Lewis Levine
Columnist
You know sometimes you meet people you just don’t click with, then there are those you just can’t wait to embrace. Well, over the years, actually over the past five years, I’ve met two women who have become very dear to me. We may not talk every day and can go months without seeing each other but when we meet, we’re family.
I’ve met both of them through tragic occasions. I covered the deaths of their husbands, it’s an uncomfortable way to meet someone, a grieving widow who lost the love of her life. As fate would have it through these tragedies we overcome the awkwardness, the sadness and the pain.
On the evening of September 15, 2018, I was home scanning the police channels. I picked up on a chase involving a Liberty County deputy that winded through Flemington, Hinesville, Walthourville till it came to a horrible stop when Ludowici Police Chief Frank McClelland, while trying to stop traffic at a heavily traveled intersection, was struck and killed by the suspect who has since been convicted of his death and the death of Marvin Pope, who was at the wrong place at the wrong time while out riding his motorcycle with friends.
I knew Frank and had known him since my early days as a reporter. Frank was a friend, a gentle giant of a man even though he was shorter than me and I’m 5 feet, 6 inches tall. I don’t recall meeting his wife Cindy McClelland till the day I photographed her leaving the church behind Frank’s casket with pain etched on her face and tears streaming down her cheeks. It broke my heart, and it was difficult to focus while I wiped tears from my eyes.
I don’t know how or when it happened but we became friends.
We may have gotten close on Frank’s first anniversary of his death or when they unveiled a portion of Highway 84 in his honor but we became friends. Working in the news business can lead you down many paths strange byways and highways, but the rainbow at the end is so rewarding, which leads me to how I met Alisa-Ann Whiteman. who incidentally over the years has become a sister to Cindy.
If memory serves me well on the morning of January 23, 2020. I happened to be listening to the scanner and heard a great deal of chatter involving a fatal accident in Long County. After listening for a while and hearing deputies with high emotions in their voice, I decided to make some calls to see what had occurred. I learned through Sheriff Craig Nobles that one of his deputies was killed in a chase on Highway 57, a Deputy Sheldon Whiteman.
I made my way to the scene and was allowed to shoot the area where the accident took place. Nobles asked me if I would not shoot the patrol car, which was significantly damaged, out of respect to the family. I said, of course.
I had seen Whiteman once at a murder scene. His job was to keep the media at bay. He was a quiet, polite man and that was the extent of our interaction. I had no idea who Alisa-Ann Whiteman was till I photographed her outside the high school where her husband’s services had just concluded. She sat in a chair surrounded by her sons a few feet from her husband’s casket.
Like Cindy before her a few years earlier, Alisa-Ann’s face was etched with pain, tears streaming down her face. The moment which I captured with my camera and once again showed the human side of me as I wiped tears away was when Alisa-Ann was handed the flag draped her husband’s casket.
Over the years a bond was formed between Cindy and Alisa- Ann, it started on the morning Cindy visited Alisa-Ann the day her husband had died. It’s a bond that only these two women can know, that many of us never want to imagine. To be the widow of a fallen officer holds many responsibilities in a community, responsibilities like putting your best foot forward, smiling, living life and to carry the torch for their fallen loved one. These two have grown fond of each other, checking on each other, hanging out, attending church. Their love for each has grown strong over the years, to the point when Cindy would just prefer to stay home and not go out – Alisa-Ann will take no for an answer.
Sometimes God puts the right people in our lives to become strong and he did well with these two ladies.