Chilling With Our Special Agent

My father was a full-fledged bigot.  It wasn’t a malicious act on his part.  He wasn’t the kind of bigot you would find under a hood at a Ku Klux Klan rally, or was he one you would find running for the US Congress as a Republican from Tennessee.  To be honest, he was a Democrat.  He grew up on a small farm in the southwest corner of Barron County, Wisconsin, and had no contact with black people until the Second World War.  During that war, the Army thought my father’s talents would be best used guarding German prisoners of war and he was stationed at Camp Polk (now Fort Polk) near Alexandria, Louisiana.  Through interaction with practicing bigots from the southern United States also stationed at Camp Polk, my father developed a fine-tuned level of bigotry.

As a child I often remember him watching television referring to black people as “niggers”, or “jigaboo” or a “jungle bunny.”  Once when I was about 10 years old, we rode with a friend to the Twin Cities to watch a Minnesota Twins baseball game.  In downtown Minneapolis as we passed the famous Leamington Hotel, we saw a black doorman standing next to the curb.  My father, seated in the right front passenger seat, casually rolled down his window and yelled at this man “Hey Rastas, how you doing?”  Not knowing any better since he was the model I grew up with, I laughed as hard as my father and his friend as the man turned and walked away.

I carried my father’s level of bigotry with me as I grew older.  My senior year in high school we had a black girl from South Africa as an exchange student.  She was probably the only black person in all of Barron County and maybe everywhere north of Eau Claire.  We instantly ostracized her not because of anything she had done or said, but simply because she was black.  The collective heritage of many of us demanded that she be treated like a pariah, and we went out of our way to make her feel unwelcomed. Sadly, we succeeded.

The first black person I ever talked to was actually four black guys sitting in a dorm room of Johnson Hall the first week of college as a freshman.  Freshly arrived and wide-eyed, I became friends with a kid from Tomah named Chris.  I thought he was in room 214 and when I went to his room to talk with him, I entered without knocking and found four black men sitting on the two beds and the two chairs having a normal conversation.  Chris was in room 216.  Seeing them, I instantly stopped in my tracks and felt my eyes widen like saucers.  I was fearful that they would attack me because, after all, they were niggers and all my life my father told me that’s what niggers do.

Gary Gray, a sociology major, sensed my fear and said “Hi, come on in. We won’t hurt you.” I had no reason to believe him but I followed his advice, entered the room, and stood there.  If it was necessary, I could bolt for the door and save myself in an emergency.  I wasn’t taking any chances.  Gary very politely introduced me to the three other guys.  I now forget the name of two of them but the third guy was A.J. Wilson.  “Just call me Apple Juice,” he said.

Gary asked where I was from and I told him Rice Lake, Wisconsin.

“Rice Lake?  We beat your ass in the state championship finals in ’61,” Gary gloated.

He was right.  Rice Lake lost the state high school basketball championship in 1961 to Milwaukee Lincoln High School.  Lincoln was then the perennial number one power house high school basketball team in Wisconsin.  We lost to them in overtime. Milwaukee Lincoln ended the season with a 25-1 record; Rice Lake ended theirs 24-1.  They were undefeated going into the finals.  The “1” for Rice Lake was at the hands of Milwaukee Lincoln.  All four guys sitting with me knew that, and for the next hour reminded me over and over again that Lincoln won and Rice Lake lost but I was still a nice person despite where I went to school.

The banter quickly caused the considerable tension in the room to erode and after an hour of it I found myself not talking to four black guys, but to four high school basketball fans from Milwaukee.  It was one of many epiphanies I experienced in college.  It was one of the best I ever experienced.

Cleveland Vaughn grew up in a little town in central Arkansas.  His experience as a child was considerably different than mine.  Where I looked at black people as “niggers”, Cleveland was called one nearly every day.  Where I was watching black people being treated like chattel on news broadcasts from far away in Alabama, Cleveland was one of those black people.  In school we were told about segregation and studied it a bit in social studies classes.  For Cleveland, he lived with “Whites Only” bathrooms, “Whites Only” drinking fountains, and wasn’t allowed to enter restaurants because of the color of his skin.  Once in an story about him in the Omaha World-Herald, Cleveland lamented the fact that “everything was segregated” where he grew up.   If anyone I knew had a right to be angry it was Cleveland Vaughn, the US Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent assigned to Nebraska.  He was anything but angry; quite the opposite.

