By Benjamin GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | 2025 Truth Endures©
The Quiet Backbone
I keep a photo in a drawer in my desk. It is tucked beneath an old leather-bound notebook and a yellowing map of Beckham County. It’s a photo of Lloyd Joe “Bick” Bickerstaff. The image was taken about a month before his promotion to Captain with the Elk City, Oklahoma Police Department.
In the picture, Bick sits in his unit, his uniform crisp in the late autumn light. The shadows are long. The wind has just started to turn cold. That unmistakable Oklahoma sky behind him stretches flat and wide. It is quiet, open, and full of secrets. He wears a half-smile that says,
“I’ve seen things, but I’ll carry them quietly.”
Bick and his brother were born in Sentinel, Oklahoma. I only heard his brother’s name once in passing. Sentinel is a patch of land barely big enough to hold the stories it carries. They began their careers as State Troopers with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. The two brothers wore matching uniforms and chased something bigger than themselves.
But by the time I knew Bick, he rarely mentioned his siblings. I assumed time had done what it often does to families. Maybe there was a falling out—just distance. I never asked, and he never offered.
I knew he had a wife who baked cinnamon rolls on Sundays. He also had two children. One child was off in Sayre, chasing classes at a junior college. The other was a veterinarian who had graduated from Oklahoma State University. His life beyond the badge was quiet but rich. He even operated a small answering service—its operators worked right from his living room. You knew that life grounded him.
Nevertheless, Bick was more than just a veteran officer inside the department. He was the compass.
When rookies came in shaken from their first domestic call, Bick was the one who handed them a cup of bad coffee and said,
“It gets better if you let it.”
He never lectured. He just listened. And when he spoke, it was always worth hearing.
I remember the weeks leading up to his promotion. The department was shifting—a new Chief was being promoted, and a Major was moving up from Captain. Everyone felt the tremors of change. But Bick? He was steady and unmoved. I asked if he was nervous about entering a bigger role during such a turbulent time.
He just smiled that same quiet smile.
“Storms pass,”
He said.
“Someone’s gotta keep the porch light on.”
He did more than that.
He held the whole house together.
Years passed. And then, like storms do, time took Bick from us. When the news came, I expected many familiar faces at the service. Officers from every corner of the state would be paying their respects. But they didn’t come. Time had moved on, and so had they. Somehow, the news of Bickerstaff’s passing hadn’t brought them back.
Elk City Police Chief Bill Putman did what mattered. He escorted Bick’s casket from Elk City to the Old Soldiers Cemetery in Oklahoma City. That quiet, deliberate ride said more than any ceremony. It was loyalty. It was respect. It was love.
I was there, too, standing back in the shadows as the service ended. I didn’t speak. Didn’t approach the family. I just paused long enough to leave a final tribute at the edge of his resting place. It was a farewell from someone who had seen firsthand what quiet strength looks like.
Maybe Bickerstaff would’ve preferred it this way. No fanfare. There is no parade of names—just those who mattered most.
I like to think I was one of them.
Bick was never the loudest voice in the room. He didn’t need to be.
But when he spoke, the room listened.
And when he left, the silence he left behind was deafening.
The echo he once carried over the radio has gone quiet. And somewhere out in Western Oklahoma, no one will ever hear that calm, steady voice call out again—
“Attention, all stations and units; stand by for a broadcast.”
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