six and closed at six, so about

seven days a week and twelve hours a day. That was his hobby. That was his whole life

evolved around that. Every one of us even including my younger sister had

responsibilities in those businesses that we had to work. Now when my guys here at the

sheriff department get to complaining about overtime or may-I didn't know what

overtime was. I don't think anything about a fifty or sixty-hour workweek. That's just

what you do. It's just part of it. I think there's nothing wrong with that. That's probably

one of the better things that I got out of my early childhood is having to work.

RA: Did you ever, was there ever any thought on your part of kind of going into

your dad's business, taking that over? As he retired or—


JOHN LEDFORD

JL: Well, it's interesting. I've always been interested in law enforcement. When

I graduated from high school, my father-

RA: Was that Madison High?

JL: Madison High School, 1983, my father and my twin brother he gave myself

and my twin brother a good graduation present. He let us go down to Myrtle Beach, and

we spent a week there, and he paid for all that. When we came back he told us, 'You can

go Monday and get yourself lined up to go to college, or you can go to work.' But he

said, 'You're going to do one of the other.' He said, 'You're not going to stay here at the

house and not work.' That was my father, 'Or you can go in the military.' So my brother

went to Mars Hill College. I went to talk to dad about whether I was going to go to

college. Dad said, 'What would you go for?' I said, 'Well I guess business.' He at that

time we owned three service stations. He said, 'Well, if you're going to go into business,

here's the keys. Go over to the one in Mars Hill and go to work.' He said, 'You can run

that one. And we'll run it together.' That's really what I did. Now my brother came out

and went one semester to Mars Hill College, and then he and my best friend joined the

US Army, and they left for two years. When he returned back, I went down to the North

Carolina Highway Patrol Academy. This was 1987 by then. I stayed about four weeks

and just didn't really ever click. That just was not what, I knew I wanted to be in law

enforcement, but I just really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I knew that wasn't it. So

came back and continued to work in my father's business until 1990. I was fortunate to

be offered a position with the Buncombe County Sheriffs Department. That's how I got

my start in law enforcement.


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: You were talking earlier about the idea of the store being a hangout and

places where people congregated. Was that also a school bus stop kind of right there?

Were kids picked up right in that area?

JL: Not so much at our store. It was interesting because my mother taught

school. So I always had to be at school thirty minutes early and had to stay about thirty

minutes late. There were a whole group of us, my next door neighbor who was about

four years older than me. My closest friend growing up, his mother was also a

schoolteacher. So we all, there were a number of us. It was amazing how many of us

actually school teachers had children that were a very tight knit bunch about the same age

and all stayed after school together. Then really from the time I was probably old enough

to push a broom and stuff, my mother would take us over to my father's store or over to

the store [tape unclear] that Dr. Anderson owned. By then we were, the store at the house

had closed down or we had rented it out. It was also a paint store. He sold paint, Glidden

Paint. We would go over to the Highway 19 store, and we had responsibilities. It was a

pretty good-sized store, still is a pretty good-sized store for this community. There was a

lot to do putting up stock and cleaning and sweeping. So we had plenty of chores to do,

cleaning out the garages, and we grew up in those businesses. It was always kind of

funny because later on in life when I ran for office, I knew so many people because all

these people traded at the store. They grew up and they'd say, 'Well those boys are hard

working boys, and they're fine young men.' When I would go in their homes and say

I'm going to run for sheriff and I want your vote.' They'd say, 'Oh yes. I've known your

father for thirty-five years and traded with him. I can remember you boys since you

were-'


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: I watched you grow up.

. JL: Yeah. I got one of the biggest votes that's probably ever been gotten in

Beech Glen in my home community box there. The year I ran, I ran it by just the man I

had run against had never lost the box, and not only did I beat him in that box but beat

him by over two hundred and fifty votes. So it's just, that's a lot. It was a complete

swing in the Beech Glen box that year.

RA: How did you as a child, what did you do for like entertainment? I know in a

sense working at the store could function as both work and the camaraderie of the place

could be entertainment. But what other kinds of things did you do as a boy growing up

kind of in the county that were--?

JL: Myself, my brother were very close and are very close. But we had

completely different tastes. When we got into high school really, my father told us, 'You

can work and I will pay you a salary, or you can play athletics and I will give you an

allowance.' It didn't take long to figure that I'd rather have a new car as playing

basketball. The monies, financially it was just better off for me to have a job, and I was

lucky to have a job. So we worked. Many of my hobbies revolved around just typical

stuff. We hunted. We fished, backpacked, did a lot of hiking, backpacking, rock

climbing, anything that this area had to offer. I was an avid hunter, I guess was one of

the biggest things. My closest friend at that time who is still somebody that I consider a

very close friend was about four years older than us. He had a car. So when I was like in

the-he had his license at sixteen and I was only twelve. My parents trusted him

immensely because his mother was a schoolteacher. We skated. We were still probably,

we skated. That was a big thing, roller skating, something we did very well at.


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: Did you go into Weaverville?

JL: We did. Carol Powers who is owner of Skateland or Skateland US A was a

good friend of mine. The interesting thing about Carol was we had a natural ability to

skate. It came out to the point where we were probably some of the best. We floor

guarded and skated on speed teams. We probably were as good a skaters that were

anywhere around. At that time we would go and compete different places and probably

better than ninety percent of them. That's something that I still can go every now and

then and do. At that time, now it's probably progressed. We could do things at that time

that people I thought were very good skaters that were older than me could not do. I'm

sure that's continued to evolve because the skates get faster and people get more athletic.

But that was a big part of us growing up. We did all those things, very active.

RA: It sounds like doing a lot of walking, hiking, hunting. So you spent a lot of

time in the woods it sounds like.

JL: We did. About every evening. My father bought me my first shotgun when I

was in the eighth grade. It was a little Four-ten. I used to love to squirrel hunt, and then

of course we grouse hunted. I never was really into big game hunting, but we did a lot of

bird hunting, a lot of rabbit hunting. We had bird dogs. We had beagles for rabbits. We,

I enjoyed that type. I still would enjoy it if I had the time to do it.

RA: So it sounds like, just this whole notion of place was very ingrained in you.

JL: It was.

RA: That was, sounds like that was a big part. What, would you hunt in the

moutains around your home, around Forks of Ivy?

JL: We did.


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: One thing I see right now quite often is you see more and more posted

signs-

JL: You do.

RA: Coming up in the county whereas when I first moved here that was just not

something you ever saw.

JL: Most of your squirrel hunting and stuff you would drive or you could just

walk. You'd take off in the woods and just walk and hunt squirrels because like you said

a lot of farm land and still a lot of wooded area there around Forks of Ivy. We would go

to Rich Mountain Mills down in the lower end of the county here to bird hunt. We

hunted in Barnardsville, did a lot of hunting. You could bird hunt on and around the

Coleman boundary there. We would rock climb in the Coleman Boundary. That's where

we learned to rock climb out there. We'd go from there to Looking Glass Falls and

places like that. We backpacked into the Smoky Mountains, Slick Rock Creek way out

in toward I guess it's Tapico, I'm trying to think. We were very active and doing that

kind of thing. Backpacking was something for us that was kind of-. It got into a very

big way because [when] we started out we had just probably very poor equipment and

that evolved into something. Diamond Brand Camping Center out in Naples knew us

very well. We, no matter if we had one good sleeping bag. As soon as we had enough

money, we'd buy a better one and then backpacks and stuff. That was, our parents, they

trusted us. My brother and I had a very good relationship with our parents. They trusted

us immensely. I would come in on Friday and be thirteen years old and say myself and

my brother maybe and Glen Norville are going to go somewhere and we'll be back

Sunday. They would say, 'Well you be careful but go.' They () because I think they


JOHN LEDFORD

knew that they raised us to be very independent but to use common sense. My father

gave me those speeches, there are two kinds of people, leaders and followers. You need

to be a leader not a follower and that type thing. I think he was around us enough to see

that we were pretty squared away type kids. He trusted us, and we turned out very well.

RA: That's a real, that's almost a mountain attitude I think in terms I think of

raising kids. To give kids guidelines and kind of boundaries but at the same time give

them lots of freedom within those boundaries.

