Even his laugh was soft. When he was out of uniform, no one ever guessed that the soft-spoken man with the distinctive, tinkling laugh was a police captain in one of the St. Louis area’s toughest suburbs. But he was. Following in his father’s footsteps, Bennie Ford was a police officer in Wellston, and served for a time as the interim police chief. “I never wanted the job permanently,” Bennie said. “It was just too much of a headache; too many people wanted to dictate to people rather than help them.”

And helping people was something Bennie did all of his life.

“You couldn’t find a better person than Bennie,” said his lifelong friend and running buddy, Robert “T.” Johnson. “He was just like a brother to me. And he was a nice policeman.”

He Always Wanted to be Somebody

He hadn’t always been a police officer but he had always worked for a living. “I didn’t have much of a childhood,” Bennie recalled. When his declining health forced him to retire in 1998, he had worked 52 years. That’s because he had been gainfully employed since he was nine years old, beginning his work life at Mr. Buddy Nichols’ supermarket in Keiser, Arkansas, a tiny town in the northeast part of the state. By age 11, he was driving the store’s delivery truck.

When Mr. Nichols asked if he could drive, he declared he could; after all, he’d seen Mr. Nichols and others do it enough times. The very first time he drove, he almost had a wreck in Mr. Nichols’ brand new Studebaker truck, but he delivered four sacks of feed. Despite making regular deliveries, it was years before he got a driver’s license that was handwritten by a state trooper.

He had, in fact, always wanted to be an accountant, a lofty goal for a little Black boy born in the south. But he knew he had the brains for it. “Back when I was a kid, I was smart,” Bennie said without a hint of braggadocio. “I could do problems in my head faster than most people could do them on a calculator.”

Growing Up in the South

Bennie Ford, who never lost his mental agility, was born April Fool’s day in 1937 – for most of his life he used a different birth date so people wouldn’t tease him – in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Lula Thomas, who everybody called “Auntie,” even her own children, and Jack Ford, a policeman who was shot and killed during a gambling game when Bennie was a child. While Auntie worked, Bennie and two of his siblings were raised by his maternal grandparents, Annie and Pratt Thomas in Keiser, Arkansas, a town with only one four-way traffic light, located nine miles west of Osceola, just off Highway 61.

His sharpest memory of his grandmother was that she was strict. “Big Mama” didn’t believe in playing and she didn’t believe in going anywhere except to church. Or an occasional outing with a relative, which is why Bennie and his brother QT and sister Juanita liked when their Aunt Jessie, their mother’s sister, came over. She took the children to movies, which no one ever bothered to mention to Big Mama.

Despite his grandmother’s sharp oversight, he managed to do a lot of things; in fact, he could do almost anything. At least that’s what his older brother believed. “QT said I used to tear up stuff so that I could fix it back. I loved fixing stuff,” Bennie said. “And QT was right there with me when I was tearing up stuff. We were so close, people used to call us Frank and Jessie James.”

A Letter from Uncle Sam

Following graduation from Keiser High School in 1954, Bennie quickly answered the call from Uncle Sam to join the U.S. Army. Just as quickly as he was drafted, he came home. After serving only four months, he was discharged because there were so many young men who volunteered, many draftees were released. Despite the fact he looked sharp in his uniform, Bennie had no objections to this turn of events.

Courting and Marrying

He could look sharp in anything, and he did. He was known for playing the field, but his playing days ended very early. He and “T” sang at churches throughout Arkansas and surrounding states, but he returned repeatedly to First Baptist Church in Steele, Missouri. It wasn’t the music that kept drawing him, it was Mary Agnes Ross, whom he married in 1958. They went on to have five children: Bernard, Jack, Jeffrey, Chris and Kimberly.

After years of marriage, Mary and Bennie divorced. Bennie later married Bobbie Johnson, with whom he has one daughter, Bearnice.

A Love of Work, Life and God

When he arrived in St. Louis in 1955, he worked in the downtown Famous-Barr (now Macy’s) bakery, then worked as a shipping clerk at Carps, a chain of department stores that once had more than a hundred stores. Although he had a steady job, Bennie wanted a career, so he went to college.

He graduated from St. Louis Community College at Forest Park with an associate’s degree in law enforcement. He joined the Wellston Police Department in 1969 after graduating from the St. Louis Police Academy and the Missouri State Highway Patrol Academy. He remained with Wellston for 14years. After leaving Wellston, he joined McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing), where he worked as a night shift security officer for 24 years. After retiring from McDonnell Douglas, he proceeded to take yet another job, this time with Avis Rent-A-Car, transporting one-way rentals back to St. Louis. Due to failing health, he retired for good in 1998.

“I never wanted to retire,” Bennie said. “I always loved to work.”

He also loved the rain; national politics, the only topic that would make the normally quiet man positively talkative; cowboy movies, especially ones with Clint Eastwood, and Chinese food. And like most true city people, he would only eat Chinese food from “his” Chinese restaurant. And, of course, he loved the Lord.

For more than 20 years Bennie was one of Kennerly Temple Church of God in Christ’s most faithful and best-dressed members. Even after his health failed him, he’d attend as often as possible and proudly take his seat among the ushers.

Family

He loved his family, especially his children, and they loved him. Loved ones who went before him included his son, Jeffrey Kent “Cavey” Ford, whose death at 19 took a mighty toll on Bennie. He was also preceded in death by his parents, his brother QT Ford, and his sisters Dorothy Pugh and Edna “Earlene” Richie; his stepsisters, Malinda Simon, Emma Caruthers and Mary Jane Wells, and his stepbrothers: Francis, John, Jimmie and Walter Strode.

Among those he leaves to mourn are his wife Bobbie Ford of St. Louis, his ex-wife, Mary Ford of Ferguson; sons Rev. Bennie Bernard Ford (Alice) of Lake St. Louis, Jack Leonardo Ford of Ferguson and Christopher Edward Ford, of St. Louis; his daughters Kimberly Denise Alexander (Lamont) of St. Peters and Bearnice Russell (Jethro Hopgood) of Wentzville; his brother, Arthur Strode (Lavolya) of Allen, Texas and his sisters, Irene (Annie Bea) Strode of Atlanta, Ga., Vernell (Dell) Robinson of San Francisco, and Juanita Johnson of St. Louis; two stepsisters, Margaret (Willie) Thomas of St. Louis and Sally Gathing of East St. Louis.

He also leaves six grandchildren: Adrienne Ford, Jennifer and Calvin Alexander, Samantha Daniel, Christian Williams and Gabrielle Hopgood.

Numerous nieces, nephews, other relatives, friends and fellow travelers are also mourning his passing.