A state trooper with a Ph.D.? Probably not many of those. Not many move on to college professorships either. But there's nothing conventional about Walter Stroupe. He's Mr. Personality, for one thing. He loves to tell colorful, entertaining tales about his early life in a scruffy McDowell County coal town called Havaco.
Unlike buddies who went straight to the mines after high school (if they waited that long), he wanted to go to college. He got a degree in criminal justice from West Virginia State, where he teaches today as associate professor and head of the Department of Criminal Justice.
He obtained master's and doctoral degrees from Marshall and is the first active officer in State Police history to earn a doctorate.
But don't expect a stodgy, erudite professor circulating in the upper echelons of academia. He's about as folksy and affable as a guy can get, even after 23 sobering years as a trooper.
He served in McDowell, Clay and Raleigh counties and retired as a first lieutenant and assistant director of training at the State Police Academy.
A diagnosis of colon cancer nine years ago didn't dim his wit a whit.
Last month, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin appointed him to his Committee on Crime, Delinquency and Correction.
At 59, this coal miner's son has branched far from his humble roots in Havaco. But he remains proudly loyal to them.
"I grew up in Havaco, a coal camp in McDowell County. The population was probably 150. It was originally called Jed. An explosion in 1912 killed about 90 miners. They couldn't get anyone to come back to the mines to work, so they changed the name to Havaco. Nobody knows the origin of that.
"In 1960, the mines permanently shut down. My dad was a miner and got laid off, so he worked at a gas station. Once the mine shut down, there was nothing.
"We were poor, but we didn't know it. I grew up in a house with 9 to 12 people. The matriarch was my grandmother, I never did really know my mother. She left when I was 2. My grandmother raised me.
"We had a lot of exposure to outdoors stuff, so I always wanted something with a little excitement. You grew up watching Superman, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, so you had that distinction between good and bad and kind of had a calling to do something good.
"We were isolated. You learned the art of self-entertainment. We would do crazy things like just throw rocks at each other. On one side of the house was the train, and on the other side was Tug River. Open sewers ran into the river. In the summer, if you were hot enough, you got in there anyway. We were heathens. It wasn't unusual to fight every day. It was part of the culture.
"The first reunion I went to, one of my classmates asked me what I did. I said I was a trooper. He said, 'A trooper? I thought you were in prison.'
"I've been back to Havaco. There's nothing there. But the terrain looks better. There is green foliage. When I was growing up, the slate dumps burned at night. Nothing but mud and coal. It looked like hell with the fire put out.
"They have the same issues as everybody else. Drugs, unemployment. They've just lost hope. When you look up the history of these coal companies, they had an ingenious business model. They would come to a place and lease the land for next to nothing, timber it and build the houses and provide electricity and water from the mines, so they owned everything. And they even had their own currency with the company store.
"Generations depend on that one company for their lifestyle, and when that company goes, people are left in a void. It's basically learned helplessness. That company took care of these people for 100 years and just suddenly cut it off.
"McDowell doesn't have one four-lane road. I am directionally challenged because I never had learn to read road signs. We had one road out and one road in. We only went to Welch, and that was like going to New York City.
"You learned self-reliance. Everybody grew gardens, raised hogs, chickens and rabbits for food. Now here I sit in a coat and tie, like a TV evangelist.
"We started seeing the effects of the mine shutdown, because all of the adults who were no longer working just turned to alcohol. You could walk to school and pass two or three drunks passed out along the side of the road. Per capita, we had to have the most drunks of anybody. They had nothing else to do.
"One of the most interesting things culturally is taxis. Their main function in McDowell County was delivering untaxed liquor to your home. That was their main source of revenue. I was 15 before I knew taxis picked up people and took them places.
"I graduated from Welch High School. I took mining classes in high school, Mining I and Mining II. A lot of my contemporaries, once they turned 18, they went straight to the mines. It was very good money.
"I was the first in my family to go to college. Back then, college was a lot more affordable. You lived off campus and you worked, so you could do it.
