John Echoff

Below these e-mail messages you'll find John's biography and a lot of other really interesting 'stuff". However, right now he is dealing with several specific situations that he would appreciate your concern about: his own recovery from and rehab after back surgery (see info on this in the new "Sick Bay" post), the death of his daughter-in-law, and the set-back his sister experienced while recovering from her second knee replacement. Please read on and then use the comment section (below) or an e-mail to express your support and concern to John.

Wonderful Holiday, Terrible New Year Start

Karla, I recently sent out an e-mail about the very wonderful Christmas I had, and it was indeed wonderful!  The surgery fixed my back problem (for now) and we had the family over the Saturday after Christmas for dinner and the gift exchanges.  Everyone enjoyed Linn's really great dinner and the gifts were all well received.
 
One of our daughter-in-laws, Laura has been fighting cancer (Senovial Sarcoma) for the past eight years, if you remember, I mentioned her visiting us during our camping trip which we gathered with Charles & Dolly Crider and Larry & Charlene Smith.  Laura was at the Christmas gathering. After she, Matt and our 10 year old granddaughter left, I commented to Linn that Laura did not look good.  She had an ashen complexion, and a very bad cough. 

 

This past Friday at 1AM, Matt called us and asked us to meet him at M.D. Anderson.  We arrived around 1:30, I knew at that time what the call was about, so I took Kaitlyn and told her that her grandma (Linn) was going to stay at the hospital with Matt to visit with her mom.  We stopped at IHOP for her to get something to eat and then to our home in Santa Fe.  Matt and his in-laws arrived around 10AM and broke the news to Kaitlyn that her mother had passed away.  It was heartbreaking to see the heartbreak in that child’s face when she heard the news.
 
Kaitlyn is my main concern at this point. She is at the age when she really needs the guidance of her mom, now Linn will have to take that role.  About nine years ago I enrolled Kaitlyn in the Texas Tomorrow Fund for her college needs.  I hope and pray that we will have enough influence to guide her to a proper education.

There will not be a service, just a cremation and a family gathering at their home in Willis.
 
On the way to the hospital Linn made comment about always losing family members during the holidays, her dad died on New Year's Day about six years ago, her mom died the 29th of December last year.
 
I hope this is the last holiday that brings this type of news...  John & Linn Echoff  

A second e-mail arrived from John a day later, this one about his sister:

Karla, thought I'd drop a note to let you know my Sister JoAnn Renfro (Graduated from Pasadena H.S. in'52), recently had her second knee replacement and is in rehab.  The first replacement (right knee) was
done last spring and she decided to go ahead and get the left one replaced.  She said all was well until they took out the staples and had her stand for an X-ray, then the incision opened, so she had to stay in
the hospital a little longer.  JoAnn is not only the oldest of us four kids, she is my last sibling, both brothers have passed away some years ago. 

 

Get this-until she decided to have the first knee replacement, she was a foster parent to three infants, all with special needs!  She has been fostering kids for about ten or twelve years, she is now in her
mid-seventies and has my undying admiration for her energy and her devotion to helping helpless children.  Sometimes she is very hard to keep up with, imagine the energy required to care for three infants, I couldn't do it. She's a real special lady and I'm very proud of her.

John's Biography

My life may not have been the stellar success of some of our classmates, but it hasn't exactly been boring either. Thirty-eight years of wearing a badge in the nation's second largest Sheriff's Department has given me the opportunity to study mankind at its very best and worst.

During my Law Enforcement Career I have served in many capacities. Some were fun and some were down right scary! I have been assigned to the jail, Booking and Releasing, Patrol, Traffic Division (Accident Investigator), Academy Classroom Instructor, Firearms Instructor, and Adjunct Instructor at the U of H downtown. I am a fixed wing and helicopter pilot and have also worked motorcycle patrol and served as a Police Motorcycle Instructor.