JL: My father was a very interesting man. He's been much more of an influence

on my life than he would ever know. He would tell us, I would go to my father and ask

him for something, and he would say, 'Well, no you can't have that.' I would get upset

about it or feel like somehow I had been cheated. My dad would tell me, 'When I was

your age—which at that time would've been fourteen or fifteen years old—we were

picking fruit in Florida for ten cents an hour, ten cents a day or whatever it may have

been. Nobody owes you anything. You have to get out and get it on your own.' He was

always, I knew that I could have anything I wanted if I was willing to work for it. He

was not going to per se, he gave us anything we needed, but if we wanted it he afforded

u s - his way of doing it was giving us the opportunity to work to get it. We could put the

hours in to get it. He made the work available. That's why we've never been afraid of

work whether it's in law enforcement or any job I've ever had. I've never been the guy

that once I got into law enforcement. If we work a six o'clock shift at night until three o'

clock in the morning, I checked on at about four thirty and drive to the office and knock

out thirty minutes of paper work. Then when six o 'clock came I had most of my stuff

squared away and ready to go to work. I worked with a whole lot of agents who at six


JOHN LEDFORD

o'clock would check on the radio at five fifty-five and then have to go get gas and then

they'd have to stop. By the time they got to the office it was almost seven o'clock and

they hadn't done anything. So it was up in the evening before they were ready to go out

and do stuff. I got more done because I tried to be more organized. The same about

going home. At three o'clock and we were out working and there was still work to be

done, I stayed out. I wasn't one of those fellows that would look at my watch and say at

twenty minutes say I've got to be home at three o'clock and just leave in the middle of

something to go home. I just, it didn't really make any difference to me whether I got

paid for it or not. That's just the way, once you get used to that, that's just the way you

are.

RA: That's a real, I think that's an attitude or a value that comes from being self-

employed because you have your own business, you work until the work gets done. You

don't punch a clock. You just work until you get everything that needs to be done, done.

That's a real difference.

JL: My father used to always say that if you're working, you were making money,

should be making money. And if you were off you were probably spending money. So

which are you better off? So that was his philosophy. So he, nobody in the Ledfords,

even my sister as I say, we all knew that that was part of the bargain. That was part of the

package. You had to work. You were always compensated for working in many other

ways, not just financial. I could go to my father for anything. He just, he was there for

us. My mother as well. That kind of made us, that got me to where I am today because I

just believe, when I set in to run for sheriff, my plan was—I took a leave of absence in

November from the state, came back and went to work for my father and brother again in


JOHN LEDFORD

the business. That entire year, they made available to me at two o'clock in the afternoon

and I would get out and get in the car and go to ten o'clock at night just visiting people,

stopping by houses, shaking hands, seeing people I hadn't seen. I went in, if I would go

to somebody who they would tell me you need to go see this man in Spring Creek. I

would say can you take me to some people because if he told me he was going to support

me, then I wanted him to take me around to see some folks. I think that's how I won. I

really believe that. I got out and worked. If there was a gathering to be at and an

opportunity to speak and be seen or just go. The only thing I didn't do, I tried to shy

away from was funeral homes. For years in Madison County a lot of campaigning was

done at funeral homes and I just, somehow that didn't sit with me. I don't know exactly

why.

RA: Yeah, that's almost crossing the line. It's real close.

JL: It's an interesting thing because since I've been sheriff, I've had a lot of

people say, 'Well such and such a person has died and you need to go to funeral home.'

And I'll go in like thirty minutes early and sign the log and they'll say, 'Well you

should've stayed. The family would've liked to had you there.' And they might have.

But just for, you feel like you ought to be there for the family because they were friends

of yours, but at the same time you feel like you're either a distraction or you feel like

people are going to take it the wrong way if you are there. So I just, I sign the log and

just try to stay away from that type of thing. That's another way this county is changing.

I don't remember ever there being an election in the fall of the year. There was, but if

you've been here since '70, mid-seventies you know there never was a Republican

elected to anything in this county in my lifetime until '86 when Dedrick Brown beat E.Y.


JOHN LEDFORD

[Elymas Yates Ponder, former sheriff]. Yeah, he was the first. You had your primary.

You had your shoot out in the primary, and then it was over because fall of the year you

knew you were going to be elected.

RA: That's true. The style of campaigning that you just described to me is very

old style.

JL: Very much so.

RA: Very much kind of avoiding emails and phones and computers and things

like that and really getting out and talking to people face to face often times in their

homes or in the community stores, and that to me is a real, it's kind of old tradition.

JL: Now, I had to do the other too now. I had mail outs. We put up road signs or

yard signs and signs and did mail outs as well. It was just, of course the bad thing about

it was that some time around 1994 when my father lost, after five times, negative

campaigning hit Madison County. When I ran in '98, it was really negative. I'll tell you

that's the part I hate the least [most]. I learned early on from being out here by watching

the expression on people's faces if somebody brought up my opponent and would open

the door for me to make a negative comment if I let my emotions go and made that

negative comment, you could tell by the look on their face that they didn't like that.

They were going to see what kind of person I was. If I made a comment, 'Well, I guess

he's a pretty nice person but I think I can do a better job,' I think I would get much

farther with that. I really believe that. I don't think it's because the person is of negative

or not negative but opposite political party of myself. I didn't agree with a lot of the

things he did and I thought I could do them better. I thought I would work harder at it

because I knew what type person I am. I knew once I got here that I could just about will


JOHN LEDFORD

something to happen just because I work hard. I believe if I work hard, then my deputies

work hard because then they know what to expect.

RA: You're setting the example.

JL: Sure. Like we had a situation here the other night at one o'clock in the

morning they called me. The newspaper guy came across the street. He said that he

showed up on the situation and he said that, 'I was laying in bed at one o'clock and heard

you on the radio.' I've got an unusual voice and I knew if the sheriff was out at one

o'clock that something big was getting ready to happen. He came out. The newspaper

guy came out. But that's the way I've always been. I wouldn't ask any person I have

here to do anything. Since I've been sheriff here, I have jailed. I have worked

communications. I have transported prisoners. I have written citations. I have called

court. The only thing I haven't done is taken a mental commitment. I haven't done that,

but I did enough of those as a deputy in Buncombe County. I just, if it has to be done, I

don't think I am above doing it.

RA: My sense is that you're going to run again. When it comes four years comes

or two years, do you sense that the way you campaigned in '98, '97, '98, do you sense

that there's going to be a change as-. For example we've got so many new people in this

county now who are going to respond differently to you driving up on their place to visit

and that kind of thing?

JL: Sure.

RA: How does then this change in the demographics, kind of change the way a,

not just a sheriff, but any kind of politician kind of works among the people.


JOHN LEDFORD

JL: I believe that the only way you can be beat if you run again if the people have

to vote you out. So basically you have been fired. That's my belief now. Sheriff is an

unusual position. I have been running for office since the day I have been elected. When

I say that is, one thing that I became very much aware of once you get elected and that's

even more. I've been watching this presidential thing, and I really hope that they'll do

what I have tried to do, and I have said that I am everybody's sheriff in this county. I

have done, I have never asked a person who has come up those steps or stopped me in the

street or anything their politics. In fact I have probably tried harder to help some of the

opposite party even whether I believe they would support me or not just simply because I

didn't want them to say I was a bad person or couldn't talk to me. I have maintained an

open door policy. And another thing from my training with the Buncombe County

Sheriffs Department and my training with the state is I was fortunate to have received a

number of schools with dealing with the media. I'm not afraid of the press. Always in

Madison County before the sheriff here has been the type of man that has told the press

nothing, starved them out. Don't make a comment, God they'll hang you. I don't believe

that. I believe that you have to work with the media. They have a job to do. As long as

they respect you and you respect them and you have a kind of working relationship there

that you know the boundaries of, that you'll be fine. So I think that my next campaign

and the biggest thing in this county is name recognition too. I really believe that. I think

that was the Ledford name may have been known, but it was known for James Ledford

not John Ledford. If you like John Ledford or you don't like John Ledford, you know

who he is now and I can accept that. Another thing is you have to think about is that

being sheriff of this county is that the more that you do at this job, the more stands you


JOHN LEDFORD

take, the more people you arrest, you're going to make a few people mad. There's no

way around it. So you've got to hope that by doing your job, people will say, 'Well good

or bad he did his job. He was fair about it.' You've got to hope that there are people. It

used to be that the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, the Republicans voted

Republican and the Democrats voted Democrat, and Democrats hold about a two to one

registration advantage that the Democrats can elect you. That's not the case anymore. I

think people now split tickets. I think that they vote more for the man not the parties.

The party's not the machine that maybe it once was. It's still strong, but it's not the

machine that it once was, and there's the unaffiliated, and I think those are your educated

voters. So if you look around my office, you can see all these certificates. I've probably

got a hundred more of those. I am told that I am the only sheriff that still goes to the

Justice Academy at Salemburg and takes classes. I take them right along with the other

deputies. I never tell them who I am. If the instructor doesn't say a word, they don't

know who I am. Unless they know me, they don't know that I'm a sheriff from Madison

County. So I still am in the learning process. I'm still trying to increase my knowledge.

