The story about a police experiment that went horribly right
Chattanooga’s first female police officer was Patricia Underwood Williams. She was recruited to the CPD after graduating Knoxville College in 1971. Officer Williams would serve thirteen months in the youth crimes division of the CPD before resigning to work with the criminal rehabilitation system.
Yet, hot on her heels were two women who didn’t just walk the path Williams started—they bulldozed a four-lane highway for future generations of law enforcement officers. Melinda Bryan and Helen Cooper, now in their seventies, recall a time when they were subjects of a great experiment.
The Fighting Lady: Melinda McKenzie (Bryan)
Melinda Bryan has a pleasant demeanor of any loving mother who enjoys Southern breezes and strong coffee. But there’s something keen to her awareness, an active observance of everything. It’s a supernatural aspect of being around people who have been there and done that. It’s not long until Melinda’s commanding presence changes her from motherly figure to a fierce mother wolf.
“I was ten years old when I said I’d become a cop when I grew up; my mother wasn’t impressed,” Melinda says.
Melinda attributes much of her inspiration and encouragement to her father.
Boyd M. McKenzie was at the Battle of Midway. He survived the bombing of the USS Yorktown in 1942. Lt. Cmdr. McKenzie helped members of the Yorktown escape and assisted with sealing off holes to delay her inevitable fate. The Yorktown stubbornly stayed afloat long after her fatal attack and became the stuff of legends.
“He was a gentleman and a gentle soul.” Melinda tears up. “He passed in ‘76 but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was a daddy’s girl. He always insisted that women should know everything a man should know,” she says.
Boyd McKenzie would muster out of service to become a sworn deputy of Los Angeles before moving his family back to Blount County to take care of ailing relatives. Melinda would grow up to get married and divorced very young, eventually landing a job at the CPD as a records clerk late in ‘69.
She built connections with the patrolmen and detectives, eventually taking advantage of free courses at Cleveland State. While earning an associate degree in criminal justice, she decided she was going to be in uniform and on the streets.
“Several officers encouraged me. They seen something in me and supported me. When Helen and I started the academy, the instructors were determined to make us street ready,” Melinda says.
The real hurdles starting her career existed among city bureaucrats and the community. In what Melinda calls “the uniform debacle”, the city leadership were stalled on deciding which uniform was appropriate for patrolwomen.
“They couldn’t figure out if they wanted us wearing skirts or the standard issue,” Melinda explains. “The city didn’t have uniforms that fit us. I sure as hell wasn’t going to wear a skirt, so I modified the men’s uniform on my own. I’d say the community reaction towards Helen and I was seventy percent against and thirty percent for. One time a woman I was dealing with wanted a ‘real cop and not a meter maid’. My Sergeant drove up and told her ‘You got a cop!’ and then drove away. We were such a novelty that we were accused of all sort of evils. I think the community was trying to get rid of us from the beginning.”
As novelty worn off, Melinda would advance her career by attending training courses with the FBI for homicide investigations in Quantico and sex crimes with the TBI in Nashville. For her, going outside the city to learn how others investigated crimes was an eye opener.
“I’d brought back so much knowledge, I realized we needed to update our investigation techniques,” she says. “The way rape cases were handled back then was very ignorant. So, I decided to get permission to put together rape kits like other departments I’d learned about. My boss said as long as it didn’t cost the department money it was fine. So, with items donated from local businesses and old shoe boxes I put them together on my own.
“I wasn’t out to save the world. If I managed to save just one person in my career, then I did my job. I’ve this philosophy that if you treat people with respect and dignity then you will get that in return. Years ago, a young man approached me and said that I’d dealt with him and his buddies on a burglary call. He said the way I’d treated them inspired him to turn his life around for the better. I can’t remember his name, but he remembered me. That was it, he was my save.”
The Iron Maiden: Helen Hill (Cooper)
Helen resonates much of the same energy as Melinda, a warm kindness mixed with that otherworldly edge. She has a home with a beautiful garden far from the hustle of town, with two majestic stone lions keeping watch. This is a woman who has stared down evil without flinching. You can feel it in her gaze. Sitting across from her, I feel myself being analyzed, dissected, and filed. I definitely wouldn’t want to tango with her in an interrogation room.
Helen grew up the oldest of eight on the wild side of Trenton, GA. Being the daughter of a traveling iron worker forced Helen to grow up fast in order to help her mother raise seven children.
“I remember there was always a baby to take care of and we lived far away from civilization. We were always out in the woods,” she says.
Helen left town at nineteen, but soon returned with a baby of her own and eventually found seasonal work at Hamilton Distributors on McCallie Ave. Hamilton Distributors was an Amazon Fulfillment Center before the internet. It was here that Helen met Officer Lee J. Hicks on guard duty because of the expensive jewelry at the location.
“I was looking for full-time work and Hicks offers me a job in the records department and I fell in love with record-keeping,” Helen says. “Uniform Crime Reports was only a five-year-old department when I started. Sometimes arrest records were written on the back of matchbooks so trying to dig back further than five years would be futile. But the records department got to know every detective and news personality on the beat, and you knew everything going on in the city. I even had our frequent customers' arrest jackets memorized.”
Helen was so good at keeping and classifying records that she created a how-to guide for supervisors to start classifying their own reports. This guide would be reproduced by Helen at the request of her bosses. Helen also took courses at Cleveland State with Melinda and the two decided to become patrol officers soon after completing college.
Helen laughs, “They had no idea what to do with us, from the uniforms to our duty pistols. We were only allowed to have these dainty .38 Chief Specials because it was believed we couldn’t handle larger calibers. We’d eventually prove that idea wrong, damn it!”
After academy, Helen and Melinda were assigned a daytime beat with male ride-along partners. As Helen tells it, she and Melinda hated being on day shift and once they caught on that the dispatchers were screening service calls, they both decided to move from patrol to dispatch. Helen would fall under the training of a legendary figure named James F. Tucker, better known as “Mother Tucker”.
“Mother Tucker got that name because he mothered the officers. This man could map and orient you to a mailbox anywhere in the city. My time in records set me up for success because to be effective you had to know where everything was.”
But the streets called to Helen and on a fateful night she asked the Chief of Police to get her back on patrol—but this time on night shift. To her surprise, her request was immediately granted. Helen would go on to work in several departments, eventually becoming the first female officer of the CPD to graduate the FBI National Academy at Quantico in 1984.
“I loved the training,” she says. “I worked with some of the biggest personalities in law enforcement. I ran the ‘yellow brick road’ several times. My entire career was a highlight, and looking back I wouldn’t change a thing. Police work is about accepting all aspects of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you have any doubts about doing what is required, then it’s not for you.”
The women still meet to keep their pistol qualifications up to date and to enjoy well-earned peace and quiet after three decades of police work. Though they maintain a humility about their contributions, there’s a spark in their eyes when recalling the horrors and heartbreaks that came with a life in uniform. I don’t doubt that, if given the chance, these legends would get back out there to show the world how it’s done.
Contributed photo