I have cleared over 2,000 felony crimes, arrested 147 "uncatchable" miscreants, and survived five shoot-outs. I have had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time and as a result been directly responsible for saving 17 persons’ lives, three of whom were fellow officers in imminent danger of being killed when I intervened. I have been instrumental in furthering the modernization of police training by instituting new standards of training courses while teaching at the Academy. I was a member of an inter-agency task force (criminal intelligence - is that an oxymoron?). I also served on the Governor's task force for C.L.E.P. (College Level Entry Program), a program in which police officers can challenge college courses by testing. I was part of a research group at the FBI Academy for a program to standardize police instruction nation-wide. Concurrent with my law enforcement career, I was in the Army Guard for 25 years and retired in 2000 as a Colonel, commander of a Military Police Regiment.

My wife Linn also works for the Department. She is a Sergeant in the downtown jail, having been there for a little over 22 years. She is also a certified Police Motorcycle Instructor and taught with me for about 17 years. She no longer rides police motors, but has a Honda Goldwing 1800 for pleasure riding. Linn has two grown sons and one granddaughter. We live on a few acres in Santa Fe (halfway between Houston and Galveston). Although I am long past being eligible to retire, I am finally beginning to think about pulling the pin and hanging up the gun.

It's been a long, sometimes bumpy road, but like the sign says "The journey to the grave should not be an effort to arrive in a beautifully preserved body, but rather broad-sliding in, totally worn out, completely used up, proclaiming WOW, WHAT A RIDE!" And that is about where I am at this point.

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After the post “Fulfilling a Dream” was published on the blog, John sent me the following article which he had authored for a law enforcement magazine. I have added here some photos I found on-line related to red cushman motor scooters - the topic of his "Fulfilling a Dream" post and relevant to the following article.
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How I Began Riding

In the early ‘50’s my two older brothers got an “Allstate” motor scooter from Sears for Christmas. One of my earliest memories of events involving the scooter was when my mother decided that us kids did not know how to ride and she was determined to demonstrate how to ride properly (if memory serves me right Mom did not even know how to ride a bicycle!). As Mom increased the throttle the centrifugal clutch engaged and away she went-careening down the gravel road and promptly into the ditch about a hundred yards across the road.

Later, we had numerous memorable rides on fresh oil coating the gravel; sudden springtime thunderstorms turning the roads into a combination of oil slick and mud. The gravel roads were not very forgiving and the primitive brake (rear wheel only) resulted in numerous and spectacular spills, with a wide variety of abrasions.

The red scooter stayed around a couple of years, but as the newness faded, so did the interest. After a while the scooter was gone. [Editor's note: The red 1949 model Cushman scooter pictured here was featured as a "for sale" item on a page full of Cushman "stuff" on the internet. Could this be the very Cushman motor scooter that John and his brothers (and mother) were riding in 1949?]

It was probably five or six years later that one of my brothers acquired a used B.S.A. motorcycle. I managed a few rides as a passenger and discovered that was not much fun. I found my brother’s keys and somehow, managed to get it started, and toured the neighborhood in 1st gear. I didn’t know how to shift and I had to slide off the bike to hold it up every time I stopped. The semi-pony express mounts to get back on, as the bike started rolling must have been a real sight to see!

Before long, my brother began to notice things: the bike was not in the same spot as he left it, the gas gage was lower; it was on the side stand instead of the center stand, etc. A padlock and chain put a stop to my adventures. After my brother broke his leg in a crash, the B.S.A. was also gone.

For over twenty years I observed other folks enjoying motorcycles and a wide variety of scooters. One of my school buddies had a Cushman with a cargo box on the right side, which he used for his paper route. We used it to cruise the neighborhood, parks, swimming pool area, and golf course. Except for the golfers, no one, citizens or police officers, paid us much attention. Therefore, we had, or thought we had “Carte Blanche” to roam at will, and we did with as much gusto as we could muster.

After a brief exposure to college, military, marriage, and settling down, motorcycles still piqued my interest on occasion. But, career and home-life took precedence over all else. That is until 1976 when after eight years as a Deputy; I found the deal of the decade and became the owner a ’76 Harley FLH, Police Special. Our Department allows us to purchase our own Bikes; therefore we can use them off-duty to escort funerals and/or oversize loads.