I think that all of that will play into this next election because I think the educated voter is

going to say, 'Well, he's worked pretty hard and he's got this and he's got that. We

know he'll work, and we know he's got the education. So I think he's the best choice for

the job.'

RA: Has the Ledford name, do you sense that that also has liabilities, maybe

among-

JL: It does.


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: Especially maybe among newcomers who would come in and say, 'God

Madison County politics. I've been hearing about this stuff for years. It's just a

machine, and it's run by these good old boys and here's another one running for sheriff.

Just passing the thing down the line.'

JL: That's exactly what they [say]. And in fact if you really remember the ads

they ran, they are what upset me the most about the last campaign I went through. They

never really attacked me; they attacked my father. The whole time they kept trying to say

my father would be sheriff. Anybody that knew me knew that would not be the case and

knew my father that wouldn't be the case. Then when we had the forum up at the high

school, the sheriff then again attacked my father, and attacked Dr. Anderson. They really

were on Don. They were trying to claim, some of their ads said, 'Who will really be

running the sheriffs department.' My father came down the first day, wanted to look at

this jail, stuck his hand in his pocket and handed me five hundred dollars and said, 'This

jail is pink and nobody deserves to have a pink jail. Go have it painted and I'm going to

pay to have your jail painted.' That's about it. That's the last time he's been down here.

But I'd be the first to say I'd be a fool if I didn't draw any resource, any resource and if

you don't think like Don Anderson or James Ledford who especially Dad and Don who

have been active both in the school system and in, ran this county for a number of years.

If I didn't draw upon their knowledge of how to get things done, I would be foolish and I

would not be doing. People kept trying to figure out how I came and how I had all these

grants. We got almost a million dollars worth of grants now since about a year and half.

We're probably somewhere between five hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand,

but I'm still writing grants. I write grants myself and Don Anderson writes grants.


JOHN LEDFORD

We're getting ready to write two more, and I don't know of anybody else that's written a

grant for anything. But the money is out there. You've just got to be willing to go and

get it. If I've got an asset like Don Anderson and James Ledford who either has a contact

once the grant is written I can make a phone call to and I can say, 'Hey this grant is

coming up and we need this money.' Or Don Anderson has the ability to knock a grant

out in about thirty minute it seems like. He can write a grant out quicker than anybody

I've ever met. Then I don't care. If they want to get on me for that, I'll take that heat

because the good thing about being sheriff in this county is I am guessing, but I know I

am in the lowest twenty-five of the hundred paid sheriffs in the of North Carolina. There

are a hundred sheriffs in North Carolina now. Sheriff Orr in Transylvania County tells

me he's the bottom twenty-five and makes forty almost fifty thousand dollars a year. I

know that I make thirty-one nine, thirty-two thousand, something like that. That was less

money than an ALE agent makes. It is less than a state highway patrol cadet with no

experience in the basics of road makes. It's about, most detectives in Buncombe County

Sheriffs Department where I worked before if I was just a detective and worked forty

hours a week would make that. I work about sixty hours a week, some weeks as high as

eighty or more. There was one week here we figured up I had made two dollars and

sixteen cents an hour. Because we'd been down here, I had slept down here. Basically

the first six or eight months I was in office, I slept down here. I was here, and I would go

home for four or five hours and come back, and that was seven days a week like that.

But you've got to love it because every time we get a new car or every time we get

something new in dispatch or every time the jail inspector comes up and looks at me and

says, 'You've done all you can do with this building but for the first time in history, it


JOHN LEDFORD

meets code and passes.' Those are things that maybe the public will never know but I

know. That's-

R:A: And those things are happening because of some of this grant money.

JL: They are. They are. When I came in, I had four deputies, which was fine

maybe in 1980, but Broughton Hospital is what two hours away. So if we pick up a

mental commitment at six o'clock when he checked on duty, he's going to be tied up in

Asheville until about eight or nine, and he had to take him to Broughton, the whole shift

was gone. So it meant, who's covering the county?

RA: Right.

JL: So I stayed out. There was nothing for me to work all day down here on the

day shift. My office was downstairs then and I would set back there and lay my head on

my desk, and I would tell the dispatcher if something happens and you need to call, call

me. I will take the call. I would go out or my chief deputy would stay out. So very early

on, I knew I had to get more deputies. I knew the county wasn't going to pay for them.

So I got almost three hundred dollars from COPS, Community Oriented Policing Grant

that Clinton had come up with and put a hundred thousand cops on the street.

RA: I remember.

JL: We got four. I've got in now to get, I have in for school resource officers,

and I want to see us get the first school resource officer. I convinced the Board of

Education, which I can't take all the credit for. I'm glad they had foresight in that to not

only get one for the high school but let's move one into the middle school too because

every other county has it. I don't think the citizens of Madison County deserve any less

than anybody five miles down the road has got just because they've got a bigger county.


JOHN LEDFORD

That's something. I met with Roy Cooper who is now the Attorney General, but he was a

candidate then. I said, 'You know instead of sending this money to hire more SBI agents

and increase the highway patrol, the legislature should look at some type of funding for

local departments that are maybe less than twenty thousand people or have a geographic

area of so much. They ought to assign us to make it mandated you have one deputy for

so many miles or so many thousand people because that's the only way certain counties

are ever going to ever bring them in line.' I may not be able to pay what Buncombe

County makes, but every deputy here ought to at least have access to the same type of

equipment they have. It's not fair that a crime will be served in one county because they

have a bigger tax base and might go unsolved here. So that's something I'm kind of

touchy about, and we've worked very hard. That's the main thing I have worked hardest

on with a lot of these grants is equipment. We've bought eight cars for eight thousand

dollars. What we've done is every year I've gotten state even when I was told they had

no money to give me, I got forty thousand dollars out of them to buy cars. Now it may

have been used highway patrol vehicles, but we got that. That was during all the money

going east for the flood. Somebody made a comment that dispatch down here at the jail

had never [been] on the internet one night. We'd never done anything to update. I went

within the next couple of weeks and caught Bill Stanley and Tom Sobol who were the

commission of Buncombe County, they had built moved into a big building there and the

sheriffs department. It's ultramodern but I knew they had dispatch equipment at the Old

Biltmore School from when I was a deputy that was still more modern than anything we

had. I talked them into donating twenty thousand dollars of console equipment to us and

had, got money to put it in. Oh I'm sorry.


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: That's okay.

JL: We just got a grant for twenty thousand dollars here for voice recording,

logging equipment that records all radio transmissions and all telephone conversations.

When I came into office, the first six thousand dollars we got — a private citizen donated

six thousand dollars to us - and I used that to buy all new uniforms, leather gear. My

deputies didn't have anything. We got that because me and the chief deputy spent three

days and nights out here looking for three stolen four wheelers that had a five thousand

dollar reward out for them, not because we thought we'd get the reward. That was just

the biggest case we got information we could solve in the first week. The man was so

appreciative that he just took us out up there and said I want to know what it's going to

cost to get what you need and took us to Office Depot and bought us fax machines and all

that stuff and then turned around and wrote us a check and equipped all our men.

RA: That's great. That's a real. Just that whole idea of getting grant money,

going out seeking donations kind of thing is kind of anew idea, kind of a new approach

certainly for the Madison County sheriffs department I think. I never recall ever hearing

E.Y. doing anything like that or Jed Ricker or those kinds of things. Just never, so this is

a very modern kind of way of looking at things it seems to me.

