Alabama's first female officer, motorcycle cop, dies at 81
Trever Stokes - Jun 17, 2008

 

The full-fledged motorcycle officer - not a meter maid as she would insistently correct people - was a rarity in an era that encouraged Southern women to stay home and raise families.

 

"She didn't want to be a ticket writer - she wanted to be an officer," said her youngest son, Rick Rollings.

 

Her unusual profession and no-nonsense character made her known around Florence. "You can bring her name up in a crowd and people will say 'I know her. That's your momma?' " he said.

 

Rollings was born May 31, 1927, on a small cotton farm near Albertville. Cotton fields held little interest for her and instead her passion in law enforcement led her to join the police department around 1953, according to her son.

 

 

During her 11 years at the Florence Police Department, Rollings helped raid bootleggers back when the city was dry, conducted middle-of-the-night searches and female arrests and even wrote the police chief a ticket.

 

Rollings once was called in the middle of the night because an incarcerated woman refused to enter the jail cell. After asking the woman nicely - twice - Rollings grabbed the woman by the wrist and flipped her on her back into the cell, Rick recalled.

 

"She took her job seriously," he said. The shocked woman stayed in the cell, he said.

 

Leeba White, a former police chief secretary, worked with Rollings in 1963 and remembered her as an outstanding person who was kind and helpful.

 

White, who now works at Heritage Manor Assisted Living, said Rollings balanced being firm with accommodation.

 

"She'd give them a break when she could," White said.

 

Rollings crossed the lines between stereotypical male and female roles and activities at a time before feminism moved mainstream in the early 1960s.

 

"She could tell war stories like a man, but could also wear a dress," her son said.

 

"She was very adamant that she could do her job as well as any man of the force," Rick said. "She lived and breathed the Florence Police Department, even after she left."

 

Her family and community members said they will remember Rollings as a fighter, not to be intimidated, but above all else, fair.

 

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