"I majored in criminal justice here at State. I always had a calling for public service. I was a juvenile probation officer in McDowell County three or four years, and I wanted to do something more, so I enlisted in the State Police. The Police Academy was a cross between Parris Island and Alcatraz.
"I went to Clay for seven years, Welch for about six months and then to Logan for 10 years. I was used to that environment being from McDowell County.
"It was always violent crime. Murders. Stabbings. I had a scalping one time in Clay County. There were drugs, but it was more huffing paint, glue and gas. And alcohol was a problem. Saturday night on the first of the month was time to stand by because every person in the county who got a check was out.
"But we used a lot more discretion then. If someone was drunk, you could just take them home. People had a different attitude towards police officers then, and policemen had a different attitude. They were more user-friendly. Now officers are under more scrutiny. If you are being videotaped, that is going to cut down your discretion.
"We didn't do a lot of road work, because if people sped down there, they generally wrecked and killed themselves. So I did mainly criminal work. It was wonderful investigative experience. I loved every minute of it. We didn't get paid a lot. It's something you are called for. Either you can do it or you can't. That's why the turnover is so high.
"I had a few close calls. I'm not nostalgic about getting shot at. Thank god they didn't get me. Before we had pepper spray and Tasers, all you had was a stick. We used to carry those big nightsticks in a holder. I was so short that mine would drag the ground. We would go in a beer joint to police it for public intoxication, and those guys would start laughing.
"They did away with height regulations in the late '70s mainly because of the inclusion of women in law enforcement. So that helped me. I'm vertically challenged. But smaller people are mentally tougher.
"I was in Logan and the community college called and said they needed someone to teach a class in criminal justice at Williamson. If you had a four-year degree, you could teach. I liked teaching, so I kept doing it. I taught as a adjunct from '93 until I got hired here full-time. I taught at Bluefield State, Mountain State, here at State and at Marshall.
"Once I realized I liked teaching and could do this when I retired, I went back to grad school. I didn't start a doctorate program until I was 43. I finished my doctorate in 2003. I got my master's when I was in Logan. I knew these colleges were going to university status, and to teach there you had to have a doctorate. I could do this job until I'm 90. If you love something, it's easy.
"I was a trooper from '83 until 2006. I retired at 50. I was executive officer at the academy then, training basic officers and State Police cadets. That's the year I had cancer. I'd worked all those years and retired and suddenly I'm diagnosed with colon cancer. When I turned 50, I got a colonoscopy, and that's how they found it. It was Stage 1, so they just did a resection.
"It's been nine years. I didn't need chemo. But I did lose a kidney. Scar tissue developed from the surgery and shut the kidney down. I had five colonoscopies in a row after the surgery. I had my last one in July. I'm good now for five years.
"I wouldn't want to be a trooper today. They talk about police being racist. In all my years, the only thing I saw police prejudiced against were criminals. It's a lot more dangerous today. With drugs, anybody you stop could turn violent on you.
"Drugs are probably responsible for about 80 percent of crime. They lost the war on drugs in the early '70s when they didn't enforce it. Once it escalated and the profit margin kicked in, they couldn't stop it.
"Research indicates that the number one drug abusers are white middle-class Americans. They get by with it because they stay at home. Lower-class individuals can't hide it. They get in public and make fools of themselves.
"Today, because people communicate electronically, they don't have the ability to converse or read people. By reading body language, inflection, tone, you can pick up clues when people are becoming aggressive. If you learn to communicate electronically, it's all literal. No nuances. The key to criminal investigation is information. And you get information by talking to people and relating to them. You establish these relationships long before you need them so they trust you. You don't wait until a crime happens and go to their door and ask them who did it.
"Somebody recommended me for this new appointment from the governor. I'm the higher education representative on the Governor's Committee on Crime, Delinquency and Correction. It will be interesting, another form of service."
Reach Sandy Wells at sandyw@wvgazette.com or 304-342-5027.