Relatives collect ex-lawman's award

The day it happened, Staunton newspaper boys sold more than 3,000 extra papers.

People wanted to read about it – how then-Augusta County Sheriff G. Maslin Gilkeson and Deputy Frank Armstrong faced gunfire from a mad man as they served a lunacy warrant.

“Don’t come any closer” Charles Johnson, the shooter, shouted.

Seventy years later, on Tuesday, two of Gilkeson’s relatives finished the story while reading from yellowed copies of old newspapers. Grace Gilkeson, 83, and her daughter, Margaret McDowell, 57, both of Texas, stopped by the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office on their way to Pennsylvania to accept two posthumous awards for Sheriff Gilkeson.

They gasped at the details of the story as their eyes scanned the words.

Johnson shot Armstrong in the head as he stepped out of his patrol car, killing him. Gilkeson ran nearly a mile away from the Sanger Lane address to call for help. The sheriff returned that day, in August 1941, with a “posse” of more than 50 men.

Together the group took down Johnson. It wasn’t clear who fired the fatal shot.

“I admire you people so much,” Grace Gilkeson told Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher. “It’s a whole different world and thank heavens for that other world.”

Staring down from a framed photo on a nearby wall, Sheriff Gilkeson watched as his granddaughter and daughter-in-law stood next to Fisher and accepted, for him, the two highest departmental awards: a Medal of Valor and a Combat Cross.

McDowell peered into her grandfather’s eyes.

“He still has that look Dad gave us when we weren’t telling the truth,” she said, smiling.

Fisher said he wanted to honor the memory of Gilkeson in 2008, when his office started handing out awards for service. He found Armstrong’s family relatively quickly, he said. But it took time to find the remaining Gilkesons, who’d since moved from Virginia.

In a stroke of dumb luck, Fisher said he found a way to reach them at church on Sunday. Reaching into the pew in front of him, he said he pulled out a hymnal. Inside the book, someone had written Gilkeson’s name.

From there, the sheriff used members of his church to find people who could get him closer to the Gilkesons.

“That would qualify for divine intervention, you know,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Glenn Hanger.

The group swapped stories, pieces of Augusta County history dedicated to memory rather than newspaper pages or books.

Grace Gilkeson and McDowell then continued their journey to Pennsylvania.