JL: It is and it's funny because like when I came in, the deputies had some old

brown uniforms, and they most of them were nylon leather gear or nylon equipment. I

can always remember being in rookie school in the 1990 and the firearms instructor

telling us that nylon gear was a death trap. You need good leather gear. We went out

and were able to buy all this stuff off of private donations, and then I got a grant for

bulletproof vests. All of my deputies have bullet proof vests, and I got a grant and


JOHN LEDFORD

bought them all ultra-modern firearms. We, some guys were carrying .38s. Some guys

were carrying .357s. Some had 9mms. It was a nightmare. We'd go out there to qualify,

and I had to order the ammo because the state mandates that you're all going to use

specific kinds of ammo, and I had to order a box of this and a box of that. It was just the

most awful thing you've ever gotten into. It would take two days for Brenda and the

chief deputy to get all this done. I remember watching something on the History Channel

about J. Edgar Hoover. I never will forget it. It was interesting. One of the first things he

did when they formed the FBI and gave them arrest powers and they got guntoting ability

all was he uniformed everything, and that's what you really want. When I came in, I had

a brown patrol car and a blue patrol car and a white patrol car. Some had bar lights and

some had star. Some didn't have anything. I said, 'Unless it's changed in the last eleven

years, the most successful or productive type of patrol is routine random patrol in marked

cars.' There have been a number of studies on that. So I marked every vehicle we had

but mine and the chief deputies. There are no unmarked cars. We run now what's called

semi-marked cars, which don't have the bar light, but that's because of economics. I can

buy a strobe light that mounts inside for two hundred dollars or a bar light that costs a

thousand. I can buy five of those that sit, but they're still marked. They have stars on the

doors. You see that car coming. People say, 'Lord sheriff, we see your cars everywhere

now. What have you done. Have you got that many deputies.' No, I just simply marked

them and put them all in uniforms. The prior sheriff let them wear blue jeans and shirts,

and they drove their patrol cars on dates and stuff like that. I cut out all that, and we put a

policy procedure manual in, and I hold them accountable. I've got deputies, I hate to say

this but I have deputies who won't come and talk to me. They'll send somebody up here


JOHN LEDFORD

to talk to me because they say, 'He intimidates me.' If they, if they ask me a question,

I'm going to answer it. It may not be the answer they want. They're not going come up

and shuck and jive with me and BS around to get what they want. They know they're

going to have to be able to justify what they ask for. We've tried to take as much good

old boy out of this department as you can and still be in Madison County.

RA: When did you, you were growing up when-I taught at the college from '75

to '77 and during that time I was teaching there, [Highway] 19 and [Highway] 23 was

open from two lanes to four lanes, that's when that was widened. I'm curious about

before you were even involved in any of this kind of stuff when you recognized that this

place was really changing and then-well, let's go with that first and then I'll follow up

with that with another question.

JL: Well, I probably-

RA: This is really changing gears.

JL: I probably recognized it about 1990 because my whole world revolved

around Madison County. We would go to Atlanta to watch a ball game, or my brother

was in DC for two years and we would drive up and visit. That never hit home and even

Asheville never hit home, but in 19901 left my father's employment and became a road

deputy with Buncombe County. That's where I met my chief deputy Randall Bradford.

Everybody if you're that type of macho guy, a lot of people want to carry guns and badge

and handcuffs and go out here and fight crime, but I'm going to tell you something.

When you're stuck out here on the north end of the county, Buncombe County and you're

the only deputy working and you've got a shots fired call. There's idiots shooting at each

other. You're going up there to break that up and you've got a pistol and they've got


JOHN LEDFORD

high powered rifles and this-I guess I say this, what I'm leading up to is you know I

began to realize, "Hey Madison County is a pretty good place to live. We didn't have

that type stuff." We didn't have-you probably had need for a better sheriffs department

at that time, but I'm just telling the volume of calls and the type of calls, I realized very

quickly how the rest of the world lived. In 1993 I joined the Alcohol Law Enforcement

Division and we worked sixteen () and I worked all over North Carolina. I realized very

quickly what Madison County was getting ready to find out. I knew what we had, and I

knew what it was fifteen or twenty miles here to the south. I realized what was going to

overtake us. Very quickly then I can remember I moved to Buncombe County, and I

wanted to come back so badly to Madison County. I just, I can remember my father at

night in the late '60s and early '70s cars breaking down because that was still the main

road. If it were bad weather or something because there were no hotels in Madison

County, my father would bring them home and let them sleep in a spare bedroom in our

house. People traveling and didn't know them from Adam. You couldn't do that now.

Now you've got people breaking down, and they go over in Haywood County and killed

five family members.

RA: That's right.

JL: That's how time has changed. The only thing I think or one of the main

things but probably the biggest fear I have in my whole world is that I get elected to a

second term as sheriff and 19-23 [N.C.]becomes 1-81 or 1-26 whatever it is because

there's going to be a period of time. Everybody's talking about sign ordinances. They're

talking about construction boom. But all that's got to come before tax base increases to

get increased funding for the sheriffs department. What do we do in the meantime?


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: Right.

JL: We're running right now wide open. I need, I don't have a full-time drug

officer. I need one. I don't have school resource officers. I think that we need them. I

sit and realize some of the things that we don't have now. I can't really tell, I've got one

of the oldest if not the oldest jail in the state of North Carolina, and I've gone out here

with a group of people like Don Anderson and Becky Anderson and some of these people

and tried to write grants. We just put one in for about $400,000 to the Golden Leaf and

I'm told-you know the tobacco settlement-and I am told that no money this year-

RA: ()

JL: It just didn't get to come west of Charlotte. I go down to Charlotte and

they're building. They've got everything. I'm thinking to myself -

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A


JOHN LEDFORD

START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B

JL: 0

RA: Now what do you feel is going to be your biggest challenge once again 1-26

opens, once that whole corridor gets opened up. What do you feel like is going to be the

challenge? I'm thinking what is the challenge for you both as sheriff, but what is the

challenge for you personally also? How is that going to change your world?

JL: One of the promises that I've made to myself when I came into office, I told

my chief deputy and my staff hear me say this all the time. I tell them, 'You do your job

and let me worry about the politics.' I always tell them, 'We're not going to spend this

four, worrying about the next four.' Personally, my job is to continue to get my

education. My job is to continue to stay updated, advanced, well-trained. The FBI just

called this morning, and what they're trying to do is I believe I have maneuvered myself

into the FBI National Academy, which is in Quantico, Virginia in April. If I get to go to

that, that's probably the most elite executive development there is anywhere in the United

States, a graduate from the FBI Academy. So personally right now personally is still

sheriffs department related. Right. They've got a lot of rumors I have turned down jobs

with bigger departments with the state and such, but I have no desire to leave Madison

County. So I want to be able to, I want to build something here. That's what I'd like.

I'd like to be the type of sheriff that maybe not in four years but maybe eight years I'm

still going to be-I 'm only thirty-five now-so I'm in my mid-forties. I want to be able to

take a day and go to Asheville, I can go, and the department will operate without me. But

I want us to have quality law enforcement. I just think we've got to have it because I

know what's out here. I have seen what is other places.


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: Do you feel like some of those same problems are going to be facing, are

coming to Madison County?

JL: They're here now. The thing about Madison County is, and you've been here

thirty years. You correct me if you think I'm wrong. The wrong, seems like a lot of

people in Madison County, the first thing they do with any problem is deny it exists.

They're like if we just don't mention it, it'll go away. But it's just like. It can't be.

That's not here. Just don't look at it. Don't mention it and maybe everybody will forget

about it. Then they're like, that's not going to work. So we've wasted six months now or

a year because of trying to pretend it doesn't exist. Then we want to talk awhile, and then

we're going to spend another year or so trying to decide the best. We're going to fight

over who's going to decide. Somewhere down the line, somebody is going to decide, and

no matter what he decides the other side is going to pick his decision to pieces, and then

eventually it's going to get so bad we have to act and then we swallow the peel and go

on.

RA: Right.

JL: That, it may not be that quick. It may be a whole lot of time in between

there. I can stand down here as sheriff. I think one thing though about the people of

Madison County. They appreciate hard work. As long as I'm out leading the fight for

sheriff who's visible, and I'm on that scanner night and day, and we're making the type

of arrests we're making. The local newspapers are giving us the type of coverage and

TV, and they see that we're working. They believe the need exists. We're going to get

what we have to have. It may be that we'll never get, I'm never going to have. My

patrol car is the newest car we have. It's a '99. The problem is I bought it in 2000. I


JOHN LEDFORD

bought it because somebody else had ordered it, and they didn't pick it up, and they

didn't have what I wanted on it, but it will get by. That's the way everything is in

Madison County with anything, the schools or anything else. We're always trying to get

by. So hopefully the good side of 1-26 is that the tax base increases, and we're able to do

some things, to have some of the things that are ultra-modern. Just once we'd get a

Cadillac and not a Chevrolet. It's going to happen sooner or later. I think you've got to

be-I believe my father and Don Anderson, like them or dislike them, I know them. I

know that they didn't do it for themselves. They believed they had a goal or they had a

'calling,' I guess is the best way to put it. Some people probably wouldn't ever believe it,

but I know it because I know how they made their money, how they worked and what

they got out of it. They weren't down here to better themselves. They weren't trying to

get rich or secure some government contract or sell the county land or whatever be the

case. They did what they had to do. So that's what I hope to do. I don't want to stay so

long that I become somebody the county doesn't trust. I believe in term limits. I really

do. I believe if you get the right man here and you've got eight years and you know

that's all he's going to get, then he's going to go down here and work like hell for his

eight years, and he doesn't have to worry about it. He knows he's got it. That's the bad

thing about being an elected official is that in the back of your mind, nobody wants to

lose and you've got—I'll tell you something self-preservation kicks in and these poor

commissioners or school board either one. If you take a guy that really wants to be there

and enjoys that position and he has to make the decision whether it's the right decision

politically or the right decision for the kids, which one is he going to make?

