By Catherine M. Welch
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/whqr/local-whqr-696453.mp3
Wilmington, NC – The funeral of North Carolina National Guard soldier Emanuel Pickett was held this week. Pickett was with a small unit that had lost two others just weeks before his death.
He was a police detective in the Duplin County town of Wallace, and was putting his law enforcement experience to work training Iraqi Police when the 34-year-old was killed in a mortar attack.
In the heart of hog farm country, just about every flag in the small town of Wallace flies at half-staff. Including the flag outside the town's police department where inside a big white bow hangs on the door of what used to be Detective Emanuel Pickett's office.
Pickett served on the Wallace Police Department for 14 years. And soon his photo will hang on the wall that serves as a memorial outside Police Chief Bobby Meready's office.
"I've known him since he was a teenager, when he graduated from Basic Law Enforcement training, he came looking for a job and I gave him one."
It took Pickett seven years to rise through the ranks to captain, the first minority captain in his small, rural town.
He got there through hard work, but neither the chief nor his officers could tell that he was putting in long hours by looking at the impeccably dressed Pickett. And they'd tease Pickett that he always looked like he had just stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine.
"Sometimes calls come in at three in the morning, and he never got wrinkled or deshriveled like we did. Three in the morning, it looked like we just rolled out of bed, but he looked like he'd been here all night, you know he was, (pause) he was real neat."
When Pickett wasn't answering police calls he was at his other job, a butcher at Billy's Pork and Beef Center.
Pickett's mom asked owner Billy Goff if he could hire her youngest child, who was then 14-years-old, to help around the shop.
"I needed a little clean up boy around here, so I hired him turned out he was like my own kid."
In the nearly 20 years he worked at Billy's Pork and Beef, Pickett helped Goff build the business. In return, Goff offered to send Pickett to college, but Pickett stayed home to be with his high school sweetheart, raise a family and pursue a career in law enforcement, following in the footsteps of his older brother Kemely.
"I remember doing some ride along with Emanuel, and I was like, "where we going, where we going?"
He says, "I gotta go check on the old ladies put the light bulbs in."
"And I'd say you're a captain, you gonna put '"
"And Emanuel would say, yeah, I put light bulbs in old folks house.'"
"Old ladies, old guys, they would have his number personally, and they would call him, contact him, and he would go out if the light bulb was out on the porch.
He says his brother treated those he arrested with the same kindness and respect. So it wasn't a surprise when Chief Meready came to pay his respects and told the family that many of the names in the guest registry where people whom Pickett had arrested.
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