THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 6, 1995 TAG: 9501060476
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 111 lines
They are at it again, two brothers from Brooklyn who have competed against each other all their lives.
They used to be New York City policemen. Now they are police chiefs at this city's two state universities: Victor O. Rice, 56, at Norfolk State; William C. Rice, 54, at Old Dominion.
As children, when they often were mistaken for twins, they competed against each for best school attendance record, best marble shooter, best practically everything. As young men, they competed to grow the bushiest mustache.
Now they compete to see which university's police force is better.
``I get in the car and drive through his university,'' Victor said, ``and he does the same. I say my school is going to be better than his school, and he says his school is going to be better than mine. So we are back at it again.''
Their rivalry is exceeded in intensity only by their mutual admiration. Two or three times a week they lunch together to share advice.
Victor is at a competitive disadvantage just now, because he has only been Norfolk State's police chief since Nov. 1, after applying for the job at his younger brother's suggestion. William has served on the ODU force since 1987, and as chief since 1991.
Victor spent most of his 25-year New York City police career as a homicide detective, the creme de la creme of investigators, while Williams rocketed into police administration. He served 21 years.
``I was in a world where it was blood and guts,'' Victor said. ``He was in a world where it was paper and pen. Both are needed.''
Victor solved the case of a New York woman who'd murdered four husbands, all disabled veterans, in different states. After the fourth murder, she told Victor her husband had been done in - slashed ear to ear - by one of three men who'd been drinking with him. Four half-filled glasses were on the table, but there were no wet marks on it. After Victor pointed out to the woman that each man could not have placed his glass in exactly the same spot time after time, she broke down and confessed.
She should have used coasters.
William helped write the New York police handbook on how to deal with the deaf: how to read them their rights in sign language, how to ask if they needed an ambulance, and so on.
As youths, Victor and William were known as Wild Rice, because you could not fight one without fighting both. Similarly, a friend of one was the friend of the other. Now they're called the Blues Brothers.
They said they ran with a group of nine boys who all wanted to grow up to be cops, and seven did. In the 1950s, they said, a policeman walked his beat and knew everyone's name. He was treated with respect, often addressed as officer. They remembered calling the policeman in the their neighborhood ``Officer Whitey,'' because his hair was white.
The brothers got good grades. After Victor won perfect attendance awards, William never admitted to being ill till he won the awards, too.
William, though younger, grew faster, so the brothers were about the same size. Victor treated William in a way most younger brothers can only envy. Rather than ditching his younger brother, Victor was inseparable from him. ``We were like twins,'' Victor said.
``Victor's always been a supportive admirer,'' William said. ``He's always had that nature, even though he's older.''
Their father was a tailor who became a delegate in a garment union. Their mother was a housewife. They had one sister, now deceased.
In those days, a person had to be 20 to take the New York City police exam and 21 to be hired.
Never forgetting their dreams of being cops, the brothers took interim jobs. After graduating from high school in 1956, Victor worked in a thermometer factory, got drafted into the army for two years and worked for a security firm before joining the police force in 1968, just in time to be called ``pig'' and get spat on. He heard ``Good morning, Officer Rice'' fewer times than he'd hoped. Victor said, ``I still liked the job.''
William graduated from high school in 1958, and first repaired washing-machine motors. Later, at the green age of 24, he worked as a foreman at the 1964 World's Fair, supervising more than 100 workers who maintained fountains and rides. He worked 80-plus-hour weeks.
By the time William became an officer in 1965, he said, ``I felt comfortable I could supervise others easily.''
The brothers only got to work together one summer, as patrolmen at Coney Island in 1969.
By 1970, William was in administration. He would work for Chief Anthony Boauzo, subject of the 1979 best-seller ``The Bronx Zoo.''
Victor was a patrolman till 1971, a plainclothes investigator till 1981, and a homicide detective till he retired this year.
``That's the whole Johnson, solving homicides,'' Victor said. He loved the work. Hot on a case, he said, he might go home only to shower and change clothes over three or four days.
William moved to Norfolk in 1985. His wife, Barbara, whose maiden name is Simmons, was from Norfolk and wanted to return. William worked for a security firm two years before ODU hired him.
Victor frequently visited his younger brother in Norfolk, and after Victor started thinking he'd done it all as a homicide detective, he applied for the job at Norfolk State.
When William was at ODU and Victor was still a New York City policeman, William called Victor about a murder at ODU.
Victor asked if there were more than one killer. William said he believed so. Victor predicted the murderers would be caught, and they were. If two people commit a crime, Victor said, invariably one is strong and one is weak, and the weak one sooner or later will boast of the crime to build himself up.
Today, if someone commits a major crime at either university, he will be up against not one smart former New York City cop - but two. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
PAUL AIKEN/Staff
William C. Rice, 54, left, and Victor O. Rice, 56, now compete at
making their college police forces the best.
by CNB