END OF AN ERA
LONGTIME TOP COP IN COLLINGDALE HANGS UP BADGE AFTER 37 YEARS
COLLINGDALE » Police Chief Robert W. Adams was in Harrisburg attending a statewide chiefs meeting when his phone alerted him about a building fire at Scully Welding Supply where his wife, Linda, worked in the office.
For the entire length of his 100mile, two-hour drive from Harrisburg to Collingdale that September afternoon in 2010, Adams feared that Linda had been killed in the series of explosions that rocked the Oak Avenue plant. It was the most frightening, most personal experience the law enforcement veteran had faced in his storied career.
“The phone grids were all down, there was no way of communicating,” Adams recalled earlier this week. “Just when I got there people were trying to brief me. I really was split in half … frantic … I didn’t know whether to focus on my chief role, or look for my wife. But then I looked over someone’s shoulder and I saw Linda. I just pushed through the crowd and I ran over and I hugged and kissed her. Then, I got back to work.”
As he retires today after 37 years in law enforcement, the last 10 as chief, Adams said his wife has supported him “110 percent” since the day they met, and he shares every success he’s earned along the way with her.
“She’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” Adams said.
Adams has been a resident of Collingdale for 35 years. It’s where he met Linda and where they raised their two daughters, 26-year-old Sarah and 24-year-old Melissa. Rounding out the family are two female shepherd/hound mix rescues, Penelope and Luna.
Come Monday, Adams, 58, will formally begin his new job as assistant athletic director at Cardinal O’Hara High School. Adams graduated from O’Hara in 1978 and in 2008 he was inducted in the school’s Hall of Fame for his humanitarian efforts.
Adams decided to opt out of the Deferred Retirement Option Plan, or DROP program, which would have taken his employment with the Collingdale Police Department to March 2020.
“It’s time to go,” he said, leaning back in the chair of his office at the Collingdale police headquarters, which he began clearing two weeks ago. “But, it’s also very emotional.”
Privilege to serve
For Adams, it has been a privilege to serve the residents of Collingdale, and to work with many fine officers over the years, both in the borough and neighboring towns. Throughout his career, he has served under two police chiefs, Robert Morris and John Hewlings; one mayor, Frank C. Kelly; and two council presidents, Jack Hayes and current President Kate Munro.
“Chiefs Morris and Hewlings were always fair to me and I tried to take my cues from them,” Adams said. “I’ve always tried to be fair to people and remember that everybody’s family is always first.”
Raised in the Penn Pines section of Upper Darby, Adams is the son of Robert E. and Marie Adams. His dad is a retired Radnor Police Department detective. Both father and son are graduates of the prestigious FBI Academy.
“We are the 78th father-son team out of 36,000 graduates,” Adams said.
Sharing that honor with his dad, coupled with twice being invited back twice to FBI headquarters in Quantico, Va., to lecture on leadership, are the pinnacles of his law enforcement career, Adams said.
It was through his father’s ties as a police officer comes one of Adams favorite war stories, Adams was 16 and working the counter at the McDonald’s on MacDade Boulevard in Darby Borough. There had been a rash of robberies in the area and a man had come into the eatery asking about the safe and money drops.
“I was scared to death,” said Adams. “I called my dad.”
His father called Darby Borough Police Chief Robert Smythe, who was a sergeant at the time. Smythe arrived and set up surveillance.
“He was in full uniform and carrying a long gun. He told me if the guy came in, just to duck,” Adams said. “The guy never came in.”
Adams has long considered Smythe one of his mentors in law enforcement.
Last week, Smythe said losing Adams as a chief is not only a loss to Collingdale, but a loss to the county as a whole.
“He’s always there,” Smythe said. “He ran the basketball game for the Hero Scholarship, which was his idea in the first place. He was into his town, into his county. He was into the (Delaware County) Police Chiefs Association, going through all the chairs to be president. Bobby Adams was absolutely the guy you could depend on.
“He is a cop’s cop,” Smythe said. “I think it’s the biggest compliment you can get.”
While Adams always enjoyed growing up in police life, a career in law enforcement wasn’t his first aspiration. For a time between his graduation from O’Hara and first stint at Delaware County Community College, he had designs on being a hotelier.
Looking back, the hotel idea just makes his laugh.
“It would have been a hell of a lot easier, I’ll tell you that,” Adams said.
But Adams left DCCC after a semester, having become “hooked on public service.” It was a calling Adams said developed through his volunteer service with the Collingdale Fire Co. No. 1, both as a firefighter and EMT.
Adams was 18 when he joined the fire department, and he was a very active member.
It was in the early spring of 1980 that his path to policing began.
“I’ve always tried to be fair to people and remember that everybody’s family is always first.” — Collingdale Police Chief Robert W. Adams
“I was hanging outside the firehouse and then-Sgt. Hewlings came by and said (then-police) Chief Morris wanted to talk to me. My first thought was something happened to my parents because they were in Florida on vacation,” Adams said. “When I sat down in Morris’ office, he pulled a badge out of his drawer and asked me if I wanted to wear that. I said, ‘Yeah, but I wanted to talk to my father first.’”
Adams, an only child, has always been close to his parents. Given his father’s police experience, Adams wanted his advice before taking Morris up on his offer.
“Absolutely, take it,” Adams recalled his father telling him.
Rising through the ranks
Earning $3.25 an hour, Adams was sworn in as a part-time officer on May 23, 1980. His mom held the Bible and his father pinned on his badge. At that time, Adams said training was mostly onthe-job. Officers had a year from the date of hire to attend the police academy.
“You got your badge and gun and you go,” he said. But first, he had to quality at the shooting range with his six-shot revolver.
His first night on the street, his first call was a DOA on Cherry Street. A woman in her 80s had died of natural causes.
“It was challenging,” Adams said of his new role. “Back then you had one guy day work, one guy 4 to 12, one guy midnight, and a guy 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. for the busy hours. That was it. I was the only part-timer.”
Today, there are eight full time and 15 part-time officers patrolling the square-mile town of about 9,000 residents. They handle an average of 800 to 1,000 calls a month.
Adams worked part time in Colllingdale for a couple years and then left, taking a part-time police position in Aldan. That job lasted three months.
“I asked to come back to Collingdale, which I did,” Adams said.
Adams was hired by Collingdale as a full-time officer in April 1988 and was promoted to sergeant in May 1998. He was named chief in June 2007 and at the time earned, as he put it, “$69,000 and change.” He previously worked as a dispatcher for Delaware County Emergency Communications and for the Springfield Police Department.
He had 11 years on the Collingdale police force when the former Linda Wenig moved into a duplex across from his on Andrews Avenue. The couple, who married in 1991, moved twice throughout the years, but stayed in the borough.
“Our first date was at the Springfield Ale House. I was two hours late because I was tied up here at work,” Adams said. “Over the years, there were many missed dinners, family events and holidays.”
For Adams, there was also at least one very close call.
A month after his promotion to sergeant, Adams was struck by a car trying to clear traffic for a tow truck at a drug bust. He told former Daily Times reporter, the late John M. Roman, that he credited a warning by Darby Town
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