Cleveland Vaughn. My best friend in Nebraska who loved the Platte River almost as much as I do

I met him when he arrived in our office when he traveled to Grand Island to keep an eye on a whooping crane that had stopped on the Platte River.  This was the first one where we changed the policy and let the media know about the bird before we let law enforcement.  Explaining my background to him, I mentioned that when I was with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, I took a 320-hour law enforcement training course that qualified me to carry game warden arrest authority in the Cheesehead State.  I mentioned helping Jerry Cegelski, a mountain of a man who was the Special Agent in Wisconsin, identify ducks harvested by hunters along the Mississippi River.  Also in my repertoire was the famous canvasback duck case that earned Gene McCarthy a Special Achievement Award and a cash bonus.

“You’re the guy who got that award for Gene?” Cleveland asked.

“That was me.  I was in graduate school.  I took the duck away from the hunter, called Gene, who cited him over the phone. I sat on the witness stand in District Court in St. Paul and then met Bob Hodgins afterward.  Bob helped me get my first job with the Service.”

“You were picking in tall cotton,” Cleveland said with a toothy grin, “if you were hanging out with Bob Hodgins.”

My major professor in graduate school received his PhD from Oklahoma State University where he studied red-winged blackbird concentrations on several National Wildlife Refuges in the Sooner State.  There he met several Special Agents who were called “Game Management Agents” at the time.  Later he was a researcher at a field station of the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center where he had more exposure to Special Agents.  Once in a wildlife biology class he told the students, “You don’t ever want to mess with a Game Management Agent.  Those people will arrest their own mother if she breaks the law.”

I quickly learned that Cleveland would also and we bonded almost instantly.

He admitted that he was not the most proficient person when it came to identifying birds and asked if I would be interested in riding with hm on investigations to help him.  A few years earlier he lost a case in Federal Court when he wrote on the citation that the hunter had illegally harvested a “Redheaded Duck.”  It was true the hunter had illegally shot the bird but its correct name was “Redhead.”  Cleveland botched the citation, the hunter’s attorney used the American Ornithologists Union Checklist of North American Birds to prove to the court there was no such species as a Redheaded Duck so it was impossible for his client to have shot one, illegally or otherwise.  The case was thrown out and Cleveland had considerable egg on his face.  He asked for my assistance so that would not happen again. 

My first summer in Nebraska we had an issue on the Platte River with endangered least terns and piping plovers nesting on sandbars in the channel and operators of ATV’s running up and down the channel potentially harming the birds or destroying their nests.  John Sidle and I marked the boundaries of every nesting location in the central Platte River, marked off the edge of the area with bailing wire, and posted signs informing ATV users of the presence of the endangered birds and that it was illegal to harm them.  Cleveland and I spent nearly every weekend that summer patrolling the river channel protecting the birds from humans.  

Our friendship grew as the summer progressed. It grew to the point where we felt comfortable chiding each other about our race.  Those kinds of comments would have instantly resulted in someone being charged with racial discrimination but between friends it was acceptable.   One Saturday when we approached the river near Kearney, the sun was particularly bright and I lathered on sun tan lotion.  As I did, a quizzical look crossed Cleveland’s face.

“You know what I don’t understand about white people?”

“What’s that?”

“You give me shit about being black, and then spend all summer trying to get as black as I am.”

Another time, driving on South Locust Avenue in Grand Island in the late summer we saw a large wagon filled with watermelons along the side of the road.  Immediately preying on the stereotype, I asked Cleveland, “Do you get an erection when you see that many watermelon’s in a single place?”

He responded, “Do you want me to arrest you right now?”

We had that kind of friendship.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a strict liability law wherein it is not necessary to prove intent to have a violation.  If a bird flies into a power line and kills itself, the company operating the power line is liable under the Act for “taking” a protected species.  In Nebraska we had an increasing problem with hawks being electrocuted on small power lines in the western part of the state and other birds colliding with power lines and dying from impact trauma.  Each time a hawk fried itself or a sandhill crane broke its neck flying into a power line, Cleveland could, under the law, cite the CEO of the company operating those power lines. 

Nebraska was lucky in those days to not only have a high energy Special Agent but also have a United States Attorney who loved birds and who was passionate about sandhill cranes.  Ron Lahners, a George H.W. Bush appointee, was the United States Attorney for Nebraska and he took particular interest in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and especially people who were killing “his” sandhill cranes.

