EPISODE 5 - In this closing episode, Tom Lewis and Hal McAlister sit down together to talk about how the book and this podcast came to be. Tom’s request to his father that they record a long conversation about the Chief’s policing career just weeks before Carlton’s death is a lesson to us all about preserving family history before it’s too late. Hal asks Tom about how his mother reacted to her husband telling them at the dinner table that he wanted to quit his job and become a deputy sheriff with half the income they had been accustomed to. Her response was surprising. Early in the first podcast, Tom’s dad says that “to be a good policeman you have to love people.” And yet, Carlton was a fearless fighter who relished a good brawl. Those two things seem to be contradictory. Tom and Hal talk about what led him to find that balance? While Carlton’s mentor, Sheriff L. L. Wyatt, killed nine men all of whom fired at him first, Chief Lewis never killed anyone, even when it entirely justified. How does all this relate to an assessment of Carlton Lewis as a law man? [Accompanying image: Carlton Lewis late in his career.]

Enforcing the law to a T, Carlton, accompanied by his African-American partner Johnny Grimes, goes into an all-black juke joint to shut it down for violating curfew laws. Fights ensue, and they take several men off to jail to sober up. The next morning, Carlton recommends that the judge let them all go as they were just blowing off steam after a long week of hard work and can’t “feed their families” sitting in jail. The conclusion to the shooting death of Officer Rowry is described. Deputy Sherif Lewis arrests the famous civil rights leader Hosea Williams for driving drunk through Greene County. That action has positive repercussions for the arrestee and for civil unrest in the county going forward. Ironically, after Carlton’s passing, Tom is given the job by his boss, Governor Joe Frank Harris, of protecting Williams and other civil rights leaders during a highly tense 1987 march into Forsyth County, one of the largest such protests ever in the U.S. [Accompanying image: Tom and Eleanor in the late 1970s.]

Carlton personally takes on providing security for Kenny Rogers during the filming of a movie in Greene County and quickly gets bored with the job. Tom is jailed for speeding in Union Point, and deputies Grimes and Lewis stakeout a moonshine still. The Chief snatches a shotgun pointed at him from the hands of a deranged man who is then sent off to the huge and notorious Central State Hospital in Milledgeville. Carlton’s grandson rides along with him in his police car when the Chief pulls a car over and puts the drunk driver in the back seat to the dismay of Tom’s wife. Two of Carlton’s four-man Union Point police force are shot and one man, Officer Tommy Rowry, dies. [Accompanying image: Tom and Carlton Lewis with Georgia Governor Joe Frank Harris.]