Baugh longest-serving deputy, 2-term sheriff

By ERIC BERNSEE Banner-Graphic Editor

Veteran Deputy Jim Baugh died Friday as he had lived, serving the public.

A 32-year member of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department, Baugh was responding in the fog and mist to a routine fender-bender north of Greencastle when he apparently lost control of his patrol car, which wound up upside down in Big Walnut Creek.

An all-too-tragic end to a man records show was the longest-serving merit deputy in the history of the Putnam Sheriff’s Department, which dates back to 1821. He was due to retire this year.

In a December 1996 interview with the Banner-Graphic, marking Baugh’s 25th year as a Putnam County deputy, he reminisced on how his law-enforcement career began.

After a hitch in the U.S. Air Force, Baugh originally joined the Greencastle City Police Department as a patrolman.

“Steve Newgent was the chief,” he recalled in what now seems a heavy dose of irony. “And he gave me a gun and said to go down to the Big Walnut Creek somewhere and see if it works.”

A little more than four years later, Baugh, a 1961 Belle Union High School graduate, jumped over to the Sheriff’s Department.

“I left the City Police at 3 p.m. (on Oct. 1, 1967), wearing a blue uniform,” he once recalled, “and at 5 p.m. I reported to the jail, put on a brown uniform and joined the Sheriff’s Department.”

He had plenty of chances to go other places in law enforcement. Renown as a firearms instructor, he opted to stay in Putnam County, serving his home area and cementing his roots.

“I had no desire to go anywhere else,” he said in that 1996 interview. “It’s like I told (then-Sheriff) Bob Albright when he hired me, I’d stay.”

Baugh was elected sheriff twice, serving 1975-1982. When he was elected the first time at 31, Baugh became the youngest Putnam County sheriff ever elected.

His family lived in the old jail (at Washington and Market streets) back then. Wife Lauralee was matron and sons Jason and Jerrod, ages four and six respectively at the time, were the youngest children ever to reside in the not-so-friendly confines.

But he made it work for himself and his family. It was nothing for the Baugh boys to be found upstairs in the cellblock, playing cards with the inmates. And Baugh himself was known to play chess with offenders.

Undoubtedly it all inspired son Jerrod to enter law enforcement work. His father was “very proud” that his son has become an excise officer.

In the 1996 feature story on his father, Jerrod recalled, “I never heard my father complain about going to work. That may be why I have chosen the same profession. He loved his county and the people he serves.”

Throughout his lengthy career, Baugh assured that the hardest part of his job was dealing with death. “You never get used to it.”

To illustrate that point, he told what is now a chillingly ironic story.

He spoke as he drove along U.S. 231 over the very bridge over Big Walnut Creek that brought a fateful end to his 62-year life.

“I remember pulling two fellows out of a Corvair that flipped over into that creek,” he said. “One lived two days, the other four days. You never get used to that.”

No, you don’t, Jim. You sure don’t.

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