| "LaVista Bill" - port director and western storywriter
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A lot of us enjoy watching a well made western where good squares off with evil in the middle of the small-town. Doc Holliday, the James brothers, and the notorious Billy the Kid are characters that filmmakers showcase in movies as famous outlaws. But many western heroes were often local law enforcement officers, territorial marshals, or skilled fast-draw gunfighters. The lawmen in most of these stories are persons of integrity and principle - courageous, moral, tough, solid, and self-sufficient characters - just like so many of our Customs officers today. It's not surprising that William Bell, Port Director at Indianapolis, also saw the parallel and was intrigued enough about westerns to start writing them.William Bell, who sometimes writes under "La Vista Bill," began writing in 1983. Since then, he has written more than 160 articles and short stories over his career. Bell created his alias when he joined the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) organization several years ago. An article, titled The Saga of La Vista Bill, was published in the Guns of the Old West magazine, where he explains his persona of a Customs mounted inspector from the 1890s, his costume complete with a period-style badge and commission. | An article written by port director William "La Vista Bill" Bell.
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Bell's work can also be found in the Police, Guns & Weapons for Law Enforcement, Combat Handguns, SASS Cowboy Chronicle, Smith & Wesson 2002 and Glock Autopistols magazines. He has also written for the Customs Today magazine. He is currently writing an article on the Reno Brothers Gang for Wild West magazine, a piece on The Pinkerton Detective Agency for Guns of the Old West, and he's even doing a couple of gun test and evaluations, which will be featured in one of several Harris Publications magazines. Bell has been writing for Harris Publications, a NYC-based publishing company, since 1988. But before he ever started writing about lawmen of the Wild West, he was already involved in a law enforcement career. Lawman BellWilliam Bell's law enforcement career has spanned over 26 years. He received a B.S. degree in Criminal Justice at Eastern Kentucky University in 1976, and went on to serve as a campus police officer, military police officer, city police officer, deputy sheriff, border patrol agent, parole officer, and OPM investigator. When he started his career with Customs in 1988, he was an inspector at Calexico, Calif. He worked there until 1991, when he was given the opportunity to return to his hometown of Louisville, Ky., where he worked at the UPS hub for five years. He later moved to Indianapolis, where he is now the area port director. "I've always enjoyed writing and studying the Old West because the lawmen back then helped tame the country," Bell says, "just like Customs officers are doing today, putting their lives on the line to protect and keep our country safe." So look out Indianapolis, there's a lawman in town that carries a swift, mighty pen. |
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