RA: That's right.


JOHN LEDFORD

JL: Somehow, I don't know but-

RA: That's a hard choice to make.

JL: It is a hard choice.

RA: It is a hard choice.

JL: It seemed like up in Buncombe County no matter who's the Sheriff in a

county that size, it's not going to make that much difference. Personnel are going to

change. You've got majors and then you've got your chief deputies and you've got

majors and got captains, got lieutenants, and you've got sergeants, then you get down to a

whole host of just deputies. The same was in the jail. So the top knocker up there is an

administrator. The department still functions. They're not going to. But down here with

the change of the sheriff, you could change the whole, the whole function of this jail.

You could go back twenty-five employees or less, and you could fire everybody down

here and he could just, that's the only kind of thing that scares me. I'm the only sheriff

that's ever been to basic law enforcement training in the history of Madison County.

RA: Right.

JL: And I'm closing in on the only thing I lack now is just time. I have enough

training hours for my advanced law enforcement certificate. I will qualify for it the day I

get my twelfth year in. I've got enough points waiting on me to get it. So my chief

deputy is the only chief deputy. He holds an advanced law enforcement certificate. I

have a number of officers, my DARE officers and my detective, they hold their advanced

law enforcement. So we've got training and equipment has come a long way.

RA: Do you, with this, with the road and we're already seeing it. This has been

going on for a while. It's not just the highway that's changing this. We've been seeing a


JOHN LEDFORD

real influx of new people coming into the county with new ideas, different kinds of

thoughts about what community is all that kind of thing. How does that, how does that

conflict with the say the local community and is that something that you as sheriff kind of

anticipate as being an issue as being problematic or—

JL: Well, I'll give you an example of that. This is an interesting story. I had a

man at the lower end of the county who sold property to two people out of Raleigh. They

bought the farm. Got along very well, but there was a, the old man took care of a

cemetery and had a right of way through the property he sold to the cemetery. The

problem being is that I think a lot of people in Madison County do not really know what a

right of way is. They might have abused the word right of way to the point where he was

going to do what he wanted to do on that road going in. It came down to a verbal

confrontation. Blows may have been struck and warrants were drawn and it came across

my desk. When it was all said and done, the people who had moved in from Raleigh had

charged this man with assault. The man comes to me and wants me to go down and talk

to these people and see if we can get the charges dropped. So I go down and spend an

afternoon with these people, very nice people. Very nice. Moved in here, educated and

work in banking I believe in Raleigh, but these people, they had some means but they

wanted to come back. They really wanted to get along. They felt like that they were

being bullied over by this guy. In my mind this guy here may not have thought that he

was bully over them. He just simply thought that, "Well, hell I sold them the property.

I've got a right of way, and I'm going to use the right of way. It's my cemetery, and I've

got to get in and I'm going to show who boss is." I spent the day down there and talked

them into dropping the charges. I don't really want to say talked them into dropping the


JOHN LEDFORD

charges. I basically gave them my word that this guy will not be a problem to them, and

it's not going to be necessary to go on into court. It might be handled-see Haywood and

Buncombe have what's called mediation. Down here the sheriff does the mediating. I

had spent the afternoon with these people, and we'd come to an agreement on all that and

went back and told this man that and thought we had it worked out and the guy who had

violated these people's space and hell then he decides he wants a trial. So we go over

and have a trial, spend all day over in court over something that should've never been

there started with. In the end the exact same thing the judge found is exactly what I had

worked out. My point being on that is you've got people coming into the county who are

used to doing things one way. You've got people in the county who are used to doing

things another. I think the people who live here are determined that they're not going to

be run over by the outsiders. I think the people that are here are, or are coming in here

are somewhat afraid of the mystique of some of these people in these communities of

being gun-toting mountain people, and they don't want trouble. I think it's just a whole

lot of fear based upon ignorance, or maybe they just don't know.

RA: Or just even a lack of contact.

JL: Lack of communication maybe is a better word.

RA: Exactly.

JL: That's kind of funny because I know the old farmer because I'm from

Madison County and grew up in there. I know them all, and I can talk, I can talk their

language, but I've been out of here and worked off from here and I understand how an

educated person moving in here from Raleigh would think and might, and what their

customs might be. Maybe that's a good thing. So as long as I can continue to function


JOHN LEDFORD

as a go-between. I think the sheriff of this county has to do that because I hadn't been

sheriff, what Brenda, I guess about three months down here and one day an old man in ()

brand overalls comes in and says, 'I need to make an appointment to talk to my attorney.'

I'm like, 'Well okay. Why don't you call him?' He said, 'E.Y. always called him for

me.' He throws his attorney's name down and all he's got is his name and I said, 'Are

you serious?' And he says,' Yes.' So I looked and I looked the phone and I called up

here this is Sheriff Ledford down here in Madison County. I believe that Butch Gudge

represents Mr. Stanley. He said, 'He does.' He says, 'He does.' I said, 'Well this may

sound crazy but I'd like to make an appointment for him because I says, 'He says E.Y.

always did it. And the woman said, 'He did.' So I get him an appointment set up. That's

the way it was done.

RA: That story you just told was just really very interesting to me because I think

that that's what I see kind of being the type of problem. It becomes almost like a cultural

or class kind of issue as opposed to almost maybe even a law enforcement issue. It

become something totally different and twenty, thirty years ago, E.Y. didn't necessarily

need to be able to deal with so many new people coming in because they weren't here for

one thing, or they were just starting to come. But the fact that you recognize that you

have to be able to go both ways.

JL: Sure. A woman was talking to me yesterday at lunch and she said, 'Sheriff,

how do I get a handicapped license plate?' I said, 'Well ma'am. I'm not real sure on

that.' I said, 'But I know you have to have something in writing from your doctor to start

that process.' She said, 'Are you sure about that?' She says, 'Is it a form or just a letter?'

I said, 'Well I'm not sure.' I said, 'Tell you what you do. You check with your doctor.


JOHN LEDFORD

He will know and then regardless of what it is, you get what you need and bring it to me.'

I said, 'We will call DMV down here and get you set up with a license plate.' I would do

that what Brenda, five times a day.

BRENDA: Yes.

JL: Probably five times a day. That's nothing unusual.

B: 0

JL: Exactly. That woman right there is one that wants to write a-. She has sat

down there and composed a play dealing with the stresses involved in emergency

management fire fighters and law enforcement. She feels like this play needs to be put to

a training film so that it can help. It may be a great thing. She's been to everybody but

now she's come to me because she wants me to sit down and with her get together and

write a grant so that she can get money to produce this play. Now whether that money

exists, I don't know. I don't even know how you can check into that. But I'll tell you

when I get with this woman, I'm going to spend a portion of my day trying to work that

out. Is that a law enforcement function? Probably not. But it is a sheriff department

function in Madison County.

RA: That's interesting.

JL: It's just, it's just the type of thing. If they're not sure, they come down here

to me. You wouldn't believe some of the type things we've had down here. I've got one

woman here that lives in this community and her and her neighbor, she has a son who is

somewhat of a hellion so to speak. He goes out the driveway too fast. They must share a

right of way. But one thing they also share are water rights. The man, the neighbor

controls the water. Apparently he has the ability to shut the water off. When the son gets


JOHN LEDFORD

up there and gets to partying up and down the road and doing things he doesn't like, he

just goes over and cuts their water off. So then the woman calls me. Well then I, for a

while there I would call up there and he would say, 'Okay.' And he would turn the water

back on. But that got where that didn't work so what I would do. The old man has a

scanner. So usually what he would do is cut the water off at about ten. She'll call me

about eleven. So about eleven thirty, I'll dispatch a car out there. He'll hear the car en

route on the scanner and turn the water back on. So it's always there. So I have to come

out of a meeting to handle those type things. As you can see there, I would say fifty

percent of my time doesn't have anything to do with law enforcement, nothing to do with

law enforcement. It has to do with giving legal advice, and I feel bad about that part. I'm

very cautious about that, but they'll call me before they'll go get an attorney because they

want to know if they think they need an attorney.

RA: Exactly.

JL: They know I'm going to tell them.

RA: That's that social work function that we talked about.

JL: It is.