To resolve the power line issue, Cleveland and I organized a seminar for power companies in Nebraska to explain to them their legal responsibility under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.  We also gave them some alternatives to follow to reduce or eliminate bird mortality.   The seminar was held at the Midtown Holiday Inn in Grand Island, and a representative of every Nebraska power company no matter how large or small, sat in the audience. So, too, did Ron Lahners.

I began the seminar with an overview of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and recited several pieces of case law that were the precedents for the power companies being liable whenever a bird died at their power line.   Cleveland followed me by introducing himself and went straight for the jugular.

“Good morning.  I am Cleveland Vaugh, the US Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent for Nebraska.  I arrest people.  I don’t like doing it but when I have to I do it.  If I find you or your company in violation of our laws about taking birds, I will arrest you.”

Every CEO in the room sat in silence.

Cleveland then added while pointing at Ron Lahners, “When I arrest you, your next stop will be in Court sitting in front of the United States Attorney Ron Lahners who loves to prosecute people who I arrest.”  Finishing his presentation, he said, “Our next speaker is Ron Lahners, the US Attorney for Nebraska.”

Ron stepped to the podium, cleared his throat, and said matter of factly that birds and especially sandhill cranes were a precious natural resource that he took a personal interest in protecting.

“How many of you have been in the Louvre Museum in Paris?”

Several people raised their hand.

“And how many of you saw the Mona Lisa when you were there?”

The same people raised their hand.

“The Mona Lisa is an irreplaceable public resource to be protected at all costs.”

Ron then added, “To me every bird in this state is the Mona Lisa and I will prosecute you for harming them just like I would if you harmed the Mona Lisa.”

Yes, their techniques were a little direct but no they were not bluffing.  After the meeting we were overwhelmed with requests for assistance from the power companies at the seminar. A small company in the Nebraska Panhandle wanted to revamp its entire distribution system including making each power pole safe for hawks to land on and not be electrocuted.  They sent us the blueprints for the entire system and but didn’t ask for our advice on the design.  They asked our permission to proceed with the project.  That happened because of Cleveland Vaughn.

The Nebraska Department of Roads applied for a permit from the US Army Corps of Engineers to replace a large bridge over the Middle Loup River during the peak of the bird nesting season.  The bridge was known to support more than 200 nests of cliff swallow and barn swallow. Destruction of each nest on that bridge would be a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act as would destruction of each egg. With an average clutch size of five eggs, there was a potential for more than 1,000 violations of the Act from lost eggs and 200 more from lost nests. Through the consultation process, we informed the Department of Roads that they would be in violation of the Act if they destroyed the nests or eggs.  As an alternative we asked them to put off replacement until August after the birds finished nesting.  The Department of Roads was adamant that the bridge must be replaced now and they set a date of June 10 to begin construction.

Sunrise on June 10 found Cleveland Vaughn and me sitting in his car waiting for someone to arrive.  Not long after the sun peeked over the horizon, a pick up truck from the contractor chosen to replace the bridge arrived and with him there were soon more three more trucks.  Next was a large semi with a backhoe on it and another with a bulldozer.  They were ready to get to work.

Waiting until most of the people he expected to arrive were on the scene, Cleveland opened his car door, exited, and walked up to the man whom he assumed was the project foreman.  He flashed his gold badge in the man’s face, identified himself, and then asked what he was doing.  The foreman explained the project and Cleveland explained the facts about the birds.

“The first member of your crew to touch a nest will be arrested.  I will continue to arrest people until everyone of you is under arrest.  I will then arrest the owner of your company, and if that is not enough then I will go to Lincoln and arrest the Director of the Department of Roads.” 

For added emphasis, he asked the now visibly shaken foreman, “Do I make myself clear?”

Rather than respond, the foreman activated the CB radio in his car, contacted his boss and explained what was about to happen.  The boss called the Department of Roads in Lincoln and the next time his crew was seen at the bridge was on August 1 after all the birds had left their nests.

Waterfowl hunters referred to Cleveland as “the Black Lab”.  We referred to him as “the Black Death.”  He always gave waterfowl hunters the benefit of the doubt unless they failed “the Attitude Test.”  If a violator showed an attitude that was the end of any hope for leniency.  Consider a hunter we found parked illegally on a Waterfowl Production Area in the Rainwater Basins.  It was legal for the hunter to be there but not for him to take down the fence, drive onto the Federal land, and park.   We found the hunter’s truck, parked beside it, and waited.  Soon the hunter returned and Cleveland motioned him to come to our car.

