
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 19, 1995                   TAG: 9507190021
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DONALD O. LINCOLN JR.
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JOHN PERRY ALDERMAN

AS PROUD people were being sworn in as new citizens of the United States at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello this July 4th, and towns and organizations celebrated Independence Day with picnics, band concerts, fireworks displays and parades, a more solemn parade was being held in the quiet Southwest Virginia town of Hillsville.

The parade included a long line of police vehicles with flashing lights, many luminaries from the state and federal judiciary, political figures and literally hundreds of patriotic Virginians. This funeral parade on the Fourth of July was the final celebration of the life of one of Southwest Virginia's quiet heroes, John Perry Alderman.

For hours on the night of July 3, hundreds of people had interrupted their holiday weekend to file quietly through the small village church to pay their respects to this honorable son of Virginia and his family.

This newspaper covered the death of Alderman on July 1 with a substantial obituary and a brief article. Although the facts presented were accurate, they did not convey the impact this remarkable man had on modern law enforcement in Western Virginia.

After serving for more than 18 years as commonwealth's attorney for Carroll County, in 1981 he was appointed by President Reagan to be the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia. Alderman had the foresight to see the impact that illegal drugs, and the attendant crime and violence they foster, would have on Virginia and the country as a whole.

Alderman is credited with turning what had previously been a quiet, rural U.S. attorney's office into a nationally recognized crime-fighting machine. After recruiting and developing a team of aggressive young prosecutors, many of whom are still in the U.S. attorney's office, he honed their skills by assisting them in aggressively prosecuting many cases that had previously been unworked because of their multijurisdictional, interstate or international nature.

Under his command, the U.S. attorney's office opened offices to service the federal courts in Charlottesville and Abingdon. In addition, Alderman was responsible for lobbying the attorney general for the opening of an office of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Roanoke.

Alderman's attitude toward taking on major targets and issues was the same as that of one of his Civil War heroes, the legendary Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart: ``Ride to the sound of the guns.''

Alderman knew that no single law-enforcement agency could fight the necessary battles alone and that turf battles among agencies were counterproductive. He was instrumental in the formation of one of the country's first Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force units under President Reagan's initiative.

Made up of agents and officers from numerous federal, state and local police agencies, as well as prosecutors from his office and local commonwealth's attorneys, this group, dubbed by Alderman as his ``First Virginia Cavalry,'' has taken on all comers in the war on drugs in Western Virginia. Under his leadership, this group took on outlaw motorcycle gangs, major international cocaine cartels in several countries, major marijuana importers, LSD producers and,, beginning in 1989, the problem of crack cocaine. Alderman taught us that no target was too big and no criminal should be allowed to establish a base of operations in his beloved Virginia.

Alderman accomplished all of these things not with the bombastic or confrontational slogans and rhetoric common to many public figures when addressing the problem of drugs, but with the quiet, confidence-inspiring examination of the issues and potential solutions that had become his trademark. His ability to quietly mediate problems among agencies, districts, defense lawyers or any other parties in these sometimes complicated investigations often belied the iron determination he would demonstrate when sincere attempts to find a compromise failed.

I also knew Alderman as a loving family man with a wonderful sense of humor and the ability to charm a crowd or a jury with his wonderful country tales and analogies.

I was proud to have been a soldier in Alderman's campaigns and even prouder to have him call me by his highest accolade, ``friend.'' As I listened to the final notes played by the single kilted bagpiper in that quiet Carroll County cemetery, I knew that from this day forward, Independence Day will always bring me fond memories of this quiet hero of Virginia.

Donald O. Lincoln Jr. is a special agent in the Drug Enforcement Administration in Roanoke.

by CNB