Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6A
MAINSTREET NEWSPAPERS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2017
This view from the back of the car was published two days after Hoard’s murder. The front windows of the house were shattered by the blast.
seat by blackened steering wheel, white shirt charred
and bloodied beneath the buttons of suit ripped open to
reveal intestinal wall. “Oh God’I mighty, ” I thought, though
whether or not I said it, I don’t remember, “Oh, God’l
mighty, he’s going to die. ” Somehow Horace must hurry.
Get him to the hospital. Daddy might be there a long time,
but he’d get over this. He couldn’t die. God, he couldn’t
die. Not here. Not now.
“Peggy Jean!” Mama cried. “We’ve got to call the ambu
lance. ” She ran toward the house.
“Mama, I’ve already called. Horace is coming. He’s on
his way. And I’ve called Albert. ”
My mother stopped in mid-step and returned to the car.
“Listen Daddy, ” Peggy Jean said. “Listen, I’m right here.
Help is coming. You’re gonna be alright. You’ll be alright. ”
Suddenly he breathed — or groaned — a large guttural
escaping of air. Quickly Peggy Jean was upon him, parting
his lips to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but finding
his throat blocked by a mass of broken teeth and gums
she tried to force air through his nose. “Daddy, ” she said.
“Daddy?” She raised his eyelids, saw nothing but whites,
and closed them. She felt for a pulse. “Oh, Mama, he’s
dead. ”
...As if in a dream I walked toward Albert, who leapt
from his car and froze in his tracks. “God damn!” he
shouted. “God damn!” He pounded his fist into the palm
of his hand, tears streaming down his face. “Who would
have done this? God damn! Who would have done this?”
QUIET AFTER THE BOMBING
Former GBI agent Ronnie Angel, who had worked with
Hoard on earlier raids and in prosecuting both bootleggers
and car thieves, was also at the Hoard home early that
morning. His boss, R.J. Cleghorn of Commerce, had called
him shortly after the blast and told him to go to Hoard’s
house, but didn’t tell him what had happened.
“It was eerily quiet, ” he said of the scene that morning
after the bombing. Although there were 50-70 people there,
mostly law enforcement officials, nobody was making a
sound, he recalled.
Former GBI agent Calloway was also on the scene.
“When I drove up there were a few people there, ” he
recalled. “... All I remember was chaos. ”
Jackson Herald editor Helen Buffington got a call that
morning about the murder.
7 had just got to our newspaper office when the phone
rang. ‘They’ve killed him, ’ the caller said.
“I knew immediately what the caller meant. But I still
couldn’t believe it. He (Hoard) had recently told my
husband that he had been threatened because he was
cracking down on the crime bosses in the area. But we
couldn ’t believe someone would actually do such a das
tardly deed. “
EULOGIES FOR HOARD
In the days after the murder, Hoard was remembered by
family and community members for his sacrifice.
“He couldn't live, ” said daughter Peggy Jean in the
August 9, 1967 issue of The Jackson Herald. “I hadn’t
thought of their getting him this way... I had thought they’d
shoot him. But I wasn ’t surprised. ”
Hoard’s funeral was held on Tuesday, August 8th, at First
United Methodist Church of Jefferson where he had been
a Sunday School teacher.
In his remarks, the Rev. Robert Ramsey remembered
Hoard and called for the community to not let the law
man’s death be in vain.
“...he made his decision, he had counted the cost and
yesterday he paid the full price, ” Ramsey said.
“As long as there is one shred of decency, as long as
truth, honor and love prevail, this state, community and
area and each of us shall always owe an immeasurable
debt to Fuzzy Hoard.
“Like a sword piercing our heart, the question that
hangs over our heads is: ‘Did Floyd Hoard die in vain?’
In a rare front page editorial, The Jackson Herald lament
ed Hoard’s death and called on the community to stop
turning a blind eye to the corruption in the county:
They killed Floyd Hoard.
Or was it “they"?
Did we in Jackson County by our apathy, our ignorance,
our fear, our failure to lend law enforcement and the
courts our full-hearted support help create a climate which
led to this heinous crime?
If Mr. Hoard had had staunch, unrelenting support from
the public, if we had let it be known, time and time again,
that we were not going to tolerate these hoodlums in our
midst, would Floyd Hoard be alive today? Would they
have decided the cost too great in Jackson County and
moved on to some softer spot?
It is almost a certainty.
But the past is behind us.
When they put dynamite under Floyd Hoard’s car, they
put dynamite under Jackson County. In this tragedy, we
as a community were jarred to an anger, an awareness,
a determination, a unity which we had not before known.
This resolution — so strong in the heat of emotion this
week — must not waver. It's time to get tough with hood
lums and gangsters and stay tough. We can no longer be a
soft spot where such can find a solace. We can no longer
be intimidated.
