White's City

I've always been a good friend of Doc White. We met in the late 1940's, and I got to know Doc during the time we were stranded in Ogden. He put in a good word with the management of the apartment building that helped Thelma and me to get a place to stay.

As a Doctor of Podiatry, Doc provided professional care for the severe foot problem that I had been suffering from for several years.

The cold made my foot pain almost unbearable. To this day, more than thirty years later, I can truly say I have never had any further problems with my feet.

One time Marshall White stopped a guy who'd broken the law involving a barroom fight that'd sent four people to the local hospital and caused damage to two businesses around 25th Street and Wall Avenue. The guy was about to leave town in his pick-up truck. Doc White asked him to halt twice. It was night, well past 1 a.m., the White guy rolled down his window saw that it was a black police officer and started laughing and continued backing out on to the street. Doc was a big guy of almost six feet, over two hundred pounds and built like a football player or prizefighter. He had bear-like tendencies, when it came to enforcing the law. When Marshall White asked you to do something, you did it, no matter if you were black, white or Indian. The guy continued to back away from the curb. Doc pulled his gun from its holster and took aim. Rather than shoot the fellow, he shot the guy's tires out and put him under arrest without anyone getting hurt. That was probably the closest Marshall White had come to killing anyone. He cared so much about life that he would not drive a car most of the time. When we went fishing or to the firing range, I would do the driving.

All in all Doc White was a good person. Just because he was, a policeman did not mean he was a bad guy. A lot of people looked up to him as a role model.

He, Walter Epps and Eason back in the 1950's and 1960's worked mostly around Ogden's 25th Street. Back then 25th Street was a hub of excitement and a hot spot for problems in the state of Utah.

Ogden had hotels, nightclubs and some of the best restaurants available in the entire Intermountain West. Over eighty passenger trains made Ogden their stopover before going east or west. It took a lot of personnel to run the railroad business.

Working for the railroad required you to be away from home for weeks at a time. It was hard work, but we enjoyed it because a person could make a little more money than some of the other jobs, plus the railroad really took care of their employees. The Ogden train station was one of the most beautiful in the West, after a long trip going to and from work or traveling.

Ogden was the place where you could recharge your batteries with rest, fun and just about anything, you could think of. In the area of physical adult activities Ogden, was the place. Another time Marshall White and Walter Epps had to arrest two guys in a restaurant who had just robbed a grocery store in mid-day in Clearfield, Utah, about ten miles from downtown Ogden. They were not the brightest guys, because the store cashier was able to get the license plate number of the get-away car. A few hours later at about dinnertime, Doc and Walter had the two robbers in custody just in time for the jailhouse dessert.

Walter had spotted the car parked outside the restaurant and then called it into Doc who was the first officer to show up. He asked Walter to go around to the kitchen and ask the waitress to inform the two robbers that a milk truck had hit their car and that the owner of the truck was asking about the owner of a green Ford.

The two guys came running out of the restaurant, and Doc and Walter got the drop on them. Back then no one called him Marshall White; everybody called him Doc or Doc White, an incredible person and friend. He was a loving and caring family man that always put his kid’s education, health, and well being first; these were the most important things in his life.