Greene County resident Jeff Hedden retired as the U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Tennessee effective at midnight Saturday, Jan. 3.

In a conversation with a Greeneville Sun reporter on Tuesday, Hedden, 54, reflected on a 34-year career in law enforcement that culminated in his 2002 appointment as one of only 94 U.S. Marshals who serve at any one time nationwide.

As U.S. Marshal, Hedden had supervised 30 "career officers" and 50 contract court security officers, and had been responsible for providing security to federal courts in Greeneville, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Winchester.

He also had been responsible for enforcing federal court orders and taking into custody federal fugitives in 41 East Tennessee counties.

Hedden noted that when presidential administrations change, protocol calls for most federal political appointees, including U.S. Marshals, to tender their resignations to enable the new president to appoint replacements if he so desires.

Hedden, who had been appointed by President George W. Bush, said he decided to retire rather than be asked to leave by the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

"It was important to me that I leave on my own terms," he said.

He said that he has not yet decided what to do next, but still wants to serve -- possibly as a teacher.

He added that the decision to retire was an "emotional" one for him after more than three decades in law enforcement.

Hedden noted that holidays had played an important role in his career with the U.S. Marshals Service in that he became a Deputy U.S. Marshal on Christmas Day 1983 and was appointed U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Tennessee on Valentine's Day 2002.

While seated in the living room chair in which he had begun most of his mornings as U.S. Marshal with a cell phone in one hand and a Blackberry communications device in the other, Hedden recalled that his choice of law enforcement as a profession came almost by chance.

He explained that near the end of his freshman year at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., he came down with pneumonia just before he had planned to start a summer job in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

The bout with pneumonia derailed his summer plans, and, instead, lead him to take a summer job at the King's Mountain National Military Park near his home in King's Mountain, N.C.

Hedden noted that his father, who had been a school teacher, had worked summers and holidays at the National Military Park, which is located just across the South Carolina state line King's Mountain.

"He had recently become a school principal and wasn't going to have time to work summers anymore," Hedden said.

So Hedden himself decided to apply for a summer job at the King's Mountain National Military Park.

He said that he was among several young summer employees who came to work there in 1973.

"I was the biggest kid, so they gave me the only vehicle equipped with blue lights that they had," said Hedden, who stands 6-feet-4-inches tall.

He recalled that one of his first jobs at the park was to guard a pedestrian crosswalk on a park roadway that sometimes was used by speeding drivers who had just left a club down the road from the park.

In 1975, Hedden said, he completed his first federal law-enforcement training course.

In 1976, after graduating from Appalachian State University, he said, he joined the National Park Service full-time and completed further law-enforcement training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.

His next assignment with the National Park Service was as a park ranger at the Canaveral National Seashore in Florida.

Later, he said, he transferred to the Lookout Mountain National Battlefield Park near Chattanooga.

While working in law enforcement there, he said, he became acquainted with several deputy U.S. marshals who encouraged him to transfer to the U.S. Marshals Service.

In 1983, he said, he went to work for the Marshals Service in Nashville.

"I was young and single and threw myself into my work," he said. "I was running the warrant program in my second year."

Hedden recalled that one of his first "big arrests" had taken place when, after receiving information from an informant, he had been able to locate and arrest a federal fugitive who had been on the run for seven years.

"We found out that his girlfriend worked as a cocktail waitress at the Black Poodle nightclub in Nashville," Hedden said.

Unfortunately all he had with which to identify the fugitive was an old Polaroid picture.

While staking out the club, Hedden recalled, he saw a man enter who looked somewhat like the photo. After engaging the suspect in conversation, Hedden recalled, he became satisfied that the man, seated next to him at the bar, was the suspect.

"I told him I had a badge under my hand and a .45-cal. pistol pointed at him under my coat," Hedden said. "I told him unless he went quietly with me, things were going to go bad for both of us." The suspect complied.

Hedden soon found himself being "hand-picked" to take part in special Marshals Service task forces to apprehend dangerous suspects, and to guard witnesses in Mafia-related trials.

In 1986, he said, he transferred to Greeneville to take over a then-one-man U.S. Marshals office here. He noted that another deputy U.S. marshal was not assigned here until 1989.

By the time Hedden was appointed U.S. Marshal in 2002, the Greeneville office had grown to included four deputy U.S. Marshals. The office currently is led by Deputy U.S. Marshal Karen Burke, whom Hedden named to that post.

"She has done an outstanding job," Hedden said of Burke.

While working here, Hedden said, he continued to take part in task force assignments both nationally and internationally.

In one instance, he recalled, he was part of a detail assigned to protect the key witness in the federal trial of famed New York Mafia leader John Joseph Gotti Jr. (Oct. 27, 1940 - June 10, 2002), commonly known by the media as "The Dapper Don" and "The Teflon Don."

In 1992, Gotti was convicted of racketeering, 13 murders, obstruction of justice, hijacking, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal gambling, extortion, tax evasion, loansharking, and other crimes, and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died 10 years later, according to the Wikipedia Internet encyclopedia.

Hedden also took part in operations to retrieve international fugitives, including one of the hijackers of the Achilles Lauro, a Mediterranean cruise ship on which a U.S. citizen had been murdered.

Hedden recalled on Tuesday that two local men played important roles in his career here.

One, he said, was the late Greeneville Police Chief Kenneth Rollins, who, he said, offered assistance whenever the new local marshal-in-charge needed it.

Hedden said Rollins became a Special Deputy U.S. Marshal after leaving the police department, and later became a court security officer.

Hedden said the second man to have major impact on his career here was the late U.S. District Judge Thomas G. Hull.

In fact, he said, it was at Judge Hull's suggestion that he decided to seek appointment as U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

But Judge Hull didn't just suggest that Hedden seek the position, Hedden recalled, noting that the judge sought support for the appointment from then-U.S. Rep. Bill Jenkins, R-1st, of Hawkins County, and then-U.S. Senators Bill Frist and Fred Thompson.

Hedden noted that at one point 26 people were seeking the appointment as U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

He said that he also was endorsed for the appointment by "all the judges" of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

Hedden and his wife, Kathy, reside in their southern Greene County home with their 13-year-old dog Dillon (as in "Marshal Matt Dillon" of "Gunsmoke" fame) and numerous mementoes of his career.

On Tuesday, the accumulated memorabilia from his U.S. marshal's office had yet to be unpacked in his basement.

Among the items stored in the basement was the antique barber chair his grandfather had purchased second-hand in the 1920s and used for many years in his Jackson County, N.C., barbershop.

A framed copy of the document signed by President Bush that appointed him U.S. marshal covers one wall in his home-office.

Other plaques presented to him by other federal law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, also dot the walls of hallways.

On one wall is a glass-covered collection of law-enforcement memorabilia, including a switchblade knife that Hedden confiscated from a suspect.

"He learned that you don't bring a knife to a gunfight," Hedden said.