Local & State Headlines

Tift Sheriff's Office veteran dies

• Maj. Jack Wooland, one of Georgia's most respected lawmen, is stricken by a fatal heart attack.

J.D. Sumner

TIFTON — Maj. Jack Woolard, a 34-year veteran of the Tift County Sheriff’s Office and the head of the department’s special operations division, died of a heart attack on the steps of the courthouse Friday morning, department officials said. He was 60.

Woolard was scheduled to have a photo taken with Sheriff Gary Vowell to be used in Vowell’s re-election bid around 8 a.m. when he suddenly felt dizzy and collapsed, Tift County Public Information Officer David Haire said.

Woolard was taken to Tift Regional Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

News of his death spread quickly. By 2 p.m., Georgia State Senator Joseph Carter, R-Tifton, and Representative Austin Scott, R-Tifton, managed to calm a frenzied Georgia General Assembly, which was trying to wrap up their 2008 session, with a moment of silence followed by the reading of Woolard’s accomplishments from the wells of both houses.

A 34-year veteran of the Tift County Sheriff’s Office, Woolard was a fixture in the local community. According to Haire, at one time or another Woolard was a member of the boards of the American Red Cross, the Court-Appointed Special Advocates and the domestic violence shelter Ruth’s Cottage.

“Everybody’s just in shock,” Haire said. “Here was a man that was seemingly in good health, who would chase down fugitives in a swamp one minute and rush off to help with CASA the next.”

A distraught Sheriff Gary Vowell, who has called Woolard his right-hand man, spent most of the day consoling Woolard’s widow, Georgia State Patrol dispatcher Marie Woolard.

An air force veteran, Woolard flew more than 100 combat missions during his tour in Vietnam. When he was discharged from the Air Force, the Peirce County native enrolled at Abraham Baldwin College before joining the Tift County Sheriff’s Office in 1974.

Most recently, Woolard was honored with the 2006-07 Public Safety Officer of the Year award by the Georgia Elks Association. In 2002, he was awarded the Liberty Bell Award by the Georgia Bar Association. In 1996, he was made an honorary state trooper by the Georgia State Patrol, and in 1987 he was made a Lt. Colonel, Aide de Camp Governor’s Staff by then-Georgia Governor Joe Frank Harris.

Visitation is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday at Northside Baptist Church, 4605 Murray Ave., Tifton.

Funeral services will be at the church at 2 p.m. Monday.

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