A to Z Editor’s note: This year, The Eatonton Messenger embarked on an alphabetical tour of Putnam County, exploring and exposing something – or someone – unique, significant, unusual, or just plain interesting. The series will continue into 2024 until completion.
The first thing that strikes you upon entering the office is his desk piled high with papers, papers in folders, folders in piles, and piles upon piles of more paper. A few books, magazines, and binders are mixed in, too – most bulging with paper, of course, stuffed between pages and spilling out at so many odd angles.
Each of the office walls is covered with reminders of a long, illustrious career. Framed photos, citations and certificates, and award plaques take up nearly as much vertical real estate as the paint behind them. There are physical testaments to long, distinguished service on shelves and tables, too.
More awards, trophies both literal and figurative, things too important to throw out but not so important to be placed with care. There are reminders of events long past but nowhere near forgotten, too, including a Barbie-sized male doll confined by a pair of tiny handcuffs.
He spins in his chair to address a computer screen set up on a smaller desk behind him, a dark monolith that bursts into color upon the first touch of its controls. The colors reveal 60, 70, 80, and maybe a hundred labeled folders scattered in no obvious pattern across its flat, electronic face. This is the workspace of Howard R. Sills, as much a Southern county sheriff as there’s ever been a Southern county sheriff.
With nearly a half-century in law enforcement behind him, Sills has been elected sheriff of Putnam County for 26 straight years. At 69 years old, he figures there’s at least one more term left in him.
Two photos on the wall depict Sills as a young Georgia lawman, staring down the camera from behind dark, aviator-style sunglasses. In one black-and-white image, he stands casually in a parking lot alongside a trusted mentor; in the second, sporting the faded colors that betray so many photos of the early ‘80s, he is in the woods, shirt and tie, sunglasses on, holding a shotgun in the comfortable manner of someone who’s used to that sort of thing.
Beside him are two equally comfortable young deputies, each strapped with a pistol and one also carrying a shotgun. They were out hunting fugitives that day, the sheriff says.
Other photos feature Sills posed beside fellow sheriffs and chiefs of police, local and state politicians, governors, and at least one president. He clearly respects them all, but he leaves no doubt: if the need ever arose, Sills wouldn’t hesitate to arrest any one of them.
As a young boy in Putnam County, Sills was placed in the care of his grandfather, the local pharmacist, after both his father and mother – “miserable drunks,” he called them – proved unfit to raise him themselves.
He claims to have arrested them both at different times in later years. His grandfather died, however, just as Sills was entering his teen years, so he moved in with the local district attorney and his wife. Sills claims he learned how to prosecute a criminal case long before he knew how to write a traffic ticket.
His knowledge of the law, its nuances, and implications, is well-known among prosecutors and defense counsel alike.
The prosecution tends to love him; the defense, not so much. Sills probably could’ve been a great lawyer. But the thrill of the chase and an overarching need to do “what’s right” steered him into a life of law enforcement. And he still loves it.
These days, Sills reminds one of the late actor Wilford Brimley of “dia-betus” fame, a little thick around the middle, nearly round glasses, a thinning head of grey hair, and a big, walrus-style mustache. He looks like a kindly grampa type, which he most certainly is, so long as you stay on the right side of him.
For criminals, he has little patience and even less tolerance. Earlier this year a pair of hapless conmen were driving the backroads of East Putnam when they spotted an elderly man working in his yard. They stopped and offered to spread some of the pine straw that filled the back of their pick-up.
It’s an old scam. Sell the service, then demand a much higher payment than agreed upon and include threats if need be.
Many older people feel overwhelmed and scared; and then opt to pay rather than risk further confrontation.
This time, though, the elderly man was Sills.
Immediately suspicious, he excused himself and went into his house. Upon returning he informed the men that he was the local sheriff and he’d already called a deputy on duty to his house to check out their credentials. When the men attempted to back out of his driveway, Sills shot out the truck’s front tire.
Sills is fond of showing visitors to his office an on-screen slide of two famous southern sheriffs from pop culture, taken from a police ethics course he taught a few years back. The photo on the right is of Buford Pusser, the real-life, ex-Marine, ex-wrestler, south-Tennessee sheriff immortalized in the 1973 cult film “Walking Tall.”
In real life, not long after his wife was murdered, the real Pusser died while fighting organized crime by the Dixie Mafia and State Line Mob. The opposite photo depicts everybody’s favorite small-town, southern sheriff, Andy Griffith as Andy Taylor, the folksy, homespun widower of Mayberry, NC.
Between the two images is a dial with its needle pointing straight up. Sills says he tells everyone in class, “You want to be as much like this guy,” pointing to Andy, “as you possibly can.”
But, he adds, switching his attention to Pusser, “You have to be ready to be this guy when the time comes.”
It’s how Sills operates and it’s how Putnam County gets policed. Love him or hate him – and Sills knows he inspires both – it’s just how things get done around here.