Well-earned retirement

It was during his high school years at Phil Campbell that Merrell Potter got his first taste of law enforcement, serving on the town’s auxiliary police force. After years of police work in Franklin County, the PC Police Department chief will embrace retirement at the end May.

Potter, a Phil Campbell native, became police chief in 2000 and has protected and served the Town of Phil Campbell for almost 17 years.

“I’m proud of the time I’ve been able to put in it. It’s been a challenge, but it’s been a great joy, too,” Potter said. “Hopefully I’ve changed some lives.”

Police work was a passion for Potter from a young age. “When I was a very small child I used to watch Westerns, and I was fascinated with the law enforcement part. I always wanted to be the good guy,” Potter said. “I liked helping people.” This final month of his career caps three decades of police service, beginning in those formative years in high school, when the rescue squad transitioned into an auxiliary police force under Chief Glenn DeMastus.

“What we usually did is work ballgames, direct traffic and things like that,” Potter said. “That’s where I got started in law enforcement.”

He graduated PCHS and completed two years at Northwest Junior College. He majored in business administration, but law enforcement continued to call his name – which is how he came to be part of the campus police force. Rep. Johnny Mack Morrow was in an administrative role at the college at the time, and he wrote a law enforcement planning agency grant to establish a campus police force at the junior college, utilizing available federal funds.

“Chief Potter was the first person I hired,” Morrow said. “He was a student of my father’s – my dad was the vocational/agricultural teacher in Phil Campbell. I first knew him as a result of being a student of my father’s, and how hard he worked as a student.”

Morrow commended Potter as a “good person, hard worker and tremendous influence on a lot of people’s lives.”

“I’m just proud I know him and our lives crossed,” Morrow said. “I want to wish him the very best in retirement.”

Potter remembers how casual the campus police force was. “Our main function there was security, more than hands-on police work,” said Potter, who recalls making maybe two arrests during his tenure.

It wasn’t long after that that DeMastus became sheriff and selected Potter to be chief of his sheriff reserve, where he served for the first two years of DeMastus’ term. His next law enforcement experience was with the city of Russellville, beginning as a patrolman and promoting to sergeant after 18 months. He served 16.5 years in Russellville.

Potter said his early years at Russellville were “Wild West.”

“There was a lot of activity going on,” Potter said. “I worked the evening shift, and that was the shift. Everything happened on the evening shift. Car chases – it was just a wild time. It was always busy. You were continuously responding to domestic calls, reckless driving, the whole works. It was always something.”

Potter married his wife Regenia in 1977 and went to work at Russellville in ’78. Although he enjoyed his years at the Russellville Police Department, he said it was challenging to miss some of his children’s, Derrell’s and Cheryl’s, growing-up years. Being a young husband and father while on the police force was “trying at times,” but Potter said Regenia always supported him. “She knew it was in me – that it was a desire of my heart. She wanted me to be happy, and we were always in agreement on my career.”

In 1981 he surrendered to the call to preach, beginning to pastor New Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church. He will continue to minister in his retirement and hopes to expand his work in ministry.

He said his faith has been crucial in both job titles.

“I have used one to help the other,” said Potter of his efforts in the dual roles. “My ministry has helped strengthen me in faith and courage to do the right thing, and the examples I see in true life (with the police department), I can turn around and use from the pulpit to present my message. People relate to things that are real.”

In 1995 the Potters purchased the B&J Café in Phil Campbell from Regenia’s parents, where Potter enjoyed meeting people and cooking catfish, barbecue and other country cooking. But after six years out of law enforcement, Potter couldn’t help considering the open police chief position at Phil Campbell. He put in an application with Mayor Frieda Eubank – and his service at the PCPD began. “When the opportunity arose, it kindled the fire in me again,” Potter said. He planned to work at least four more years, to complete his years required for retirement – but four years came and went, and Potter stayed on. “As long as I felt the freedom and had the support of the mayors and councils I worked under, I just continued working,” Potter said.

About a year ago, however, as his 65^th birthday approached, Potter said he began to consider retirement. “I said, I’m going to quit while I’m in good health,” Potter said. He wants the chance to enjoy his retirement, to travel – he’s gotten a head start on that with a recent two-week trip to Israel – and to spend time with family. He wants to slow down and enjoy a more stress-free pace of life.

“This has been a good ride for me. I have really enjoyed it.”

Potter, Mayor Steve Bell said, will be a hard man to replace. “He does a lot more than just police work. He’s the one I lean on and look to in town for just about everything we need,” Bell said. “(Retiring) is something he’s been thinking about and praying about for a long time. I understand that and want to honor that.”

Through his years as chief, he faced major crimes like pharmacy break-ins and a memorable Piggly Wiggly armed-robbery, as well as a drug issues and a bank robbery. But the most sickening challenge he faced during his tenure was, as is the case for most everyone in Phil Campbell, the tornado in April 27, 2011.

“That was a time of my life I hope I never ever repeat again,” Potter said. “I have never been so heartbroken and devastated about anything in my life.” He had just gotten home from his shift when the tornado hit, and the evening shift officer called him to come back in – “the town had been hit, and hit hard, by a tornado.”

“So I immediately, my twin brother and I, started back out this way. We like to never got here because of the roadways being blocked every way we tried to turn and get here. When we finally got here, and I saw how bad it was – my heart just sank. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

“It was a devastation I will never get over.”

He knew all but one of the Phil Campbell tornado victims. Many of them were close friends. One was his nephew, and the nephew’s wife, for whom Potter conducted the funeral.

“You went through the loss of life, the devastation of property, and you look at the people, and they look like they’re beat down,” Potter said. “It was just a terrible, terrible time.”

But it was also a time when Potter saw a positive tilt to the destruction – the destruction of barriers in the community, as churches, community groups and neighbors came together to support one another and rebuild the Town of Phil Campbell. “Neighbors that wouldn’t even speak to each other became neighbors again.”

Although he looks forward to slowing down and enjoying retirement, Potter will look back fondly on his years as police chief.

“It’s been a very rewarding situation for me,” Potter said. He said he has taken his job, and the welfare of the town, very seriously – including Phil Campbell’s reputation. “It’s always been important to me what people think about the town and about the police department,” Potter said. “At one time, we had a bad reputation out here of being a speed trap, and I wanted to see that changed. I worked very hard to transition to a community police force, where we dealt with the people on a more personal basis.” He worked to “treat people with respect and dignity.”

“I feel good about the department, where it’s come from, where it’s at and how people feel about it.”