Quidell: “We’ve been married for 26 years. Now we’re both police chiefs in small towns in Mississippi. We made these Christmas decorations and are putting them in front of the Eupora Community Center. I want it to look pretty when people pull up and encourage kids to have a good time. 

Quidell: Kids call me Officer Smiley because I smile all of the time. They come here dressed as police officers for Halloween. One mama had to bring her crying baby here every morning: she wanted a hug from me. A little boy getting his teeth fixed said he wanted what Officer Smiley had in his mouth. The kid showed out. He wanted gold teeth like mine.” 

Martha:  “One of the kids drew a picture of the fattest snowman with a police hat and a gold tooth. That baby brought in the picture and said, ‘This is you.’ We kept that picture on the refrigerator for a long time. 

Quidell: “When I got out of the police academy, I thought every kid loved blue lights. I cut my lights on around a group of kids to let them see them. Two kids took off running and crying. One kid yelled, ‘He’s fixing to lock us up.’ When I touched him, he was shaking, hollering, and

swinging. What’s wrong with this kid? He saw his mama and daddy get locked up and thought the police were bad. That’s when I started showing kids the other side of policemen.

Now I know the kids. I’m goofy and get on their level. Police do our business, but we like to have fun, too.  When I see kids doing something wrong, I take them to their mama’s house to tell her what they did. We want the parents to help us take care of the problem first.

I understand the difficulties kids are going through. My mom moved from Eupora to Memphis when I was a baby. Growing up in Memphis, there was a lot of competition around bad things. I wanted to be the bad guy. Mama had six kids. We lived in a violent neighborhood where almost everyone was a hustler. My dad was a security guard, so I had an example of a man in a uniform going to work. 

My mom was killed when I was eleven. My grandmother brought us back to Eupora. We thought this was the worst place. Memphis had sidewalks and lights. Eupora had bugs, no lights, and nothing to do. It also didn’t have gangs. People getting killed in my neighborhood was normal. Living to thirty-one was a long life. Then I came down here and saw old people living a long time. Man, what’s going on? I learned I don’t have to live so fast. Life can be about nature and family. Eupora was the change I needed: it saved my life and made me think differently. 

I worked at a factory, but friends told me I should be a police officer. No way. Police officers were snitches in blue suits. I wasn’t gonna snitch on my friends. But I got older and became a family man. Found out that it ain’t snitching: it’s taking care of yourself and your family. I went to the police academy in my forties.

I worked as a police officer in Eupora for 15 years and became the police chief three years ago. We’re more like community police. I love to talk with anyone and am always checking in around here. I also check on the older folks, showing them they belong. They made this town and have the knowledge and the history. Eupora still needs them, and I learn a lot from them.”

Martha: “Quidela was good and old when he became a police officer. I watched him for a while and wanted to become a police officer, too.”

Quidell: “I hadn’t seen her ever do a push-up or pull-up. Didn’t know if she could do it. She told me I was going to be her trainer. I took her seriously and made her mad when we did the runs.”

Martha: “I graduated from the academy in 2011 and became the police chief in Ackerman in my county three months ago. If I need help, Ackerman and Eupora are only 20 minutes away. We work well together, helping each other out when we can.

We’ve been married for 26 years and have six kids. The secret of our marriage is him being quiet and listening to me. That’s a joke. We laugh a lot. For real, we work together on everything. If we disagree, we take five minutes then reset like nothing happened.”

Quidell: “I learned to shut up before I say something wrong. What do you get out of an argument? A headache or heart attack. I don’t want either. All of our kids’ friends came to our house and we made sure they were safe. We had all of the birthday parties at our house and we walked around the house with flashlights, keeping everyone where they were supposed to be. Those kids say we were the police before we became the police.”

Martha: “Our kids are grown and on their own, but they drop anything to come help us. The grandkids love to come down here. They get to the country and must put away the phones and games to take this in. They love being outside with no shoes and peeing in the woods.

We raised our kids and their friends. Now we give all of that love to our community, doing more than they expect police officers to do. It’s not just Christmas. We have a lot of fun at Easter with games, giveaways, and food. We have free movie nights with popcorn, pizza and hot dogs. A lot of these things are coming out of our pockets. We are giving ourselves broke, but we love it.”

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Toya’s story is part of The Weavers series. Stories about the people who stitch together the fabric of society while so many forces pull it apart. Who are the folks who make life a little better in your community? Send me their names and a little about them, and I’ll try to talk with them.

Lynn