While sitting in the car with his window down, Cleveland asked for the man’s hunting license as he explained the violation he had made.  While Cleveland held the license writing down information from it, the hunter reached in, yanked the license from Cleveland’s hand and announced “that’s mine.”

In a flash, Cleveland had his car door open, and his left hand on the hunter’s throat.  He lifted the hunter off the ground and with the index finger of his right hand wagging in the hunters face exclaimed, “don’t you EVER take a license out of my hand again. EVER!!  Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

“Yes, sir.  Yes sir. Yes sir.”

Three low life’s living in a trailer near the lower Platte River went out on their ATV one day and drove through a colony of least terns nesting on a river sandbar.  The least tern is protected by the Endangered Species Act and on the advice of the US Attorney we marked the boundary of the nesting sandbar with very obvious signs announcing the presence of the birds.  That did not stop these knuckleheads who purposefully drove from nest to nest smashing the three eggs in each nest.  Cleveland investigated and found out who had committed the crime.  He called and asked if I wanted to come along when he took them down.

The three culprits each had a police record, two had a prison record and one was known to illegally carry a concealed weapon.  Although I did not have law enforcement authority, I went along with my .357 magnum side arm and as backup we were accompanied by two heavily armed FBI agents from Omaha.  As we drove up to the trailer Cleveland laid out the plan.

“When we go in, you go in first,” he said to me.

“I go in first? Why in hell do I go in first?”

“Because if they shoot, I want them to shoot your white ass before they shoot my black ass.”

No shots were fired as Cleveland took each of them into custody.  Ron Lahners later prosecuted them and each was sentenced to a fine and a jail term.  They were also sentenced to community service which required them for the next three summers to stand by boat ramps on the lower Platte River handing out information about least terns to anyone on an ATV.

Cleveland had many successes during his career but there was one major screw up that made him famous.  Black-billed magpies are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and it is a violation of the Act to possess one unless you have a permit.  A couple in Red Cloud, Nebraska had owned a magpie named Joe for 16 years and a local newspaper did a story about their pet magpie.  Locals saw the story and called Cleveland who now was faced with a huge dilemma.  The owners were clearly in violation of the Act but they had possessed the bird for 16 years.  It was obvious there was no malice involved but there was the public perception.  Plus, Cleveland had to do something or face pressure from the public for having two standards for law enforcement.  Cleveland drove to Red Cloud, seized Joe the Magpie, and cited his owners under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

The local paper in Red Cloud covered the story first, followed by the Omaha World-Herald.  Soon every newspaper in the state and most of the television stations were covering this drama that eventually made national news.  The less than reputable National Enquirer sensationalized the story portraying Cleveland like he was one of Hitler’s right-hand men.  The Enquirer story caused one of its readers to write to Cleveland saying, “I was in Vietnam and you are worse than Charlie, motherfucker.”  “Charlie” was the Viet Cong.

Eventually both US Senators from Nebraska became involved and Joe the Magpie was returned to Red Cloud, Nebraska where he lived out his days.  Afterward whenever you wanted to pester Cleveland all you had to do was say “Hey, Joe.”

Cleveland ended his law enforcement career as the United States Marshal for Nebraska.  When Bill Clinton was elected, Cleveland said he wanted to be the Marshal.  It involved writing an essay and he asked me to write it for him.  In it I made Cleveland sound like he walked on water. His application was evaluated against twenty other applicants then the new Clinton Administration made him “Marshal Vaughn.”  When he received word, he called our office in Grand Island to inform us.  Nancy Nichols took the call while we were in a staff meeting.  Almost doubled over with laughter when she returned, she said “The Black Death is now the US Marshal for Nebraska!”  I told her, “The next time I see him, I’m going to start limping like Chester on “Gunsmoke” and call him “Marshal Vaughn, Marshal Vaughn.”

I moved from Nebraska to California a month later and never again saw Cleveland.  In 2016 at the age of 72 years old he developed stomach cancer and was dead four months later.  When I learned of his death I was overwhelmed with sadness and melancholy.  Now, living in Florida, I think of Cleveland every time I put on sun tan lotion as I try to become as black as he was.