Wendell Roden struck a familiar, tough-but-friendly image of a consummate law enforcement leader, and for three election cycles (and beyond), the voters of Cullman County agreed. From 1978 until departing office in 1991, the Fairview native cultivated a family name, as Cullman County sheriff, that’s still synonymous with firm, fair-minded, and community focused public trust. Roden passed away at age 88, Friday, Dec. 27, 2024

“He is, and shall always remain, a legend in the field of law enforcement,” said former district attorney Len Brooks, whose elected tenure as the county’s top prosecutor overlapped with Roden’s time in office. “Cullman County and the State of Alabama have benefitted greatly and are very fortunate to have had someone with Sheriff Roden’s character, dedication, contribution, loyalty and ability to serve and protect us. He had a positive influence on the lives of so many.”

Joining the Cullman Police Department after a 1950s stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, Roden began his career on the municipal side of law enforcement, where he served as an officer for 13 years — ascending to the rank of lieutenant over investigations — before winning his first sheriff’s race as a Democrat. Brooks’ reflection on the positive influence Roden exerted on others is echoed by retired Cullman police chief Kenny Culpepper, who was still in his teens as a Cullman High School student when he encountered Roden’s gift for good-faith equanimity firsthand.

“He was a city police officer before he became sheriff, and this would have been in maybe 1971 or 1972,” Culpepper shared. “He was working as an officer at The Globe restaurant, which younger folks won’t remember, but had a Sonic type of drive-up section where you could pull in and order and they’d bring food out to you.

“Well, me and some of my high school buddies had gone out and bought some beer. And we had iced it down and put in the trunk of the car. There were four of us — I was a passenger. We drove up to The Globe looking to see if there were any girls there that we could, you know, talk to or whatever. It was kind of like the hangout back then, which is why they hired Wendell — to kind of manage the traffic and the cruising and so on.

“So he’s standing on the corner of the sidewalk of the main building, and we go cruising by. We’re making a second trip around, and he’s standing there … and he looks at us and does his finger with that ‘come here’ motion. So we pull over next to the curb. He asks to get out of the car, and of course we’re all like, ‘Oh, crap.’ So we get out of the car and he goes, ‘Boys, boys, boys; I’m going to ask you one time — You tell me the truth, I’m going to let you go. You lie to me, I’m going to carry you to jail: Where’s the beer?’

“So we go, ‘Oh, officer Roden, you know, it’s in the trunk.’ We popped the trunk, and he opened the cooler and he said, ‘All right, pour it out, boys.’

And we’re popping the tops and pouring that beer out in the gutter, and all of our friends and people we knew were over there at The Globe, watching us and kind of laughing at us, you know. He made us pick the empty cans up and put them in the trunk, and then he said, ‘All right, y’all can go.’

“But I just couldn’t resist asking him one thing: I said, ‘Officer Roden, with all due respect — how did you know that we had beer?’ And he kind of smiled and stepped down off the curb, and reached in through the open window. And off of the dash, he pulled out a six-pack ring that somebody had tossed up there while we were icing the beer down. You could see it through the windshield.”

Not too many years after that high school close call, Culpepper was himself an across-the-way law enforcement colleague of Roden’s — first as a city patrol officer, and later as Cullman’s chief of police. Having seen from two perspectives Roden’s command of diplomacy, Culpepper never really stopped learning from the former sheriff about knowing when to deploy — and when not to deploy — local sensibilities to fix local problems.

“He was kind of folksy and everything, but he was tough as nails, too,” said Culpepper. “He always had a certain gravitas or decorum about him, and it really upheld what people needed to see in someone who holds the position of a sheriff.”

Retired district judge Kim Chaney, who credits Roden with offering him his first law enforcement job (as a deputy in 1979), reflects fondly on Roden’s signature knack for tempering toughness with circumspection.

“He was a U.S. Marine and sort of grumbled when he talked,” recalled Chaney with fondness. “He was a man of few words, and, to me, sounded a lot like Alabama coach Bear Bryant. He was a man who dedicated his life to keeping Cullman County a safe place to live, to work, and to raise families — and he loved his community and his family.”

In Cullman County, the sheriff’s office necessarily claims an enormous share of the county commission’s annual budget — a point of potential financial tension that’s been the source of more than one political power struggle between skirmishing elected sheriffs and county commissioners elsewhere in Alabama. Fellow Fairview native and current District 11 Alabama House Rep. Randall Shedd served as chairman of the Cullman County Commission back when Roden was sheriff, and remains proud of the way the pair worked together to avert those kinds of conflicts by each agreeing, without pause, to put the community’s needs first.