The learning curve on the Harley was gradual but definitely not gentle. The first panic stop locked up the rear wheel, went into a slide, and then high sided. I shot off that bike like I had been catapulted. My foot caught under the bag rail and I had pavement rash from here to Sunday.

While the rash was healing, I was called upon to be one of the escorts for an officer’s funeral (he died of a heart attack-but not from watching me ride!). Of course the story of my spill had circulated far and wide. As we lined up to lead the procession, the motor officer on my left leaned over smacked my arm as he passed by and then asked, “That didn’t hurt, did it?”

Time passed and my experience slowly grew, I constantly received well-meaning advice from fellow officers and bike riding civilians. In 1981 the opportunity to attend a real motorcycle school presented itself and I jumped at the chance to attend. As it turned out the school was taught by a couple of officers who had attended the CHP School. Now, it was their turn to make us sweat and work as they had when they went through the school.

The cone patterns were a shock, tight circles inside a square cone pattern, zigzags, curves, 90-degree turns, etc. It appeared an impossible task to maneuver a motorcycle thru this maze. Regardless of how many times the instructors yelled at us for looking at the cones, we looked and consequently ran over the cones, time and time again. After what seemed like an eternity (end of the 2nd day), instruction and technique began to meld and some of the cones were safe-for a while! By the end of the week (it was a 40hr class), most of us were comfortable riding thru the obstacle course, in fact, and sometimes there were three or four of us in the figure eight at the same time. The figure eight was a 20’x40’ cone pattern with three cones placed in midline, so that the rider has to ride around them, thus making a figure 8.

After completing the basic school, a classmate and I were asked by the department to begin instructing other motor officers. For the first couple of years we taught the course three or four times a year open to all agencies within our area. We cut back to a spring and fall class after a couple years.

The Northwestern Institute announced their Harley-Davidson sponsored school was going to be held about 250 miles from home. I begged the time off, packed my riding gear and away I went. Numerous bumps and bruises later I very proudly possessed a coveted Instructor Certification.

Upon returning to duty, I eagerly prepared for the upcoming Basic Police Motorcycle Operator Course and try as I might, I could not cover all the information in just 40hrs.

Years and Years have passed, now more than two decades later, I still anticipate the opportunity to ride. Any opportunity or excuse to ride is just as eagerly accepted now as when I first started.

My wife (who is also a Northwestern Certified Instructor) and I have made several long distance rides on vacation. We are now planning to ride the top circumference of the Gulf of Mexico. That would be from Brownsville, Texas topping around the curve of the Gulf of Mexico, to Key West, Florida. Incidentally, my wife does not ride behind me as a passenger; she rides beside me on her “Gold Wing”.

My wife is patiently waiting for our Granddaughter to get a little older so she can start making trips with us. Hopefully, she will love the adventure and appreciate the freedom of the open road, as much as we have.

Keep the shiny side up, live long, and ride far…

John Echoff

Please take the time now to make a comment in response to John's biography. You will also enjoy reading the comments that others have left.

CLICK HERE to return to the top of the main section after reading comments below, and/or making your own comment.

Comments

[Jody Bugg]

John, thank you for sharing your trip with us. You've had a remarkable life, yourself. Success is in the eye of the beholder, and I know you've enjoyed (overall ... maybe not the scary times) what you've been doing, or you would have gotten out when retirement knocked on your door. Anyway, your pride in your accomplishments is, by my definition at any rate, success, and you can't beat that. I believe your successes have been quite stellar. Law enforcement is a dicey profession. I'm so happy that you made it through all those years still in one piece and with a strong sense of self. I've been retired for six years now, and I highly recommend it. Take care, Jody

[Clyde ( Sonny ) Jones]

Hey John,

What a great photo of you in camo uniform. If I were a female, even an elderly one, I'd wanna send you some kinda risque text message or somethin'. Kidding aside, can I just say that for all the junk that the media spits out everytime there's a bad cop, I'm sure you know that the majority of us respect and revere our policemen as much as we do our service men and women. Thank you for spending your life in law enforcement and protecting others. At the end of the day, when it's all said-and-done, knowing that you "gave" instead of "took" leaves your woodpile a little higher!

