STARKVILLE — Around Dolph Bryan’s office, there are patches of painted cinder block, almost forming their own design to compliment the remaining plaques and pictures from 36 years as Oktibbeha County sheriff.
Bit by bit, Bryan is packing up and making way for a new sheriff — either Steve Gladney or Rudy Johnson — following Tuesday’s election.
The collection of memorabilia is still vast and diverse. Bryan, a car enthusiast, has scale models on the wall. Oddly, there’s a collection of water bongs — never before used — confiscated from a now defunct head shop that opened for a brief period in Starkville.
Leaving is hard to do for Bryan, especially considering he’s spent his lifetime living and working in Oktibbeha County. But he’s had a good ride.
After all, elected in 1976, he never expected to serve for five decades.
“Just about nobody holds an elected position that long,” Bryan said. “I’m humbled by that. I appreciate that citizens voting me in that many times. I expected maybe two or three turns before I get knocked off the mountain. I stayed up there a long time.”
Bryan’s tenure as sheriff has touched enough people that dozens of his supporters vowed to vote for him as a write-in on the general election ballot. Though it wouldn’t have worked — votes for a candidate already defeated can’t count unless his/her party’s candidate has died — the support strikes a deep nerve with Bryan.
He’s even had people approach him, tears trickling down their faces and lips quivering, offering him condolences following his run-off defeat to Gladney.
“I end up consoling them,” Bryan said. “I’m going to be alright. I’m gonna survive getting defeated. I’m getting older. I’m 68, but I’m not going to sit down.
“People have been good to me,” he added. “I’ve tried to do them a good job.”
Among the memorabilia remaining in his office, there’s one collage, almost within an arm’s reach of his desk, that’s most significant. The sketched and colored picture of the Willie “The Fly” Jerome Manning murder trials of 1994 and 1996 draws a deep stare and evokes a proud smile from Bryan.
Bryan recalls working with Starkville Police Chief David Lindley, then head of investigations at the SPD, to collect evidence for the cases against Manning, who is currently on death row for the murders of Mississippi State University students Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller and Starkville residents Emmoline Jimmerson and Alberta Jordan in ’92 and ’93, respectively. From digging bullets out of a tree Manning used for target practice, to blowing up a still photograph to show a flaw in the stolen leather jacket Manning gave his girlfriend, prosecutor Forrest Allgood had a “dealer’s choice” of evidence, Bryan said.
Bryan’s investment in the Manning murder cases is further evidenced by a copy of a poem Manning wrote about killing the women in Brookville Gardens.
Graphic and explicit, the poem would make most people cringe when hearing it, much less reading it. But Bryan reads it without missing a breath, hitting every cadence and rhyme as if he’d written music to accompany it.
“I can almost recite it,” Bryan said.
As determined as Bryan was to solve the Manning cases, he vows to continue collecting evidence for an unsolved murder case. The case, which he declined to give details about, isn’t the one that got away; one of two suspects still lives in Oktibbeha County.
“I’ve turned over the file to one of the men I’m pretty sure will not be replaced in the new regime,” Bryan said. “And I hope, one day, it will get solved. I will continue to try and gather information on that case. I know his family members will be reading the paper to see if I’m still interested in that case, and I am.”
Bryan noted personal accomplishments, like graduating from the National Fire Academy in Maryland in 1990 and completing an 11-week course at the National FBI Academy in Virginia.
But his fondest memories as sheriff are shared with the people of Oktibbeha County. As many criminals as he’s helped lock up, there’s a side of Bryan many people might not know enough about: Kindness. Two pictures that have already been removed from the walls tell that story. Bryan recalls two brothers who faced felony charges, but the sheriff’s office had the option to pursue their cases as misdemeanors. Bryan did, and both boys ended up in the Marine Corps, mainly because they didn’t have a felony conviction on their record. Both came back and gave Bryan framed pictures of them wearing their dress blues.
“One of them is about ready to retire,” Bryan said. “Neither one of them got into trouble after that. They were able to turn it around. It’s always great to see people do something positive after making mistakes.”
Bryan isn’t sure what he’s going to do when he leaves office. Retirement, however, isn’t an option.
“I’d rather do something in law enforcement, but I’m not too good to do anything that needs doing,” Bryan said. “Positions are hard to find, but you can find a job.”
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