RA: It's interesting because kind of a modern law enforcement in cities certainly

that function is basically eliminated. It is really a law enforcement thing. But here, one

thing that always impressed me about E.Y. Ponder was, I mean, he was this kind of father

figure almost.

JL: Sure he was.


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: In the whole county. He played that role as the, I mean, he was really hard

core when he needed to be, but at the same time he was also like the knowing kind of

father who was really going to do that first.

JL: Sure.

RA: What I'm hearing you say is that the county is changing so much that there

is this need for modern law enforcement but-

JL: There is.

RA: Yet at the same time there is still this very clear need for the other.

JL: E.Y. affected generations I guess. There are generations that knew E.Y.or

still know E.Y. or knew E.Y. as sheriff. That is the E.Y. people that you're going to, they

expect you, they call me the little E.Y. They'll come down and say, 'Well you're the

next little E.Y.' or 'God bless you.' To be sheriff of Madison county is just unbelievably

great sometimes because I can walk into Carl's up here, restaurant and some little old

lady will come over and just hug my neck and just say, 'God bless you. You're doing a

good job.' I don't know them from Adam, and that'll make a glass eye cry. That's great.

Then sometimes though I'll have them down here in the lobby, and they'll get in a knock

down drag out and I'll be-I often tell the story that I feel like King Solomon and the two

harlots. That one rolls over and smothers the child, and they come to me to decide who's

going to get the live baby. He says, 'Well cut the child in half In Madison County half

the people would say, 'Saw it up,' and they'd start fighting over who got the head or the

feet. That wouldn't work in Madison County. You've got to even be slicker than that.

But the sheriff settles a lot of things. But at the same time with E.Y., he never had to

worry about luminol or blood splatter or DNA. Those were a different generation of law


JOHN LEDFORD

enforcement. He never had to deal with any of that, and I have to have the ability to

understand that. I have to have persons capable of recognizing that and working with that

and being able to work with the State Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab and these

attorneys. It doesn't make any difference whether I keep up or not. The attorneys are. If

I'm trying, if your child, son or daughter, uncle or cousin has been murdered, and I go

over there, and I don't put on anything less than the best case possible, they're never

going to forget that. I owe them that much. I am never going to allow myself or my

personnel to go over and be made a fool of in the courtroom. I don't know about E.Y.

E.Y. lost some cases. He won a lot of cases, but he began to change then from '86 to '98

in Madison County depended on who you talked to was really the dark ages in Madison

County in law enforcement wise because they may not have kept up. They may not

really have cared toward the end, and that's probably what got them beat. You've got to

care. When you get down here and you get to the point where—. If I ever get to the point

where I don't want to come to work, if I ever get to the point where I don't care about my

personnel and the people of this county, I won't be here because if you're not part of the

solution, you're part of the problem. I believe that. Maybe somebody young and all is

what they need to carry them through and somebody else will be here. There will be

another sheriff. Nobody stays forever. E.Y. tried. He stayed for thirty-two years though.

The only thing that caught him was his age. If he'd have started, of course he probably

did, he did start at my age. He was about thirty-two when he was elected his first term

and he was sheriff at seventy. People will say, 'You're the next E.Y.' I don't want to be

the next E.Y. Ponder. Stresses of this job now are so great that nobody can stand it more

than twelve, sixteen years unless you


JOHN LEDFORD

did--. It's an amazing amount of stress. There's more stress being sheriff. There's ten

times the amount of stress being sheriff as there are being a deputy or an alcohol agent or

SBI agent or anything. You've got twenty-some thousand people in this county, and

you're everybody's sheriff, and they're all going to call and ask you.

RA: That's right.

JL: They're all going to call and ask you.

RA: Sometimes it seems like they all call at once too.

JL: They do. I've been to funeral homes, and people hand me speeding tickets.

The day of that parade that we were riding, I had a couple of guys bring me speeding

tickets run along side the car ask for help. Me riding in the Christmas parade. It's just as

simple as this. You just imagine this. You walk into the steak house at Mars Hill, and

you're the sheriff. You start through the line. You've had kind of a bad day, don't really

feel good, arguing with your family. You don't really want to be messed with. You're

going through and you see, there are ten people that know you in the room, and you

speak to nine of them. The tenth guy you don't speak to because you just don't see him,

you're not really got your head on straight that day. You're distracted on something else

and don't speak to him maybe the most powerful politician of the bunch. If you don't

speak to him and recognize him, he may be mad. Or he may say because you didn't

speak to him, 'John must be mad.' Or he'll call down here and say, 'Why didn't you talk

to me?' Those are not the normal stresses that anybody has to deal with. That's what

you deal with being sheriff. The rumors in the county, my life is like, I can only imagine

what it must be like to be a celebrity sometime with the paparazzi. Because Madison

County doesn't have paparazzi they have the rumor mill. If I talk to a woman, there's


JOHN LEDFORD

something going on. We're having an affair or if I'm seen with such and such, then he's

paying me off. If I do a favor for this one, then we've got some underhanded deal

together.

RA: Yeah. This place, that impressed me right away when I moved here about

how fast word travels and that kind of thing. Your dad and Don worked for years and I

totally agree with you that I don't think that they were working at all for themselves but

really working for what they perceived as for the betterment of the county. They were

looking to bring more things into this county for people. One of those things is the 1-26

corridor. Another is the widening of 19-23 and will be the widening of 19. That's the

next big project that's going to come those kinds of things. But it also has meant the

four-lane from Weaverville to Marshall and the health clinics-

JL: And some of the biggest things, green boxes.

RA: There's any number of things.

JL: The green trash boxes.

RA: Exactly.

JL: Were one of the biggest things I'll ever remember. Those, trash is still the

biggest issue in this county. Nursing home, they worked this thing and they still sit on

that board over there. We didn't have one.

RA: Health clinic.

JL: Health clinics.

RA: Hot Springs health clinic. All those kinds of things. What I guess I'm

getting at is, is there a point where change then becomes problematic? Where, do we, I

again, I know the county I think fairly well. I understand certain--. I was here before the


JOHN LEDFORD

Weaverville-Marshall road. So I know how long it takes to get to Asheville the old way.

If you had a job and that kind of thing, just access in and out of the county was a real

problem.

JL: And still is.

RA: And still is.

JL: It's a law enforcement issue of getting from one end of the county to the

other if you don't have but one deputy working. He's in Spring Creek and has to go to

the other end.

RA: Exactly. So I guess what I'm wondering is, what I always ask myself is. I

spent so many years it seems like wishing that more things were available, wishing it was

a little easier to get out although I did want to live here, wishing that access was a little

bit better. But then it seems like we've reached a point where it's kind of like I find

myself saying, "well enough is enough now." Do we really want the same problems that

Asheville has or Greensboro has? Those kinds of things. So again how much change do

we want? How much change is good? Where do we~

JL: I guess my answer to that is and I think you would agree with this, change is

inevitable. It's coming. You want to throttle that or control how much change comes in.

The things that the county commissioners or even the sheriff have to be very careful of is

to make sure that change is fair. Every community in this county is different from the

next. Mars Hill people are even though they're from Madison County are different than

Marshall. Marshall is different from Laurel. Laurel is different from Spring Creek.

They're different in many different ways. We have to be fair about it. When I first came

in, my statement was that the reason that I wanted these four COPS officers - and this is


JOHN LEDFORD

a true statement - I've got one deputy. He can spend all his time in North Marshall,

Beech Glen and Mars Hill. You'll never see a deputy in Laurel or Spring Creek because

that's where the calls for service are because that's where the population is and will be.

But it's not fair because they deserve, you deserve, to have your house checked. Or if

you need a deputy, call a deputy if you live in Laurel. If you don't give me these officers,

they're going to stay up here. They can't go down. They can't be in two places at once.

I don't care who the sheriff is. So we've got to be fair. Another things is, is like cell

phones, I know there has been a big war in this county about cell towers. Either you're

for them or against them. I know that you know having been from other places from a

law enforcement stand point I can't, I tried to keep my mouth shut as much as possible

because I felt like anything I might do might sway it one way or the other. But I felt like

we were going to get them, and I felt like we needed them from a law enforcement

standpoint because myself and my chief deputy from Marshall down only have the

Madison County Sheriffs Department channel one, and it cannot be secured. So if I'm

down here on something very, very important going down, I don't have the ability to talk

to anybody any other way than come over that main channel or stop and find two pay

phones. I don't think you're really going to find any pay phones in that area. These cell

phones are very important and not just cell phones but digital cell phones. So I thought

we needed the service, but now as far as the types of towers coming in, I tried to stay out

of that. I think there's a legitimate, I think I'm glad that's a decision made by the

planning board of adjustments or commissioners or whomever and not up to me. So I

think what you do is we accept that cell phones are coming, but we try to determine how


JOHN LEDFORD

they're going to come. Probably how much change is coming is the good Lord only

knows because I'd say it's going to be amazing.