“I was chairman for six years while he was sheriff during that time, and we worked really closely — we never had a cross word,” said Shedd. “A lot of commissioners and sheriffs across the state, you know, there’s conflict there — because the commission does the budget for the sheriff’s office. But when we needed to find a solution to something, we worked together.

“At that time, the sheriff’s department only had maybe six patrol cars, and those cars stayed on the road 24/7 — which meant that, a lot of times, they would be worn out and broken down. After I consulted with Lucille Galin — who was my chief clerk at the commission before she went over to work for the city of Cullman — to make sure we’d have the funds to do it, I went to him and talked about changing over to a system where we would have more patrol cars, but one where each deputy could have his or her own car to take it home and have it with them, effectively, at all times. It was a big change, but it started a trend, I think. A lot of the other sheriff’s departments around the state ended up kind of looking at what we had done, and deciding that they were going to have to do it, too, to keep up.”

In another early-career anecdote that found Culpepper taking a rookie’s cue from Roden, the expanded sheriff’s fleet proved to be the deciding factor in settling which local law enforcement agency should take the leadership reins in the wake of a 1980s weather disaster.

“A tornado had come through the south part of town, down where Kmart used to be, and tore up everything where it went on and jumped across to the old King Edward plant,” he said. “This was before I was chief — Bill Mangum was the chief, and I was the training sergeant for the city police department. The way it was structured back then, I was basically the only person besides the chief working in the chief’s office — and I’m, maybe, 27 or 28 years old.

“So we were all doing emergency response stuff — checking on houses; checking to see if anyone was injured; trying to direct traffic and stuff like that. The next morning, Chief Mangum called and sent me down to the [county] EMA office to go over the emergency plan, and to basically represent us with the other agencies — Civil Defense, the state troopers, and the sheriff’s office. They had a map spread out showing the damaged area and all of that, and Sheriff Roden was talking: ‘We’re going to do this, and we’re going to do that,’ and really kind of heading things up with the other pretty important guys from the state troopers and Civil Defense, and not really acknowledging me except to just kind of nod here and there.

“So I finally said, ‘Excuse me — with all due respect, this damage all falls within the city limits of Cullman. The city police department needs to be making these decisions.’ And Sheriff Roden looked at me and said, ‘How many cars with police officers can you put out on the road right now?’

The sheriff’s office had just gone to their take-home car policy, so all of his deputies had a car. We hadn’t done that, and didn’t do it until after I became chief.

“So I said, ‘I think we’ve got eight police cars that we can put out with officers in them.’ And he said. ‘I can put out 32. Who do you think needs to be in charge of this recovery effort?’ And I said, ‘Point taken.’ I kept my mouth shut after that, because I realized that me trying to do a turf battle with Sheriff Roden wasn’t going to work. But he wasn’t thinking about it that way. He was thinking about what the best response would be for the people who were relying on law enforcement to show up and offer them the help that they needed.”

Roden’s well-cultivated reputation as a community leader who could be tough where it counts carried forward into the 1990s, when voters elected Tyler Roden, Wendell’s son, to another three terms that kept his family name front and center amid local politics.

“At one time, I had thought about running for sheriff,” mused Culpepper, who retired in 2022 from his own 34-year career as the city’s chief of police. “But then Tyler did, which was exactly what should have happened — because he was ten times better a sheriff than I would have been, I’m pretty sure. And of course we got along great after Tyler became the sheriff and I was the [city police] chief. And it was always a pleasure to run into Wendell later on after he retired. We both enjoyed each other’s company. He really did gave me a lot of advice over the years.”

Mentorship and friendship are thematically entwined in the minds of those who owe a portion of their career success in law enforcement to Wendell Roden. “I had the honor and privilege of working and serving with Wendell for seventeen years,” reflected former district attorney Brooks. “I am forever grateful for his professional guidance and true friendship.”

“We didn’t know it back then,” added Chaney — who would later work with Roden as an assistant district attorney in Brooks’ office before eventually earning his own elected judge’s seat — “but the framework and policies of the sheriff’s office under Sheriff Roden’s administration would help shape the future of law enforcement in Cullman County for many years.”

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 234.