We have an enemy in Vietnam. But we in Jackson County
have another enemy, under our doorstep, and we must
not rest until he is rousted and put to flight.
We must serve on juries when called, never shirking for
some puny excuse this sacred duty. We must think in terms
of maximum penalties, not minimum. We must constantly
assure law enforcement officers of our support and let
them know that only the best is expected from them as
well.
We must, in short, vigorously seize any opportunity that
comes our way to make this a better place in which to live
and rear our children...
...To make it a place where a child will not have to run
out in the wake of an earth-shattering blast and see the
mangled body of a father who had tried, too much alone,
to make this a decent place in which to live.
The Jackson County Jaycees also weighed in on the mur
der with a lengthy front page letter in The Herald the week
following the killing.
“Solicitor Hoard started this job, ” the letter said. “Are we
as citizens of Jackson County going to just say, ‘Well, he
was doing a good job, ’ and sit back and try to forget how
he died.... Or are we going to carry on, taking up where
he left off and finish the job in a way that will indicate to
his family and friends that his efforts were not in vain?”
HOARD’S LAMENTATION
Hoard was a writer at heart. For about six months in late
1959 and early 1960, Hoard served as managing editor of The
Jackson Herald for his friend and legal client, Herald owner
John Holder.
A story after his death noted that Hoard “had a flair for
words and often wrote prose and verse, sometimes on a nap
kin at Marlowe’s Cafe.” (The restaurant, which stood across
the street from The Herald, is now gone.)
N.S. “Buddy” Hayden who had been editor of The Jackson
Herald in the early 1960s and was associate editor of the
Athens Banner-Herald at the time of Hoard’s murder, wrote
that his friend was not just a lawyer, but also “a poet and
writer too.”
“He had written hundreds of pages about subjects ranging
from swimming holes and little boys to the metaphysical
foundations of science, ” Hayden wrote following Hoard’s
murder.
In going through his effects looking for clues, the GBI found
an essay Hoard had written that talked about the great apathy
the community had toward the local crime syndicates.
The essay was written as a confessional in which Hoard
lamented the lack of vigilance he and other citizens had about
local racketeering.
The frame of Hoard’s lamentation was about the death
of a local youth who had gotten pulled into a life of crime.
A number of local young men had gotten caught up in the
bootlegging and car theft rings, but we don’t know if Hoard’s
essay was about a specific person, or was written in general.
There was speculation at the time that the essay refered to
the death of Donald Marlow, 27, who had been murdered
between Pendergrass and Talmo in 1965. Marlow was the son
of N.C. “Buck” Marlow who owned and operated the resturant
in Jefferson Hoard frequented for a morning cup of coffee.
In some ways, Hoard’s lamentation foreshadowed his own
death:
“If you have ever cringed and shrunk under the excruciat
ing pains of guilt, if you have ever been so ashamed that you
wanted to hide and never look another of your fellowmen
in the eye again, or if you have ever felt so low about your
conduct that the misery of your soul overwhelmed you, then
if you have, you will understand just why I must write this
confession.
“This, you see, is a confession to murder, not a murder
committed by the writer but one committed by several thou
sands of conspirators. However, this murder was one of the
most cruel acts of injustice ever committed against a human
being.
“Today a handsome, youthful citizen died. He did not die
at the hands of the law who was chasing him, nor did he
die at the hands of justice in any manner. On the contrary,
he died at the hands of his fellowman, whose duty it was to
give him justice.
“You see, we drove, shoved and knocked him to his death.
He probably never realized what we were doing to him. To
understand the misery that we are all feeling now, you will
probably need a history of just how we accomplished this
cold-blooded murder.
“The victim was born and in his early years of childhood
had the usual happiness and sorrows that come normally
in the processes of growing up. In his early youth the victim,
through no fault of his own, was cast into constant contact
with known racketeers.
“We now realize that the preserver of law and order is
courage and that fear and inactivity in the face of threats and
growing crime can only lead us to moral decay. We now real
ize although it is too late to aid the victim, that each inactivity
in the face of growing organized crime was a shove toward
the murder of our victim, that each time we backed down in
the face of threats of violence was pushing and knocking our
victim to the scene where his murder would occur.
“We are disgustingly ashamed of our crime. That is why
we confess. We want in some way to ease our consciences
and to make amend. We have learned our lesson in crime.
If you will temper your judgment against us with a degree of
mercy, we pledge activity for inactivity, courage for fear, and
- sincerely pledge that we will henceforth refrain from lending
ourselves to racketeering and murder.
“Please have mercy on us for we will make amends. ”
NEXT WEEK PART 4:
THE HUNT FOR KILLERS BEGINS