The first Cushman Eagle I ever coveted was Sidney Jones's. I believe I was 12 or 13. My parents wouldn't allow me to ride, so I spent my time on a Schwinn Roadmaster instead. I can still remember the sound of Sidney comin' down the street as I would find somewhere to go off and wallow in self-pity, vowing someday to ride off with the wind-in-my-hair. I got my first motorcycle three years ago, and may I say that the wind has a much easier time getting through now...still a terrific way to spend spare time and save money...who could've known about $4 gas. Keep in touch...that there writin' of yours sparks my 'membrance.

Your pal,
Sonny

[Jody Bugg]

John,
I've been bull riding in the Mesquite Rodeo. No, seriously, I've been practicing my high wire act for Ringling Bros. No, seriously, I missed the bottom step coming down the stairs. Two of these are out and out lies. I'll let your detective skills figure out the truthful one.
:)Jody

[John Echoff]

Well, since Ringling Bros. will be in town next week, that answer has a smidgen of believability. Mesquite Rodeo, well, not knowing how long you've been living out in the boonies-possible. Falling down the stairs-naah, I'll stick with the dance lessons...

Get well soon and quit listening to disco.

[Glenda Burns Minniece]

Hey John,

Sounds like you had a stellar career to me. One anyone would be proud of. In my opinion, law enforcement officers and our military deserve our highest respect and appreciation - and you were in both! . You really do put your lives on the line for us. May I express my thanks for the job you've done these many years.

It was always fun knowing you. Always a smile and a hello. Your positive attitude has served you well.

Blessings, Glenda

[Glenda Burns Minniece]

That march home!!! Who could forget it. And we'd marched in a parade that day, too. Bless Sheila Steele for having pictures of it. I only recently got my mother to understand that we walked all the way from downtown to Milby because the bus didn't come for us. She was so mad at me for being late, she wouldn't listen to my attempts to explain. She thought I was just out fooling around. Imagine that. :) I remember Henry Flores (I think it was Henry; might have been Donald) trying to call the newspapers to report our adventure.

[Karla Lofgren Davis]

Hey! John Glenda, Sheila... how about trying to get the other three ladies on that trek (Merle, Sue, and Melba) involved in the blog. I have watched for their voices from the beginning and sent them several nagging e-mails, but so far they have not responded or submitted a comment. I'd LOVE to get their voices here. If you need their e-mail addresses, e-mail me and I'll respond. I LOVE ALL THIS CHATTER AND ACTIVITY ON THE BLOG!!! This has been one of the highest volumn days since its inception. I am enjoying your company immensely!!! Karla

[Sheila Steele Howard]

OK ladies, let's all add our two cents about that long march so many years ago. It really was a kick even though we griped about the buses not coming to get us. Glenda, I think we did make the news. Somewhere in the fog I remember a report on the radio about our progress down the access road. Don't think I could do it again. Would have to wait for the bus.

[Linda Strickland]

John,

I know what you mean about the get to gethers. In my hometown in Louisiana they are still hiding horses from the Yankees. Each State has its own history. La. has a colorful history. Interesting that Lee and Sherman both attended the same Military School in La., Lee was ask to lead the Northern Army but chose to serve his homeland in the South. Alexandria, La. was burned by the Yankees, in history books it is described as a terible sight, women,old folks, children standing on the levee while the fires behind them reached the sky with the smell of chicken feathers and tears of the children were blotted by holding on to the skirts of their mothers, all left to starve just like in other parts of the South. One thing did occur in La. I do feel the Colfax Riot was a deciding factor in getting the carpet baggers out and the foot of the North off the necks of the Southern people. I think the North realized if they did not give the Southern people back their rights that another War would start.

In Alexandria, the water on the Red River was too low for the ships to float down south. A commander named Bailey had the soldiers throw all the heavy machinery in the river to make it rise, ex. syrup mills, saw mills etc. thus more hardship and starvation to the people. Bailys' Dam is a part of Louisiana history. Oh, John I get carried away, history comes to life when I read of the struggle of the family. Linda

[Linda McKnight Thomason]

Hi John!