RA: Right.

JL: I watch Haywood County and some of these counties have these interstates

through them. It seems like. I'll give you an example. In 1991 my chief deputy and I,

my chief deputy was the chief investigator and I was the fugitive officer working in

Buncombe County. Mark Lane ran a pawnshop on Leicester Street. He was about twenty

years of age and was shot and killed. They sent myself and another SWAT team member

to Dandridge, Hamblen County, Dandridge, Tennessee on a manhunt. The boys that did

it were named Davis and Hood. These boys, one of them was paroled, had killed a man

in Ohio, did seventeen years and paroled out. Came down and lived with his sister in

Hamblen Tennessee or Hamblen County, Dandridge, Tennessee there and began to

armed rob everything down there. Came over into North Carolina and armed robbed the

McDonalds in Canton and came out and pulled this armed robbery and shot and killed

this young man. I spent five days in Dandridge, Tennessee. The sheriff down there at

that time, this is 1991 now, they had about eight deputies about like my department now,

a little smaller. The deputies didn't have bullet proof vests and really were no better

equipped, probably not as well equipped as we are now. I know they were. They sent

Charlie Long, who was the sheriff then, sent two of us down there heavily armed because

he figured they'd come home and there may be a shoot out, and they wanted help. They

signed a mutual aid agreement and sent us down. We had Federal warrants. We had

jurisdiction. They had a hotel there, and they had one truck stop type diner. This year,

which is about not even ten years later, I went to Pigeon Forge with my wife and got off


JOHN LEDFORD

at that exit, and in ten years now they have you just would not believe the place. They

have McDonalds. They have Taco Bell. They have just, that whole exit is just. It's just

like, you wouldn't even know it. If it weren't for that one hotel that's, that truck stop still

there, I wouldn't even know the exit now. That's in nine years. So we're not going to be

any different. Exit 11 will explode up here I believe, and the change will be so great, so

quickly that I hope we're prepared for it. But I'm not sure that we are. I really don't

know that we are. I don't know that we could be prepared for it because I'm not sure we

have the tax base from a law enforcement standpoint to hire the deputies and the

equipment and get them trained and pay them salaries to keep them.

RA: With kind of change coming say at Exit 11 right there at Mars Hill, what do

you anticipate is going to be your biggest law enforcement issue at a place like that?

What is going to be the type of thing that you're anticipating?

JL: The immediate thing you'll have is armed robberies. Now of course that will

be annexed into the city limits of Mars Hill. But there are two things on any interstate,

you deal with drugs, couriers that type things, transportation of drugs. You're going to be

coming right out of Florida. 1-95 is known as the drug pipeline. 26 [N.C.] now is going

to come, go right into 81 [N.C.], right on up too. So you're going to have to deal with

that, and then the type of crimes that are committed that come off of interstates. Those

type crimes, if you will look at most counties, most would tell you—Sheriff Alexander or

Bobby ()~of some of them being a "stop and rob." People pop off of the exit, rob the

Exxon station, get back on the exit, and they can be in South Carolina in about an hour

and Tennessee in about twenty minutes. Three different states now within an hour radius.

Who do you look for? Who do you go out here and pick up? If somebody just stops off


JOHN LEDFORD

an exit and robs and shoots the place up, what do you do? The drugs coming in, but not

only that just with the growth like that the hard drugs begin to come in the county. We're

not talking about personal use marijuana, which is probably to the point now that most

law enforcement would tell you the best thing to do is just decriminalize it. It's

everywhere. I probably ought not say that, but I've never been convinced that marijuana,

personal use of marijuana is any worse than alcohol and probably not as bad. I've got a

real problem with alcohol, alcohol especially with the way its abused, and the way we

allow it be abused for money. Marijuana is illegal, and it's just illegal. Alcohol is just as

bad, and it's legal because there's so much money in it, and they've got lobbyist. As an

ALE agent, you tell me why we've got fifteen hundred troopers out here trying to catch

people driving drunk and a hundred and ten ALE agents trying to stop people from

selling it to them. That doesn't make sense to me. Then that's another thing. Will we

become a wet county, a county that allows alcohol sales? Are we going to watch, since,

at some point in time there are going to be enough people move in here that we're going

to realize the money from the sales of alcohol and stuff such as that and restaurants and

stuff and if you are going to have growth, you're going to have to be wet. We're going to

have, we're already wet in Hot Springs. Hot Springs from what I am told and what little I

am able to get out down there, especially at night and all they have some very good bed

and breakfasts and restaurants and stuff. They seem to be thriving very well. So how

long can we hold it off? How long can Mars Hill College say, "Well, we're a Baptist

college. We're not going to allow it." How long until the retail end of it is bigger than

the college, which has always been bigger than the mainstay.


JOHN LEDFORD

RA: Exactly. Well, like you say the new people coming in too. There'll be a

point in time where that population will overcome the Baptist population that is kind of

restricting the sale of alcohol.

JL: Sure. And you know-

RA: But that adds a whole 'nother level of problem.

JL: It does. It's an amazing amount of problems. It's also going to require that

the sheriff of the county is going to have to be educated. The county commissioners are

going to have to be educated because of a different set of issues. Used to be I think, my

father is a very, he's a very quick study. If you've ever been around my father, he would

amaze you with his ability for numbers and memory and read something and grasp what

it says probably much in excess of my ability. Don Anderson is just phenomenal. He

also had the ability to stand at that store behind that counter, and the farmer could come

in and tell him his problems and concerns were and dad would keep that in the back of

his mind. Always when he got in these meetings, that problem was in the back of his

mind. So he could balance it out. There's going to come a point in time though where as

you say, retail's going to come up. New people coming in. Farming land is going to go

down. It's going to maybe be a tourist type economy, that type thing. So the decisions

that the commissioners are going to make may not be influenced by native Madison

County people who were fifth generation or whatever it is. Somewhere I hope somebody

will keep that in the back of their mind and be here at that store, a man can still walk in

and lay that number down and they'll still say, 'I may be busy but I'm still going to call

and make an appointment for you.' That's what we can't lose. If we lose that, we've

really lost everything. It's a shame. I think it's a shame. You know Bobby Medford like


JOHN LEDFORD

him or not, the old people up in Barnsville. My wife's from Barnardsville, which is a

rural community in Buncombe County. Bobby still gets out and rides in and comes up

there and gets a cold drink at some of those stores and stands around and talks to people.

I don't think he really does it for political reasons. I think it's some days where it gets so

bad that you just can't stand it. You just want to run. You run back to what you know. I

still get out and see my father two or three days a week. Some days it's pretty hard to do

because while I'm there everybody wants to tell me what's going on or what they need

help with, but I still do it. I think it's good sometimes to just get out and do stuff like

that. Really in law enforcement if you really look at it, two of the biggest concepts

sweeping back into law enforcement are community-oriented policing and problem-

oriented policing—

RA: Right, which is so amazing because of what this place is all about. You've

got this history of community law enforcement—

JL: It's like I was almost born to be sheriff because the first community-oriented

policing squad west of Gaston County that I know of anywhere was in 1992. Charlie

Long got into that in a big way. He sent five of us. It was called the sheriffs community

enforcement team. He got, it got into problem-oriented policing in a big way. Basically

that's what says as opposed to going out and writing tickets and kicking in doors and

stuff, you identify the problem and you eliminate the problem. The problem may not be

solved with just enforcement efforts. It may be code enforcement. One of the big things

we were having problems with at that time. We were having problems with parks there in

Buncombe County, drug use in the parks, prostitution in the parks, homosexual

solicitations in the parks, Karen Styles there disappeared. What we did was we decided


JOHN LEDFORD

the problem was the parks, not just the parks but the time the parks were accessible to the

people because none of this was really going on during the day. It was after dark. We

brought in DOC [Department of Corrections] prisoners and cut back and thinned out all

the foliage around the park, which made illegal activities much more difficult because it

was wide open. Then we got night-lights put up in the parks. Then what we did was we

got the parks and rec say at nine o'clock they were put off limits, and you went in and put

a padlock on them and if you got caught in that park, we arrested you for trespassing. It

was all posted. It just fell off to nearly nothing. We let them know, and then we made a

concerted effort to patrol those parks. We let them know if you're going to come to those

parks and commit a crime, you're going to get [it] and people went other places to do it.

