June 28. 2004 12:00AM
Vietnam vet has worn many hats over years
By Harmony Johnson
Times-News Staff Writer
Capt. Fred Sams talks in his office about Vietnam. (PATRICK SULLIVAN/TIMES-NEWS)
Not many men can say they've worked under former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, executed covert missions in Vietnam for the Army Special Forces, earned a law degree, retired before age 40, recorded a hit record, been certified as a forensic science expert and led a crew of Polk County detectives. Of course, there is only one Fred Sams.
The Lake Lure resident currently serves the Polk County Sheriff's Department as captain and chief of its criminal investigations division. But at 55 years old, he has held more jobs and experienced more adventures than most men do in a lifetime.
His office is lined wall-to-wall with diplomas, certificates and awards. Bookshelves boast titles including Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun and Forensic Anthropology Training Manual. Skulls and skeletons decorate virtually every surface, gifts from friends and co-workers for the crime scene investigator with a quirky sense of humor.
Visitors sit in front of his desk on a white toilet, salvaged from the Sheriff's Department after a bathroom remodeling. Sams says he took out the regular chairs because they encouraged people to stop and chat, preventing him from getting work done.
But meeting Sams, you realize that maybe the chairs weren't to blame. Maybe it was the man himself, who for hours can spin tales about the time he spent working for Melvin Belli, San Diego attorney to the stars who counted the Rolling Stones and Elizabeth Taylor among his clients. Or how he lived for a year on a steady diet of popcorn, Worcestershire sauce and Rolling Rock beer as a young fingerprint expert for the FBI, then run by Hoover, whom Sams describes as "this little raisin with legs."
What he's less inclined to tell you about are the stories behind the green Special Forces beret that rests atop one skull on his desk or the Army Airborne Ranger patches that fill several picture frames displayed in the office. For Sams, those tend to be sad stories, ones that no one needs to hear.
"A lot of the stories I have will never be told," he says.
But those also are the experiences that brought him back to the United States a more compassionate man, a man who works to save lives or to find justice for lives taken by homicide because, through war, he learned a greater appreciation for life.
'In stealth mode'
In October 1972, Sams was a detective and crime scene investigator for the Miami Police Department in Florida, where he grew up. When the federal government sent him a notice in the mail, telling him to report for a physical, he knew what was coming.
To avoid being drafted into the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, Sams enlisted in the Army and passed a battery of tests to join the Special Forces, a unit of specialized experts in unconventional warfare.
He was sent to Fort Jackson, S.C., for basic training, to Fort Benning, Ga., for airborne ranger school and to Fort Bragg for 19 weeks of Special Forces training, learning to speak Korean along the way because all Special Forces agents were required to speak two languages.
After that, the details are scattered, his wartime duties more generalized.
By 1973, Sams was on a plane to Korea, where he spent two years as an intelligence agent, advising South Korean soldiers in military operations. From a base there, he and his unit went in and out of "virtually all the countries in Southeast Asia," Sams said.
Part of a 12-soldier unit split into two teams, Sams and five other men primarily were responsible for monitoring the movement of the North Vietnamese army and assessing their equipment. They would compile all their information into reports to send back to commanding officers, letting them know which Vietnamese units were active, how many soldiers each unit had and the amount of light or heavy arms each unit carried.
The six-member team usually slept during the day, moving "in stealth mode" at night through hostile territory. They carried out what Sams calls "the sneaky Pete operations," specializing in "very unconventional" guerrilla warfare tactics when they needed to fight.
"A small unit can be put in behind enemy lines and completely disrupt an entire battalion," he explained. "That's what we were trained to do. É They say a 12-man Special Forces team is equivalent to an entire platoon of 120 men."
Sams' unit was in Saigon when the South Vietnamese capital fell, his intelligence and special ops missions increasing as the end of the war approached.
He won't dwell on specific missions. But what he will tell those who ask is that throughout the course of the Vietnam War, he was exposed to Agent Orange, an effective but dangerous chemical that Air Force troops sprayed over the jungles of Vietnam to kill the foliage; he lost most of his hearing; and lost 50 percent of his lung capacity because of exposure to tear gas.
After the war ended, Sams spent one year at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. The Army determined that his injuries left him "40 percent disabled" and made him ineligible for further Special Forces missions.
So Sams changed his military career track, joining the Army's Military Police force. In addition to training military police officers, he was assigned to an intelligence unit in Homestead, Fla., that controlled access to missiles with nuclear warheads. Military officials feared that the Cuban militant group Alpha 66 would steal the missiles in an effort to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro, Sams said, so his unit was needed to "make sure Alpha 66 couldn't get our missiles and fire them at Cuba."
Multiple career paths
Between 1972 and 1980, Sams enlisted and was honorably discharged from the Army three times.
In 1980, he waived his veteran benefits in exchange for having the military pay for him to attend law school. He earned his law degree from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in 1984, working through school as a clerk and then as an attorney at the law office of Melvin Belli, whose autographed photo hangs on a wall in Sams' office.
Later the same year, Sams earned his juris doctor, and he and wife, Gayle, retired to North Carolina. But for the couple, who have been married 29 years, retiring in their 30s was just too young, Sams says. After two years, he went back to work, earning his real estate license and opening up a small firm in Black Mountain, specializing in commercial properties. He also taught law school classes in the area.
In 1995, he formed the band Screamin' Mule, with Sams on drums. They recorded one album and enjoyed success in Western North Carolina with the single Kudzu.
By 1997, Sams had returned to law enforcement, working as a probation and parole officer in Charlotte. He spent some time as a mediator and as a criminal justice instructor at Isothermal Community College and at Shaw University.
In 1998, he joined the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department as head of its forensics division. He left the department in 2002, when Polk County Sheriff David Satterfield offered him a job as chief of detectives. He also teaches criminal justice in online master's degree programs through Boston University and Canyon College and through the Taylor Group, a national organization for law enforcement education.
With such a varied career, Sams jokes that his father still asks him what he wants to be when he grows up.
"I don't want to 80 years old sitting on a porch somewhere saying I wish I'd done that," he said. "I've tried to get as much living as I can in my life."
'More to life'
Sams insists that his tour of duty in Vietnam had little to do with the jobs he held afterward. But the war did shape others aspects of his life.
"My personality and my way of life, it did tremendously," he said.
Vietnam gave him "a different understanding of life," he said. Like other veterans, Sams said, he brought back more compassion, something he uses daily in decision making, such as responding to 911 calls of people threatening suicide.
"You see so much waste and destruction -- human destruction -- you come to realize there's always more to life as long as you're living," he said.
Sams crosses his arms and leans forward on his desk when asked about how Vietnam affected other veterans, the ones who came home unable to return to a normal life, the ones most frequently heard about it the media. That, he said, is the "Hollywood effect," promoted in Vietnam War movies such as Apocalypse Now and Rambo, which Sams finds offensive.
"It gives people a false impression of who came back from Vietnam," he said. "Probably some of the most compassionate, real-life people are the veterans. That's not cinema. That's reality."
Johnson can be reached at 694-7881 or by e-mail at
harmony.johnson@hendersonvillenews.com.
http://www.hendersonvillenews.com/ap...406280327/1034