The Blue and the Gray

Images by Terrell ManascoA rain-slicked stretch of highway.A patch of fog. The rhythmic whump-whump-whump-whump of the windshield wipers. Tapping the brakes gently as red lights suddenly materialize directly in front of you. Then, amid the rows of bright red dots, you spot something ahead that, at once, provokes a myriad of emotions: fear, sadness, dread, even curiosity.Bright blue flashing beacons, starkly contrasted against the gray overcast light. Immediately you see the twisted metal shrapnel, the shredded rubber, the sea of glass shards strewn across the highway, and you involuntarily flinch inside as that sickening hollow sensation gut-punches you.You know. Somehow you just know.Death is here.Standing amid the scattered wreckage is a man in a flat-brimmed hat, a black Frogg Togg rain jacket over his navy blue shirt and French blue slacks, a sidearm on his hip. He stares at the remains of the vehicle, face pelted by raindrops, his body is bone-tired, his eyes weary because he's been up 24 hours without sleep. Those eyes have witnessed hundreds of sights, some horrifying, some heart-breaking, some heartwarming, some even amusing. What they witness today will give birth to many sleepless nights for years to come.Johnathan Appling settles his small frame into a booth at a local restaurant. The sky outside the window is the same color as his gray patrol car. After glancing at the menu, he orders lunch, checks his phone for messages, and takes a few sips of sweet tea. "I used to have three," he says, referring to the phone. "I had two work phones and a personal one. I finally convinced them, listen, I don't need three phones, I'm not that important," he laughs. "Now I have two, but they are glued to me 24/7."Johnathan grew up in Jasper, Alabama and attended Walker High School, then graduated from Auburn University in 2007 with a degree in political science. "That's when I really got into law enforcement," he says. "Had the opportunity to work with the police department there part-time. That's when I really got my feet wet, and really got to experience what it was all about."In late summer of 2007, Johnathan decided to move back home, hoping to be hired as a state trooper. But it didn't happen overnight. "It took me nearly a year to get hired with the department," he says. "Finally the next Spring I got hired as a state trooper. Being a state agency, you have to be willing to move anywhere. That was of some concern to me because you never know where you're gonna wind up, especially if you're like I was—at the bottom of the totem pole," he laughs.Initially Johnathan was told he would be going to Mobile. "I was okay with that because I have family down there and it's a really nice area," he says. "But at the last minute they came up and said, 'Well, would you rather just go home to Walker County, because we need people there?' I said, "Yeah, of course!' so I got to come straight here. I got very lucky to get to come home," he says.Johnathan was then sent to the Trooper Academy in Selma for training. "I started June 15th, 2008. One of those days I'll never forget," he grins. "I lived down there for six months and.....it's tough. We have the toughest police academy in the state, for good reason."Six months later, Trooper (now Senior Trooper) Johnathan Appling graduated first in his class in academics. "That's what makes the academy so tough," he says. "You've got so many areas you get trained on and tested. You've got the academics, you've got firearms, driving, so many different things."At that time Walker County was part of the agency's Birmingham district. "I spent five years in the Birmingham district, working Highway Patrol," Johnathan says. "I got to work all over Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair, Blount, and Walker County. I worked every shift they had, but I actually started out on midnights. There were a lot of nights I'd come out, and I had the whole post to myself. Whatever calls came in, you had to go deal with it by yourself. It was a lot of responsibility and a lot of stress for a guy in his mid-twenties, fresh out of the academy."After working in Highway Patrol about a year, Johnathan was recruited into the Traffic Homicide Unit. "Traffic Homicide takes these major, multi-fatality collisions and do the more in-depth, follow-up investigations, and build criminal cases on the crashes that need a criminal case," he explains.Johnathan worked there until 2014 but is no longer active in that unit. "I worked fatalities all over Birmingham. I built a lot of criminal cases off some crashes, murder and manslaughter cases, and got a lot of good convictions. We had a lot of family victims who needed justice because a drunk driver or someone had killed their family. These families needed answers, they needed justice, and we were able to get it for them."In October of 2013, Walker County was placed under a different district, this time out of Hamilton. "We got transferred, and I started working for Walker, Fayette, Marion, Winston, Lamar, that part of the state," Johnathan says. "In December of 2014, I went to the Public Information