Clipping from Guard provided by Tony Vittoria Boy Leaves Batesville, Resurfaces Later As Clown On TV Larry Stroud, Batesville Guard, 17 October 2013 When Robert Ford looked at the obituaries in the Oct. 6 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he saw that one of his childhood friends had passed on — a friend who left Batesville as the result of a tragic murder that occurred Jan. 2, 1935. The obituary was that of Gerald Bruce Wheeler, whose father, Deputy Sheriff Everett Wheeler, was shot to death by Robert Rose, whom the deputy was trying to arrest. Gerald Bruce Wheeler, who was 87, was born at Salado. His obituary is lengthy, for he accomplished a lot in his life, including creating, writing and acting in television programs after fighting in World War II at Iwo Jima, serving in Korea and working on the Alcan Highway in Alaska and Canada. The story of “The Murder of Deputy Sheriff Wheeler and Trial of His Killer, Robert Rose,” is told in the first edition (Vol. 1, No. 1, Oct. 1959) of the Independence County Chronicle, the publication of the local historical society. Covering pages 29-36, the article was written by Virgil Butler, who was deputy prosecuting attorney in 1934-35 after having served in the state Legislature (and in World War I) and later worked for the U.S. Postal Service. In his later years, I knew Butler as our mail carrier on the part of Route 1, Batesville, that is between Cushman and Sandtown. Sometime the morning of that fateful Jan. 2, George Wyatt, who was tax collector of Independence County, came to Butler asking for warrants for the arrests of Woodrow Crump and Robert Rose. “The day before, these two men drove up to a filling station belonging to Mr. Wyatt at Rosie and asked for 10 gallons of gas. After the gas was put in their car, they drove hurriedly away,” Butler wrote. As soon as the warrants for the arrests of Crump and Rose were issued, Butler delivered them directly to Deputy Wheeler. Three other officers joined Wheeler and left for the Brock Mountain area, where they believed the two men they were seeking might be. They saw Crump and another man in an old car, and arrested Crump. Wheeler went to the front door of a house, where no one answered his knock. He then went to the back of the house, where three women were on a porch. As Wheeler stepped up to the porch, Rose was trying to escape out the back door. Wheeler called on Rose to halt, but instead, Rose grabbed two of the women and dragged them inside the back door. Wheeler followed, and Rose shot him over the shoulder of one of the women he was using as a shield. After Wheeler fell, Rose escaped. “They had a statewide manhunt,” Ford said. “They even got out the National Guard.” Butler’s article confirms that and gives details of Rose’s capture, his trial and execution, which was in the electric chair on Feb. 23, 1935. The turnout for the search for the popular deputy’s killer was massive, with citizens showing their respect for the fallen law officer by swarming to assist “with the anger and excitement of a disturbed nest of hornets,” Butler wrote. Rose and others around him had a history of thefts. Even the car he and Crump were in when they failed to pay for the gasoline had been stolen in Louisiana. “Those who knew Rose best lived in fear of him,” Butler wrote. “He was a man to avoid if possible and if not he was to be obeyed without question. He was a tall, thin man who wore glasses. Behind those glasses were ‘killer eyes.’ “ I know that many persons believe that such a thing is merely a figment of the mind, but most law enforcement officers, at some time in their career, have looked into such eyes. I would not describe them as showing anger or hate, but rather more resembling the flat, cold … eyes of a reptile.” Anyone wanting to read the story may consult the Independence County Chronicles in the bound volumes in the Independence County Library. Although the Chronicles cannot be checked out, the library allows each patron to make five pages on a copy machine for free. Since two pages of the Chronicle fits on one copy machine sheet, the whole article fits on the five sheets. Now, back to the remarkable Gerald Bruce Wheeler. “He used to play at my house,” said Ford. “My Dad and Everett Wheeler were good friends, so they were at our house often. I never saw Bruce after he left Batesville (for Little Rock with his mother and two younger brothers) until I saw him on television as a clown.” That was probably in the 1960s, Ford said. “He was 8 or 9 when he left Batesville. I lost track of him. Years later, on television, I started putting it together.” And even then, Ford had to look at the names on the credits that ran with the TV show, to make sure. According to the obituary, Bruce, as Ford referred to him, went north as a young man to work on the Alcan Highway. Shortly afterward, he volunteered for the Marine Corps and served with an amphibious landing force on Iwo Jima and then served in Korea as a corporal in the U.S. Air Force. After awhile at the University of Oklahoma, he worked as a cameraman at KARK-TV in Little Rock. Affable and creative, he was soon suggesting characters and ideas for local programs. It was at KARK that he developed the character that would define his career in children’s television — Lorenzo the Tramp, a silent but lovable tramp. His Lorenzo charmed children and parents alike and he was given his own show on the TV station in 1955. In the years that followed, Bruce wrote and performed “The Lorenzo Show” to expanded audiences in Tulsa, St. Louis, Baltimore and Philadelphia. He helped pioneer the transformation from radio to television by creating video sight gags and visual images that took advantage of the new medium. Bruce played multiple characters on each Lorenzo show — himself, Lorenzo, country boy Clarence Lackwit, rancher Nevada Ned and pirate Raoul the Rogue. The Lorenzo show continued to be popular through 1970 and even after that, Bruce would make special appearances as Lorenzo. Bruce also wrote plays and novels. One of his plays, “The Trail of the Lonesome Kid,” was presented in Exeton, Pa. His two novels, “If All the World Were Paper” and “2084,” drew interest from publishers but Bruce kept tinkering with them and wound up with neither completed to his satisfaction. As an example of his perfectionism, Bruce is said to have once suggested to his two sons that when he was gone, they should consider having the following inscribed on his headstone: “…And you said I’d never finish anything.”
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:02:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015