Denny's Great-Uncle Ernie Baade Uncle Ernie was Chief of Police in Barrington for 35 years, retiring in 1950 with an appreciation banquet at the Barrington High School. He served in WW II and was a member of the American Legion and the Lions' Club of Barrington. He received the surprise gifts of a 1950 Chevrolet, $550 in cash, and the "Outstanding Citizen Award". (Source: Barrington Courier News, Barrington, IL, Tues., May 28, 1950). The BAADES attended the St. Paul's Evangelical and Reformed Church, Barrington. Ernie joined the Barrington Police in 1927. There was just one patrolman, overseen by a Marshall. Two years later, he became Chief, and the town bought their first squad car. The most sensational incident of his career was the shooting of Baby Face Nelson at NW Highway and Lions' Drive. He was called "everyone's friend". He belonged to the Eastern Star, Modern Woodmen of America, Odd Fellows Lodge, and the IL Police Associa- tion. (Barrington Courier-Review, 4 FEB 1965, p. 1) Uncle Ernie was one of Denny Sullivan's great heroes as he was growing up. Here is what he wrote about Uncle Ernie to his niece: "He was, as I remember him, huge. From a distance, he just looked heavy, but up close (like Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl) his height, well over six feet, combined with his great weight to make him very impressive, especially in his uniform, for he was chief of Barrington's two-man police department in those days. "Quiet, slow-spoken, concerned rather than commanding, no matter what the situa- tion, Chief BAADE seemed to me to respect everyone for what he saw each could be and to make everyone he met desire, at least a little, to live up to the estimate. Many, many times over the years since the days I'm recalling here, I've thought of what my dad, John SULLIVAN, told me more than once, that the best police officers not only keep criminals from hurting us, but are peace officers, bring peace with them, in the way they conduct themselves. Uncle Ernie was Dad's example each time he explained that to me, and I knew he was right.I felt peace, any time I was near Uncle Ernie, as if it were something that radiated from his person, the way warmth comes from a radiator, and fragrance from an armful of roses. No kid was invisible to Uncle Ernie, none was too ornery to merit a chance. Chief BAADE was, I came to realize, always taking some teenager troublemaker under his wing, supervising, advising, encouraging - being, in short, the ideal probation officer who, except in him, didn't exist. He found jobs for kids who couldn't or wouldn't find work on their own, as often as not persuading someone to create a job, then keeping touch with the difficult teen to make sure, so far as that was possible, that the youngster grew, got broader horizons, began to form ideals from the experience. "I cannot imagine Uncle Ernie ever threatening anybody. He was, I think, the con- sumate Dutch Uncle, telling his charges what they could do if they tried, making oppor- tunities for them to try, never overlooking their big faults, but much more eager to applaud than scold. "Some kids straightened out when Uncle Ernie took them in hand. Others didn't. But he never gave up, even on those who responded worst. And "spending time with Chief BAADE", was therefore, an experience Barrington parents used with warm approval and hope. If Uncle Ernie failed to save a kid from reform school, or worse, then the feel- ing was that that youngster, even as he was, was somewhat the better for the quiet chief's attention. 'Who knows,' my dad would say, 'how fine a person that boy may yet become.' " I remember my rich voiced, ever-present Grand Uncle with the deepest personal gratitude, too, for the way he'd turn up along the troubled routes to and from our school, resplendent on his gun-metal gray, three-wheeled motorcycle. He'd smile at us with his big smile you could feel like sunshine, wave and speak to the children he knew, and looked on approvingly, as nobody pushed, punched, or even whispered mean words to anybody else, and nobody from the public school appeared to threaten or torment us. "That was an enormous benefit Uncle Ernie's presence conferred. For, not only did Barrington's schools have fearsome bullies, as schools always do, but homeward bound streams of students crossed at several points in our religiously divided community. If big boys and attendant girls from the public school started harrassing us with shouts of 'Catlickers! Catlickes! Catlickers!' my granduncle or Officer Smith (his force) would almost always materialize on the scene and stop them with a word; a gesture, sometimes just a steady, expressionless stare. Officer Smith was slender, handsome, a man of medium height, a light voice and swift movements, the exact opposite, it would seem at first encounter, to Chief BAADE. But their attitudes and methods were so similar that