You are one of my heroes! I admire and respect you for all of your achievements... and there have been many. Don't hang it up just yet...I hear there is a war going on and it may move closer our way any day. If something like that should ever happen, we will need wonderful, brave, experienced men and women like you to keep our homeland safe right where we live!(Our soldiers have been sent elsewhere to keep the peace!) Why on earth would you say your life thus far has not been a "steller" success? Of course it has! Anyone who has put his life on the line every waking moment for 38+ year protecting the lives of his fellow human beings and meeting the needs of our country in military service, is worthy of recognition in the gradest terms! Not to mention you have been a teacher too! Then, on a more personal note, you must be an excellent husband and dad (I don't use the word "step"). To Linn: It's so wonderful that you and John found each other to be lifemates! It must be so much fun to enjoy the same things as your husband, and to enjoy doing them together! I can only imagine riding a motorcycle and shooting guns! You are blessed John, and I pray that you know it! It was a privilege to get to go to school with you and know you to be an honorable and nice guy way back then. You are a "steller" success as a person John Ecoff and your life speaks volumns!

[Kay Burg Moseley]

All I can say after Linda's comments is AMEN and God bless.

[John Echoff]

My heartfelt thanks, now if I can just get the tears of pride out of my eyes, I'd like to say God Bless both of you, and hope you have a memorable and wonderful Christmas and the Happiest of New Year...

[Karla Lofgren Davis]

John has sent a couple of e-mails lately that tell about the tragedy and sadness he is experiencing right now. With his permission I have copied and pasted those messages at the top of this page. If you know John at all you know that he is a very caring, compassionate guy, and that he appreciates the support of his friends immensely.

Please scroll to the top and read this info above, and then leave a comment here or send him an e-mail. I am certain he will appreciate hearing from you! Karla

[Laura Burns]

John, I wish things were better -- hope they'll get better.

[Gladys Payne Bohac]

From Gladys Payne Bohac

John, I just read your bio and writings that you have so graciously shared with everyone. I am so proud to say I know you from way back as our fellow classmate. You and Linn have really gone through so much in your lives together. I am so sorry to read about your daughter-in-law and your precious granddaughter. What a sad time for your family. I know with the Lords help you and Linn will guide your precious little girl through her life by giving her good examples and being good role models. Your life has really been an exciting one and a good example what life is all about, helping your fellow man.

May God richly bless you and Linn during this sad time and guide you through the months ahead.

Your sister sounds like a fine lady also. Your family really are a blessing to everyone that you come in contact with.

Gladys Payne Bohac

Additional comment added here:
Charlotte Vann Dew posted this comment in another section of the blog. In order to be sure it is read along with these other loving thoughts for John, I am copying it here as well. Karla

From Charlotte:
In response to John's loss, let me say how sorry I am. I can certainly understand the concerns about his grand-daughter. My son Kyle died when Austin was just 5 and it was devestating. But with God's help and guidance, we all have moved forward. Austin is a pretty normal kid full of energy and very much like his dad. I tell him all the time how he reminds me of his dad. We talk a lot about his dad and he loves to hear of the tales when his dad and uncles were little. It's so much fun to hear his giggles at some of his dad's antics. I will pray for your family that life will soon find some normalcy again. It just takes time, and trust in our merciful God. Charlotte

[John's Appreciation for Condolences]

Dear Karla,

Please post a thank you for those who have taken the time to reach out to my family in this trying time. We will gather at Matt's place in Willis on Saturday for a get together and a memorial service for Laura.

Please pass our heartfelt gratitude to all of our friends...

John & Linn

[Gladys Payne Bohac]

Hey John, Happy Belated Birthday. Hope you had a real special day. Sounds like your fellows officers made sure you celebrated in a big way.

It was good seeing you and Lynn at the reunion. Now we can anticipate the 55th, YEA!!!!

Gladys Payne Bohac