Unit, based out of Montgomery. I handle all the media relations and external affairs. I've got nine counties, everything from Jasper all the way up to Florence. I teach a lot of classes, do a lot of things with the schools, and I still do some Traffic Homicide on the side."One of the most difficult tasks for a law enforcement officer is notifying the family of the death of a loved one. Johnathan says focusing on doing the job correctly and helping the families is the key. "You have to think about your mission and what you're there to do," he says. "Yes, you should have that compassion because that is a family member that's laying there, but you can't let that shadow your judgment. You think about what you've gotta do and what your job is. If you don't, that family or that crash victim doesn't get the answers they deserve. It's the toughest part of this job. It's hard to truly comprehend the realities of this world and of this job until you knock on a door at two in the morning to tell a family that their loved one is not coming home.”Johnathan says law enforcement officers may sometimes be seen as emotionless, and there is a good reason for that. “You may see police officers out there not showing emotion,” he says. “It's because when you go knock on a door and tell a family that their dad has been killed in a wreck, that one action changes their lives forever. When that family sees you standing there, they know you're not there just to say hello. You've literally turned their world upside down. You have to maintain that professionalism and that composure. You have to be that rock, that guiding light. We sit there and talk with them for a little while, and the hardest part to me on a personal level is, then you leave and go home and you're supposed to be okay. That's hard because you've just had a part in the worst day of a family's life. You can't just flip a switch and be okay, you have to go home and just deal with it."His extensive training and experience has also helped Johnathan achieve classification as a Crash Reconstructionist. "It's the highest level of training you can get in crash investigations," he explains. "It's like a professional certification. There's only two here in this county: myself and one other person. We take crashes and we apply the math and physics and figure out what happened, we figure out the mechanics behind the crash. It helps us to understand how it happened so I can sit down with the family and explain to them.""Being a trooper is a lot more than writing tickets," he continues. "That's what people think about when they see a trooper. It's being there in a time of crisis. I've worked the races at Talladega, I've worked Montgomery inaugurations, I worked the Selma marches last year. I enjoy those. You get to be a part of history."The tornado outbreak of April 27, 2011 was a devastating time for many Walker Countians, and Senior Trooper Jonathan Appling remembers it vividly. "I'll never forget pulling up on Argo Hill just a couple of minutes after that second one came through [Cordova] and there were cars laying in the middle of the road, on their roofs," he says. "I remember all the chaos... [then coroner] J.C.Poe and I were going through and tagging the bodies. I spent the next month or so working all night every night, keeping the looters out and basically holding down the fort while everybody went home and went to bed.""Even if they hadn't call me in, I would have been dressed and gone out," he says. "It's that commitment that you make. It's not an 8-5, go to the house and don't care job. Whether you're on duty or off duty, you've made a commitment to your community. When times are at their worst, you step up and be your best."When he's not wearing the badge and uniform, Johnathan and his fiancée Lindsey Kitchens are busy planning their wedding and working on the house they are building together. He also loves being outdoors. "I like to deer hunt," he says. "I enjoy being out in the woods, in God's creation. I enjoy seeing the wildlife.”He is also an Auburn football fan, which can sometimes be a bit awkward. "I'm a big Auburn guy so I like to go to football games. Of course, Lindsey and her family are all huge Alabama fans," he laughs. "We are strongly divided. We hadn't been dating very long when I got tickets to the Iron Bowl, the Kick Six year [2013]. We knew one of us would have a long drive home. I made a joke that if we can survive that, we can survive anything."Johnathan says he always knew growing up that he wanted to have a career in law enforcement. "That was always my first choice," he says. "You know you were put on this earth to do this job. When I first got into college my goal was to go to law school, but the further I got along, I just decided that wasn't for me. (He later earned his MBA from Freed-Hardeman University in 2011.) I made up my mind at Auburn that this is what I want to do, and I'm gonna make it happen. And I did. And I'm very happy that I did. There's no way I can ever see myself doing anything else." 78For more stories like these, visit and like the 78 Magazine Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/78mag