Veteran deputy turning in his badge

Retiring Flathead County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Ernie Freebury recalls being the only deputy allowed to have a mustache.

It was 1976, and without facial hair he looked less like a law enforcement officer and more like a teenage boy, he says.

Then 21-year-old Freebury was placed in a very adult situation.

After less than two months on the job, two vehicles collided violently in front of him. He rushed to the mangled scene of twisted metal and broken bones.

“I crawled in the wreckage and I could only get one of them,” Freebury says of a crash that claimed two lives. “I did CPR on him and brought him back.”

Later, he received a letter from the man, who as it turns out was an off-duty law enforcement officer. The man thanked his rescuer for allowing his children to grow up with a father.

Freebury, now 56, fights back tears and says, “It was so cool to get a letter like that.”

Then the conversation jerks suddenly into humorous territory. It’s the way Freebury prefers it.

Just months after the jolting experience of watching life fade away, he recalls responding to a pregnant woman near Martin City who had just gone into labor. Her husband was stuck in a snowbank and ambulances were all out on calls. So Freebury drove to the Canyon and put the woman in his patrol car.

It soon became apparent that she was not going to wait for the hospital. So Freebury helped deliver the child in the back of his car during a winter storm on Montana 40.

“I wouldn’t recommend it for the upholstery in the car,” he says.

And that was the Flathead County native’s introduction to law enforcement, bearing witness to both the loss of life and its creation.

Almost 35 years later, he’s writing the final chapter by retiring. He says he already turned in his guns and will work his final day Saturday. After that, he’ll be the guest of honor at his own farewell party.

Freebury’s fairly certain he will be roasted by his colleagues, which seems fitting for a lawman who has found a way to laugh and make others do the same during the most tragic of circumstances.

“Somebody’s got to break the ice,” said former Sgt. Ken Oberndorfer, who retired after an equally long tenure at the office 10 years ago. “A lot of times, it was him.”

Oberndorfer said making light of serious situations is the only way to maintain sanity in a line of work often marked by tragedy.

“I don’t know if Ernie made light of enough things to stop from going nuts, but I guess we’ll find that out,” he says.

This fall, Freebury will take three months off to hunt.

He hopes the time he spends stalking prey and navigating landscapes will help ease him into law enforcement afterlife. He’s bracing for what he calls an identity crisis — the realization that after three decades, he’s no longer the man behind the badge.

He admits he doesn’t want to leave. But there have been signs and indications that the time has come.

Freebury was approached by a young woman recently. She gave him a hug and thanked him for his assistance as deputy coroner following the death of a baby. It’s a job Freebury has prided himself on, determining the cause and manner of death and consoling the people impacted the most.

In this case, though, he couldn’t remember the death, or at least the specifics.

“It’s OK to forget the adults,” Freebury says. “But when you get to where you can’t remember which dead baby they’re talking about, maybe it’s time you go.”

His colleagues and superiors might disagree.

Sheriff Mike Meehan admits his office is losing a heavy dose of institutional knowledge with Freebury’s departure.

He echoes the positive sentiments of others, calling Freebury both a friend and a dedicated officer. He says it’s Freebury’s communication skills that have largely made him effective.

“He’s got a very gifted tongue when it comes to calming people of the criminal element,” Meehan says.

Former Sheriff Jim Dupont agrees.

He saw the verbal skills in action during union negotiations, death investigations and everyday office banter. The skills were most apparent when as a deputy coroner he dealt with community members struggling with the impact of a sudden death.

“He was exceptional in that job,” Dupont says. “He could really relate to the victims and the families left behind.”

Freebury says it was always his goal to elicit a smile out of mourning families. In most cases, he was successful, he says. As in most facets of his life, he often circled back to humor as a coping mechanism — both for himself and the people he served.

“You learn to laugh and make jokes of some horrific things so you don’t take it home with you,” he says.

His ability to communicate extended from consoling in tragedy to leveling with the criminal element. Freebury’s a trained negotiator, the guy movies depict holding a bullhorn and barking orders at entrenched violent offenders.

One occasion appears to highlight his love of laughing and desire to understand such people.

A 30-hour standoff was grinding to an end March 17, 2008, and Freebury found himself talking with the heavily armed Robert Kowalski at the man’s home outside Kalispell. SWAT team members had just fired tear gas and Freebury was choking on the fumes and talking with the suspect.

“This is some pretty nasty stuff,” he recalls Kowalski saying. And then an unlikely thing happened— Kowalski and Freebury broke into laughter. After more than a day, the criminal and the crime stopper had formed some kind of bond, Freebury says.

“I’m on tape laughing with him,” Freebury says.

Kowalski soon came out of the home with his hands held high.

Freebury says credit is due to all of the responders on the scene, but he knows the rapport he built with Kowalski was important and one of many reasons no officers were harmed.

Anyone can get in a criminal’s mind, he says, but that shouldn’t necessarily be the goal.

“If I can reach in and get a piece of his heart, you can lead him around like a dog,” Freebury says.

And that’s what the 1972 graduate of Flathead High School will miss the most — forging relationships and bonds with victims, suspects and colleagues while never forgetting how to laugh.

He will begin looking for new employment this winter.

He’s not interested in a life without responsibility. In his spare time, he will hunt, contract farm and occasionally work as a taxidermist. He will spend time with family, write poetry and think about the wild ride that has reached its end.

He probably will spend a good amount of time remembering the past three decades as well. He’s got more memories than his mind can summon. The mustache is still in place, as is his sense of humor.

“I got to save a few lives, touch a few lives and put some bad people in jail,” he says. “And I had fun almost every day for almost 35 years.”

Reporter Eric Schwartz may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at eschwartz@dailyinterlake.com