It was pretty interesting, and then they told us-I went to Baltimore, Maryland to a

community-oriented policing conference. There were three of us that got picked up there

to go to it. The story they told was Andy Griffith, which comes back, and they talked

about the first really test of Problem Oriented Policing was solved on Andy Griffith

show. They said what it was Ernest T. Bass couldn't get a girlfriend. He wanted a

uniform. So he came to town and started throwing rocks through the windows. Do you

remember the show? They keep locking him up. He keeps getting out. They keep

locking him up. He keeps getting out. Finally Andy says, 'Why are you throwing these

rocks?' He says, 'All I want is a uniform.' That was the real problem. So he gives

Barney's uniform to Ernest T. Bass and he goes back into the mountains never to be

heard from again. So you see, that's problem-oriented policing. He solved the problem.

They could have locked him up, but as long as he could get out, he was going to be

throwing rocks. They told that now at a national policing conference. I think the chief of


JOHN LEDFORD

police that spoke there was like the chief female chief in like Houston or one of these

major departments. They know about Mayberry, North Carolina too.

RA: It's interesting. How do we solve a problem for example some guy in some

rogue from down in Charleston or somewhere, down in Florence, South Carolina comes

up here, gets off the interstate at Exit Eleven, goes up here and I don't know robs Bill

Zink or somebody like that, then jumps right back on the interstate? That's the type of

thing that it's very difficult to solve with community policing but also is a problem that

probably didn't even exist in this county twenty years ago. Although at the same time I

remember there was a period where when that crowd came through here late '70s I guess

early '80s and their car broke down over near Belva and-

JL: Killed the boys.

RA: Killed a couple of boys over there. That was a similar kind of thing. They

were from out of state and driving through and that kind of thing. And were eventually

apprehended out in Colorado I think.

JL: Colorado, what you do in a situation like that, you have to just have a well

manned, well-equipped sheriffs department. You have to have Crimestoppers, big thing.

We don't have it, love to have it, but who's going to do it. We're just now getting to the

point where I've started working with a couple of communities on Community Watch. It

comes down to having deputies. Eventually we're going to have to have zones in this

county. We're going to have to have enough deputies where we're going to have one in

Mars Hill. He's going to be the Mars Hill cop because that's all he's going to do because

with all, you've got to work those type things. You've got to have communications.

You've got to have training and people who can do and in that kind of scene, crime scene


JOHN LEDFORD

work. My chief deputy does it all now, and he's very good at it. But you're going to

have to have, he's not going to be able to keep up with all this and still be chief deputy.

You've got to have somebody who can come in there and do fingerprints, who can do

luminol, who understand blood spatters. ROCIC [Regional Organized Crime Information

Center], they belong to some of these different organizations that you can log on their

computer and check it to see if there are Mos [modus operendi] and other crimes that

have occurred. That, those type crimes are basically solved by good police work, but

you've got to put yourself in a position to be able to solve those type crimes. That's the

biggest thing. You've got to pay. That's another thing Madison County loses out. If you

can buy a good deputy for $25,000 a year or you can get an average one for twenty or a

poor one for fifteen, some would want the fifteen, and we'd settle for the twenty.

RA: That's right. That's really true.

JL: That's' the way their going to work it out. We just can't pay $25,000,

nobody is worth that. If you think about it, what I'm trying to tell you is your chief

deputy is probably, he was the lieutenant at the Buncombe County Sheriffs Department

who was in charge of all major investigations in Buncombe County which was 460 let's

see, 460 square miles and about 165,000 [people] when I was a deputy there, the

population. He ran the detective division, which gave him four detective sergeants and

twenty-five detectives, and he was making a sizable much amount more. He came down

here to be my chief deputy because he wanted to be chief deputy, and he's my friend for

$30,000 a year. He's got eight deputies, and he's still got 450 some square miles and

about 22,000 people. Much more rural and nothing to work with. He went from having

anything he wanted to really having not much. Having to make do. I left a job at the state


JOHN LEDFORD

of North Carolina, my biggest worry was as an ALE agent was every three years what

color new car I was going to get. We had the best guns, and we had the best training.

We'd take a week and go to in-service. We had schools continuously that they were

sending us to. We were trying to get the road covered down here.

RA: This is the opportunity not just for Randy but also for yourself to really build

a department, and often times I know from myself I've taken jobs or done things because

of the opportunity that it offers, and not, it's got nothing to do with money or~

JL: Sure, it really doesn't. The only thing about it is that I hope one day my

frustration level just doesn't get to the point. You know I don't know how to compare it.

It's just like you know what needs to be done, and you know what equipment you need to

do it. You've just got to get the money to get it done. Everything revolves around

money. When you go out here and you write these grants and they give you $10,000

down here in Madison County for a new phone system for crime control and public

safety, that's great because you need that phone system. But then you turn around and

APD [Ashville Police Department] who's got all kinds of money and gets $70,000.

You're like, how the hell did they do that? Proportionally which one needs it more.

RA: Exactly.

JL: Which one is going to be affected more. Is Madison County with that

seventy dollars going to get more bang for the buck than I think we would. I think we

would. We've got some monstrous things we're going to have to undertake. It concerns

me that I know what I need from a law enforcement standpoint. But we've got schools

that have roofs leaking. I don't care what it costs. The children, they come first. Bad

guys unless it's a serious violent crime, they've got to come somewhere below that. I


JOHN LEDFORD

really believe we're robbing Peter to pay Paul. I don't know what we'd do. I really don't.

That's why Anita Davies if you go over and talk to her, she'll tell you I don't ask her to

write a grant. I write. Then if I don't have any other way, I'll move money in my

budget. We had a professional grant writer here I guess under the other administration.

By the time I could've tracked him down, me and Don Anderson worked so well

together. He knows what I want. He knows what I expect, and he knows what I'm

willing to do. We get together. We're going to write two grants next week. We're

working on it. One thing I'd like to see we're talking about change is that my chief

deputy is assigned two vehicles. He has a Blazer, '94, '95 Blazer we got given to us

when Eddie Fox's was, position was moved. It's got 145,000 miles on it, and he's got a

used highway patrol car. It's a '98 Ford. It's got 80,000, and some days in good weather

he drives the patrol car because he can get places. It's got a big motor in it, and it's got

blue lights and sirens. On bad weather he drives the blazer which has got a four-cylinder

engine and run about ninety miles an hour down hill with a strong wind pushing it.

People won't get out of the way of it because it's red, and you just can't get anywhere in

the thing. But he has to be able to. It's either go in bad weather or go in good weather.

So you have to have two different vehicles. So what I've been talking to Don about is, is

why not write a grant to Crime Control for what I would term a crime scene vehicle.

Because Randy does all the crime scene processing, does all the photographs, takes all

the fingerprints. He is trained in blood spatter, luminol, can do the gun shot residue kits,

anything like that. He has all that equipment in the vehicles, but he has to continually

trade them out. Can you imagine if you have to load it out of one into another and

inevitably you're not going to take it all because you're not going to take the time to


JOHN LEDFORD

unload it. No matter what if you've got one thing, you need the other. That's just

Murphy's law I guess. So what we're looking at is writing a grant. Hopefully the state

will fund us for a nice modern four-wheel drive sports utility type vehicle, and in the

meantime the grant would also include things like shelves and stuff that you can now

order for these vehicles and make that his primary assigned vehicle. It will be marked up

as such. It will be fully equipped. If he has to go to a call, he's got his bar lights and

sirens and if he has to go four wheel drive, he can push a button-

RA: It's an all-weather, all-terrain kind of vehicle.

JL: All-weather.

RA: That makes complete sense.

JL: We've had to make do because we didn't have any money. So we took the

vehicle that's bright red and looks like a firetruck coming down the road and we used it.

We went and bought a used highway patrol vehicle and they both, I'm not complaining,

but I'm just saying I got both of those, one given to me and one on a grant. So it didn't

cost the county anything. But now I'm not going over and asking them to buy me this

thirty thousand-dollar vehicle. I'm going to ask Crime Control and Public Safety, my old

organization for the money, and let's see if they'll give it to me. I'm going to call and

beg and borrow and steal to do that.

RA: I'm going to ask this last question and we might not, I might not get all of

your answer, but would you have liked to have been sheriff during E.Y.'s time?

JL: I would've.

RA: Would you like to go back?

JL: I would've. I told my wife that I was probably born-


JOHN LEDFORD

END OF INTERVIEW

Transcribed by L. Altizer, February 2001


john ledford january 3,2001 rob amberg: marshall, north

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