Longtime Rankin police chief

Former Rankin police Chief Nekodie Mudd wasn’t one to agonize over decisions. He let his faith and sense of right and wrong point the way, and did not stray from that path.

When one of Chief Mudd’s sons needed a lift, for instance, there was no hesitation — even though it would be a long ride.

“He came to my house one morning, he said, ‘Jesse, we got to go to Minnesota,’ “said Jesse Brown, of Braddock, who was Chief Mudd’s closest friend for seven decades. “So we left, and we drove for over 20 hours straight.”

They ate sardines, little apple pies and a cheese ball on the way, picked up their young passenger and turned around, said Mr. Brown. “We went straight back to Rankin.”

For more than half a century, all roads led to Rankin for Chief Mudd, who served on the town’s police force for 33 years, including 21 as the boss. He died Monday, more than 17 years after his retirement, from a combination of diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

“He was a fair guy, and he went out of his way to keep peace, to make people happy if there were any problems,” said Rankin Mayor Nick Glova.

Even when Mr. Glova was a young man with an affinity for loud keg parties, he admired the officer who arrived to quiet them down. “He made an effort to talk to us, mentor us. We felt comfortable with him as a police officer, and then in turn he got our respect.”

Chief Mudd played midget baseball in Homestead and high school football in Braddock before going into the army and helping to guard an uneasy South Korea after the war. Back from abroad, he met Lorraine Manns, who was then a student at Braddock High.

“He started coming around my house,” said Lorraine Mudd. “He was a nice guy.” That, plus their shared Christian faith, led to marriage in 1961, and they settled in Rankin. He worked in various foundries, then at Shuman Center, while she began a career in banking.

“When we lived here, there were no blacks where I lived, and [neighbors] keyscratched our car,” said Mrs. Mudd. But things were changing in Rankin, and Chief James Payne “said he would make a good policeman, and he got into it as a patrolman,” Mrs. Mudd recounted.

The man Chief Payne recruited in 1966 succeeded him in 1978. He worked the little borough during good times and crime waves, but never seemed flustered, and that calm permeated his family. “I didn’t worry a lot,” said Mrs. Mudd. “I never worry about stuff like that because God is in control of it all.”

Perhaps the biggest scare of Chief Mudd’s career came toward the end, just five years before his retirement, in a bizarre episode that made him, briefly, into a captive.

At District Judge Betty Lloyd’s court, a prisoner brought in for a preliminary hearing on drug charges, suddenly armed with a gun smuggled in by a girlfriend, took the chief hostage.

It turned out the chief knew his captor, and convinced him to go out a back door, so that he wouldn’t endanger any bystanders. The prisoner then fled, taking two more hostages before surrendering, at the urging of his mother and the chief.

Chief Mudd later mused about it. The prisoner “went to school with my sons. He had even been to my house and had dinner with us,” he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette later in an interview. “I asked God to not let him kill me.”

He raised two sons, Nekodie W. Mudd and Carl A. Mudd. They brought him six grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

As a father, he was “strong and always willing to go the extra mile for somebody,” said Nekodie W. Mudd. What did he like to do with his sons? “Fishing.”

The chief would fish anytime and anywhere he could, agreed Mr. Brown. He also developed photos in his basement darkroom, did home carpentry and became a fan of live theater. The Mudds and Browns for years had season tickets to the Pittsburgh Playhouse, and occasionally hit Broadway.

On Christmas, the Mudds would hold an open house, and “anyone who walked in our door got a present,” said Mrs. Mudd.

His generosity would take a different form a week later. “On New Years, he would work himself instead of making any officer work,” said Mr. Brown, who became a Braddock councilman.

His health problems prompted his retirement, at which time he gave the community most of the credit for his successes.

“The police are only as good as residents allow them to be, and I feel we were allowed to do our jobs,” he told the Post-Gazette. His retirement plans? “I have a trailer near Seven Springs, and I’m going to spend as much time as I can fishing.”

In recent years, Mrs. Mudd said, “He was tired of all of the medicines, and during the last part, he couldn’t stand.” Last Sunday, the whole family came to his house in Rankin for the Steelers-Bengals game. They were there, too, when he died Monday.

Visitation will be held today from 2-8 p.m., at Mount Olive Baptist Church, in Rankin, and the community also can say goodbye at the funeral service there on Monday at 11 a.m.

“They loved him, the whole community loved him,” said Mrs. Mudd. “They all still call him chief.”