Trooper Down! by Marie Bartlett

Author:Marie Bartlett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 1988-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

She is the epitome of the cool, elegant blonde. He’s the classic “tall, dark, and handsome.” They met in the emergency room where she was a nurse and where he, as a trooper, accompanied accident victims. On her part, it was hate at first sight.

“I didn’t like him at all. I thought he was arrogant, showy, and into numbers when it came to women.”

For months, she refused to date him.

“I was at a low point, having just broken up with someone, and wasn’t really interested in getting involved. Then a friend invited me to a birthday party and that’s where David and I finally got to know each other. I was surprised at how intelligent and sensitive he was. I guess I was intrigued by him. And I had respect for the patrol. I knew those guys were real professionals.”

Within a few months they were engaged. Both were twenty-seven, but she says he still had some growing up to do.

“He was immature,” she says, “and because of it got into a few problems on the job. For one thing, he was too aggressive. At times, I wasn’t sure who was right—him, the patrol, or the public. A month before we got married, he got into a nasty fight. I was working that day and had gone to the cafeteria for lunch. Halfway there, I got paged to go back to the emergency room. There was David, bleeding, his clothes torn off.

“He had gotten into a motorcycle chase and a fight and as a result was accused of police brutality. It was all over the TV that night and in the newspapers. It was awful. And I thought, ‘Is this what I’m in for?’

“But David was having a hard time too. His sergeant came to the emergency room, walked in, and without saying a word to me, asked David what happened. He wasn’t the least bit sympathetic. Just seemed worried about how it was going to look for the patrol.”

Now married seven years, this wife says she has no regrets about her decision and has come to appreciate the highway patrol and the service it provides.

“It’s getting to be a good career,” she said. “But I think it takes a special breed of man to be a highway patrolman and a special breed of woman to be married to one. I don’t mind being put in that category.”

Not everyone shares her view.

“The highway patrol almost wrecked my life,” maintains a thirty-year-old trooper wife.

She met her husband at a college dance in 1978. By the time they were seriously dating, he was considering the highway patrol as a career.

“I was hoping he’d go for a nine-to-five job,” she recalls, “and I really didn’t think anything would come of this patrol business.” When it did, she was already emotionally involved in the relationship and says it was “too late” to back out. They were married after he graduated from patrol school and sent to a small town in the western part of the state.

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