<b>By Christin Coyne</b><br><a href="mailto:ccoyne@mineralwellsindex.com">ccoyne@mineralwellsindex.com</a>
Whether it was joining the Navy during 10th grade, becoming a deep sea diver, or serving as the first police chief of Gordon, Herb Hooten hasn’t taken no for answer when he’s decided he wants to do something.
Born the first son of cotton and onion farmers in 1935, Hooten spent his first seven years in Princeton, a small town in rural Collin County, before his family moved to Greenville so he and his younger brother and sister could attend school.
After finishing seventh grade in Greenville, Hooten moved to Fort Worth to join his mother, who had separated from his father, and decided to go to school there.
“I didn’t realize how far ahead [of Fort Worth] we were,” Hooten said.
He’d already finished a year of Algebra by then but they were just starting.
Hooten was given the option of spending six weeks in the ninth grade to see if he could pass.
“I worked hard to stay in ninth,” Hooten said. But he did, though only for a year.
In 1952, within days of turning 17 years old, Hooten quit school and joined the Navy.
Though the Korean War was well under way, Hooten said he wanted to join because of Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly movies depicting navy men.
“My dad didn’t want me to go but he had to sign the papers,” Hooten said.
Hooten, who was living in Fort Worth with his mother, was driven by the recruiter to his father’s house the weekend soon after his birthday to get his signature.
His father refused to sign but “I told the recruiter to come back Monday,” Hooten said.
Hooten said his father told him he’d be sent to Korea, but Hooten argued the Navy was all over the world and he might not go to Korea.
By the time Monday rolled around, Hooten had his father’s signature.
“Of course the first place I was sent was Korea,” Hooten said.
He didn’t tell his father that or that he soon volunteered for the dangerous duty of deep sea diving.
“He never knew until I came back,” Hooten said.
After seeing his patches showing what he’d done, his father asked him “‘My gosh, what are you crazy?’”
He was in Korea during the end of the war.
“Yeah, we saw a little action,” Hooten said.
He served as a seaman and a bosun’s mate in the Pacific before he finally got into diving school.
“I’d put in a request for two years to go diving,” Hooten said. “They thought I was too small.”
He weighed 163 pounds so they picked everyone but him.
When a man on his ship, who hadn’t even applied for the school, was asked to join, he complained, Hooten said.
“They said let him, he’ll never finish,” Hooten said. His superiors that knew him said he would, though, Hooten was so hard-headed, according to Hooten.
It was his hard head and a piece of advice from a friend that helped him be one of seven people graduating from the 40-member school, Hooten said.
One of their exercises was to screw in a piece of metal overhead while underwater.
“I was too weak to lift and hold it,” Hooten said. He could lift the patch into place but it kept falling every time he reached down for a nut to screw it in.
He was about to be sent back that night but several of his immediate supervisors talked to the man in charge and he told them he would give Hooten one last chance first thing in the morning.
One friend told Hooten to just use his head so that’s what Hooten did – he pushed his head against the plate as he reached for two nuts and held it there while he used each hand to screw them in.
Hooten survived the rest of the three-and-a-half-month school and became a diver, also called “mud duck” or “bubblehead.”
“We did underwater welding, salvage and demolition work,” Hooten said.
He was qualified to dive to 182 feet down.
“In 1954, I was in the atomic energy atmospheric nuclear testing of the hydrogen bomb [at Bikini Atoll],” Hooten said.
They were on a ship about 25 to 30 miles away from the underwater blast site, Hooten said.
“We were told to face the opposite way and bend over,” Hooten said. It was dark but they shut their eyes when the bomb was triggered.
“First we got a big glow,” Hooten said. “After the glow, we got the sound.”
Then came the heat and then the tidal wave, according to Hooten.
Hooten and fellow divers were then sent in to retrieve radiation meters that they’d set up.
After eight years in the military and five and-a-half spent overseas, Hooten decided to quit and go home.
“I thought I needed to see my family so I got out,” Hooten said.
He’d tried to transfer back to the United States but was always told they had no need for divers, Hooten said.