peacemaking and peace keeping went on as a single, seamless operation in those days. "A few times, when neither man managed to bi-locate in time, grim scenes between us and our own bullies or us (bullies and all) against public school bullies did ensue. Childhood, inspiring as some aspects of it and as some children may be, was, as I remember it, an era in which meanness and violence flashed out at, sometimes engulfed us daily. Chief BAADE and Officer Smith couldn't change that by saving us when they were able, leave the indelible impression that our whole community, not just our own families, cared very much and in a very big way about each of us. That impression, and my parents' and relatives' examples, not what I learned later from pulpit and books, became the roots and measures of my own commitment to communuty and humankind. So, I, too, become one of the people trying to live up to what Uncle Ernie saw in them. "Uncle Ernie's generosity was not just a sharing of surplus time and energy that might have been spent in other ways. He had two jobs most of his life. Sometimes, his son, Reuben, told me, three, and had to in order to support his family. His second job I remember, for the Chicago and Northwestern R.R., whose right-of-way bisects Barrington. We had flashing, wigwag bells at the main crossing, as at a lesser crossing, but, since that main crossing was right at the depot, traffic could get heavy and carelessness could rule. " So, someone was always on duty in a little shack there, to walk out with a warning sign on a pole, whenever a train came through town. In his 'off-hours', that would be Uncle Ernie, dressed, not in his to-me-magnificent police blues, but in old, gray work clothes and a much worn cloth cap, still impressive, I felt, but moving, as I noticed each time, with great effort. Once in the middle of the roadway, however, he'd hold his black and white warning sign up straight and firmly, turning his great, warm smile from motorist to motorist as they waited. " 'Almost makes you feel lucky to get stuck at the tracks,'Our neighbor, Burt Hoffman, quipped once. "Uncle Ernie's sons were a lot like him. I met them one cold, winter day downtown, when bigger boys from the public school were pelting me with ice balls, and those tall serious-faced boys, much bigger than my assailants, appeared on the scene and with a few, quiet words I couldn't hear, sent them on their way. My rescuers then check- ed to be sure I was OK, told me they were my cousins (but all I caught was the last name), shook my hand, and went back the way they'd come. "I saw the one or both, a few times over the years that followed - always soft- spoken, dignified I thought, even then, and gone before I knew what I might do next. "That's pretty much the way the whole relationship with Mother's family was - so close I could have reached out and grabbed them by the sleeve if I'd only been quick enough and had the courage. But I've never been quick, and rarely been courageous, when it came to people I wanted to care about me, even when it should have been plain to me that they already did... "When Uncle Ernie retires after many, many years as Barrington's police chief cum youth counsellor cum crossing guard, the village, the whole people and their leaders united to honor him. That seemed only natural to all concerned because Baringtonians were keenly aware that crime, like weeds, could take root anywhere and that, if it did, trying to blame Chicago, as people in some other villages did, would be beside the point and incorrect. If you moved to or stayed in Barrington because it was, by and large, pretty safe and uneventful, then you owed a great debt of gratitude to those who kept it so, and no one in Barrington's long history had been more successful at that complicated demanding, and puzzling task than Chief Ernest BAADE. "Amazingly few of our youngsters graduated from warning, to arrest, to reform school or prison. No storefront masked a crime center. Nobody made our night streets dangerous. Traffic safety? We had our share of hotdog and hotshot drivers, but they did their speeding and stunts out beyond the village limits. "Boys riding bikes on downtown sidewalks, fights between home and school, once in awhile, some visiting drunk with his bottle in a brown bag swaying down Main Street - these were, when Chief BAADE retired, about all Barrington had for crime statistics. It was more dangerous in the countryside, where vandalism, burglary, arson, and gun threats though not common, were far from unheard of. "Barringtonians were keenly aware, in other words, not only that they had it better than a lot of other people they knew, but also that Ernst BAADE was the main reason. So, in addition to customary tokens of esteem...they presented him with a brand new automobile, in those pre-lottery days the biggest prize anyone anywhere in the state could hope to win."