March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Waldo County sheriff to swap gun for pen > Retiring John Ford to make rounds of art shows, Internet with wildlife illustrations

BELFAST — When Waldo County Sheriff John Ford retires next month he’ll be swapping his guns and six-pointed gold star for a sketch pad.

Ford, who served two terms as sheriff and 20 years before that as game warden, will turn over the keys to the county jail to Sheriff-elect Robert Jones on New Year’s Eve.

“It’s time. I’ve been at it long enough,” Ford said.

When Ford decided to close out a 28-year career devoted to chasing bad guys, he was hardly in a quandary as to his next field of endeavor. Though he will surely be out hacking up golf courses all over Maine during his retirement years, he also will be hawking his wildlife drawings and calendars at art shows and on the Internet.

Ford has been illustrating wildlife scenes since his early days as a game warden tramping the woods of Waldo County. His drawings depict animals, birds and fish native to Maine, showing another side of a man who spent most of his adult life matching wits with criminals.

“I always liked drawing as a way to relax,” Ford said this week. “A lot of times when I get going on one, the subject just takes hold of me. It’s something I really enjoy doing.”

That artistic side might come as a surprise to anyone who ever encountered John Ford, law officer. As a game warden, Ford was relentless in his pursuit of poachers and other miscreants. He demolished more than one state truck while chasing criminals up tote roads or down snowmobile trails. His sharp tongue and practical jokes often would trigger clashes with his supervisors.

That same rambunctious manner and penchant for colorful language apparently struck a chord with the public, however, when Ford decided to run for office. Even some of those petty criminals whose schemes he spent two decades trying to foil backed Ford’s run for sheriff. He polled more votes than any other candidate on the ballot during the 1990 and 1994 elections.

Not surprisingly, his move from the backwoods to the public eye did little to dampen his style or temper his attitude. His public pronouncements on a host of issues tended to upset more than a few politicians. A blistering missive about the state’s criminal justice system sent to Gov. Angus King a few months ago drew only the terse recommendation that he enjoy his retirement.

His love of illustrating Maine’s flora and fauna led to Ford’s 1980 idea of doing a wildlife calendar for sportsmen. For a decade the calendar proved to be a popular item, one that Ford reluctantly gave up when he ventured into electoral politics. When he decided not to run for re-election, Ford revived The Sportsman’s Calendar, which now is in full color. People looking for a Christmas stocking stuffer for those who love the outdoors will have a ways to go to top Ford’s offering.

“People really seem to like it,” he said. “They give it to sportsmen and also to relatives who grew up in Maine, or out-of-state people with ties to Maine. I know [professional baseball player and Winterport native] Mike Bordick has one. [Newburgh native and NASCAR driver] Ricky Craven does, too. I sent them all over the U.S. and Canada, even Russia.”

Along with pen and pencil wildlife drawings for each month, the calendar notes the phases of the moon, the best days to go fishing, and the hours of sunrise and sunset. Each month also features humorous anecdotes culled from Ford’s diaries, or “book of screw-ups,” detailing his years as a game warden.

“Someone told me when I first came on the wardens service that I ought to keep a diary, and they were right,” Ford said. “I look back in those diaries, and I see some pretty funny things for the calendar. Some of it is the stupid things I’ve done and some is the stupid things the public’s done.”

One such is the time during his rookie year that he got lost on snowshoes while checking out the health of the deer herd around Unity Plantation. Ford committed the “cardinal sin” of forgetting his state-issued compass and got turned around when his tracks filled with snow. He ended up pounding on a farmhouse door to use the telephone. The word of his goof spread through the county faster than his deputy sheriff rescuer could drive him the 10 miles back to his truck.

Though he doesn’t mention it in the calendar, Ford recalled that some of his first wildlife illustrations played a part in one of his most harrowing experiences.

Ford’s drawings were included in a Division of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife booklet called “You Alone in the Maine Woods,” which contained woods lore and survival tips. A copy of that booklet was found in the camp of Maine State Prison escapees Milton Wallace and Arnold Nash. In the summer of 1980, Wallace and Nash escaped from the prison farm in Warren and led more than 100 law officers on a two-week chase that became known as the Moody Mountain Manhunt.

Ford encountered the men about a week into the hunt. Ford and a state trooper had just picked up their track in the Searsmont woods when they came face-to-face with the barrel of a gun. When the convict behind the tree threatened to kill them, they let loose their dog. The dog was killed and the men escaped. Five days later during the middle of a thundering downpour, Ford surprised Wallace and Nash at a makeshift camp in Morrill. This time Ford got the drop on them.

“I had my shotgun in their face before they could reach their gun,” he said. “When we searched their camp, we found the pamphlet with my drawings. I don’t know if they had trouble understanding it though, because they had been on the run two weeks and thought they had made it to Canada when in reality they were only about 20 miles from the prison.”

Since he discovered the Internet earlier this year, Ford has been sharing tales of the Moody Mountain Manhunt and other war stories with a coast-to-coast network of retired game wardens. He also has developed his own Web site that provides him with a worldwide audience for his color wildlife prints, calendars and note papers. His items also are listed on ebay.com, an Internet auction house that gets 12 million hits a day.

“It’s fun and I really do enjoy it. It’s a way of … establishing me with contacts I never dreamed of,” Ford said. “That’s what I’m looking forward to. People are buying my prints and I’m buying theirs. Heck, I’ve got so many prints off the Net that I’ll have to build another house … Kind of makes me wonder if retirement is such a good move after all.”

Those who want to reach Ford can write him at Route 7, Brooks 04921; call him at 772-3131; e-mail him at jford@acadia.net or visit his Web site at http://home.acadia.net /userpages/jford.


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