He intended to quit and sign up again within the 90-day allowed to regain his rank and position.
But when Hooten arrived in Fort Worth, he began seeking dates and by March 1961 he’d married a woman he began dating Jan. 1 that year.
He knew he couldn’t get a job as a Navy diver in the United States and he couldn’t bring his wife with him so he took a job at Harris Methodist Hospital as the hospital engineer in charge of making sure the boilers were on, the emergency generator was operational and nothing happened at night.
In 1962, Hooten’s son, Dwayne, was born and 13 months later his daughter, Sharre, was born.
He worked as a security guard before joining the Azle police department in Parker County in 1972.
When the chief deputy for Parker County came looking for him to join their team, he couldn’t pass up the pay raise, Hooten said.
But working as one of five deputies in the county under Sheriff Corey Carter was different, according to Hooten.
“I didn’t realize you had to work seven days a week all hours,” Hooten said. “You were on call all the time.”
The area he covered in Parker County was around 225 square miles, mostly ranches and much less populated in the 1970s.
On weekends when he was on duty, he might get called in the middle of the night to go from Millsap across the county to Springtown.
Most break-ins were during the day, according to Hooten. “I’ve caught a lot of people accidently.”
After Sheriff Carter decided not to run again, Hooten said he joined the Palo Pinto County Sheriff’s Office under newly elected Sheriff Ray Patterson and later moved from Millsap to Gordon.
His patrol area ran from Mineral Wells to Palo Pinto.
During his time, a live-in jailer oversaw inmates kept at the top of the Palo Pinto courthouse. When he went off-duty on weekends, a deputy took over for him, according to Hooten.
Overall though, the deputy job in Palo Pinto was much the same as it is today, Hooten said.
After a 10-year break working on a pipeline in Weatherford, Hooten became Gordon’s first police chief around 1998 when they received a grant from the government to help pay his salary.
Though he’d gone to the Texas A&M; police academy when he joined the Azle police department, Hooten had to go back to school again because of the long hiatus.
But the 600-hour course at Weatherford College, more than double the number of hours he’d put in about 25 years earlier, didn’t stop him.
“You’ll always go back to law enforcement once your in,” Hooten said. “I had a preacher one time that said [law enforcement is a calling] … it doesn’t matter what the pay is or the danger.”
“You get a different call all the time,” Hooten said. Even two family disturbance calls are each unique, Hooten said.
“When I first went to Gordon, they’d never had police,” Hooten said.
He remembers stopping one woman for rolling through a stop sign.
“She said ‘I’ve been driving for 20 years and never stopped at that stop sign because I can see both ways,’” Hooten said. But he reminded her that he didn’t put up the stop sign and it was the law.
“I never had to stop her again,” Hooten said.
Though he was the lone law enforcement officer for the town, he always knew backup was one call away, Hooten said.
He said he once responded to a call about a fight with a weapon involved and arrived to find the patrol cars of deputies, game wardens, highway patrol officers and task force officers lining the block.
“A man was chasing his wife with a skillet,” Hooten said.
All he had to do was walk up and take the pan from the man, Hooten said.
“I’ve had [Sheriff] Ira’s [Mercer] back and Ira’s had mine,” Hooten said.
Hooten said he went to every one of the town’s six-man football games and would direct traffic out of town afterward.
When the town could no longer afford a police officer, Hooten went to work at Corrections Corporation of America.
“I worked different dorms [when I first started], then pretty much one dorm,” Hooten said. “I liked that better … you get to know inmates and they get to know you and you have less trouble. I never did have trouble in my dorm.”
Though health issues forced Hooten to retire nearly three years ago and even give up driving, he hasn’t given up on living.
He knows everybody around the Crazy Water Retirement Hotel and participates in almost all the activities offered at the hotel, including Bingo and trips to Fort Worth.
He is also the vice president of the resident council and fire warden of the building.
The resident council takes suggestions from residents about activities and approaches management about putting them on the calendar.
“It’s a kind of spokesperson for the people,” Hooten said.
“I still stay pretty active,” Hooten said. “I’m never in my room.”
