Police work wasn't Sgt. Mickey Hutchens' only passion.
Hutchens was remembered at his funeral yesterday as a man who kept his family and his Christian faith at the center of his life.
"He was a happy man," said the Rev. Ray Davis as he summed up Hutchens' life during the service at Wait Chapel on the campus of Wake Forest University. About 2,000 mourners were present.
"Yes, he was a great police officer," said Davis, the pastor of Forbush Baptist Church, where Hutchens was a deacon. "He was a great family man. He loved his children and his wife and his family. Mickey loved his family because he loved the Lord. He knew what love was."
Hutchens, 50, died Monday night of gunshot wounds he received Oct. 7 when he and his partner responded to a domestic-disturbance call at the Bojangles' restaurant on Peters Creek Parkway.
Nearly 900 law-enforcement officers, some from as far away as Pittsburgh and New York state, came to the funeral.
They lined the walkway around Hearn Plaza as a horse-drawn caisson carried Hutchens' body to the chapel. A riderless horse followed, a pair of reversed boots tucked into the stirrups -- the traditional symbol of a fallen warrior.
Eight columns of Wait Chapel were wrapped in black bands. A single officer in dress uniform stood at attention in the middle of the plaza as mourners entered the chapel.
"Mickey was a gentle man, especially when he didn't have to assert his police authority," said Scott Cunningham, the chief of the Winston-Salem Police Department.
But even when Hutchens did, he treated people with respect, Cunningham said.
"When he put people in jail, before he left them he would shake their hand and wish them well," Cunningham said.
And twice when Hutchens was in public with his wife, Beth, people whom he had arrested came up to thank him, Cunningham said.
A couple of weeks ago, Hutchens helped a young woman whose car had a flat tire. Instead of leaving, he waited with the woman until her mother arrived. As the father of two daughters, it's what he would have wanted, Cunningham said.
"He would have wanted someone to stay if it had been Jill or Leah (his daughters). Her mom realized this, and when Mickey went to shake her hand, and she said, ‘No, I have to hug you.'"
Later, Cunningham said, Hutchens called his wife to tell her the story, in case anyone had seen him hugging another woman in public.
"These are the things that Beth wants everyone to remember about Mickey," Cunningham said.
Off duty, Hutchens loved to hunt and take walks with Lily, the family's Labrador retriever. When he wasn't outside, he was inside playing guitar.
And though he would sometimes say they had too many pets, Beth "would often find Mickey with a cat in his lap on the bed, or with a Chihuahua on his lap as he watched TV," Cunningham said.
At the end of the service, six pallbearers carried Hutchens' coffin from Wait Chapel to a white hearse where an honor guard of police officers stood in line.
Sounds of a bagpipe wafted over the plaza as the coffin was placed into the hearse for the trip to Forbush Baptist Church in Yadkinville, where Hutchens was buried.
People watched as a procession of motorcycles, the hearse and other white cars, two buses and police cars left the campus.
Marlie and Vertie Hawks of Winston-Salem said they came to the funeral to pay tribute to Hutchens.
"He is just like a fallen soldier," Marlie Hawks said.
A day before the funeral, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-5th, said that Hutchens was a North Carolina hero whose "death reminds us of the bravery and sacrifice of those keeping our streets safe each day."
jhinton@wsjournal.com | 727-7299
wyoung@wsjournal.com | 727-7369
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement