‘He’ll be back,’ sheriff said of SC deputy hospitalized with COVID. He died days later
Pastor Robert Scott could only see his friend Tommy Cudd through a glass window at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center.
Cudd, a long-time sergeant with the Union County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina, had COVID-19 and leukemia. He wasn’t supposed to talk, it took too much out of him, but he’d get on the phone with friends and family who came to visit — even if it was just to listen as they stood on the other side of the glass.
He broke the rules for Scott though, lifting his hospital mask slightly to speak into the phone’s receiver. When a nurse caught him, Scott said she smacked the window and told him to put it back on. That’s when Cudd shot his friend a grin.
“I got the man in trouble today but I tell you what I’m so thankful for that little grin — that little bitty glimmer of happiness,” Scott said during a prayer vigil at the county courthouse on Tuesday.
Less than two days later, he was gone.
Cudd died Thursday from complications related to leukemia and COVID-19, the Union County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. In Cudd’s memory, Union County will lower its flag to half-staff through Feb. 4, according to the county.
Cudd worked in law enforcement for 37 years, most of them with the sheriff’s office. In a tribute posted on Facebook, a former colleague described him as one of the finest deputies the department ever had.
“One thing that he always told me was you treat everyone the way you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes,” Kenny Ray Puckett wrote. “He also told me that placing someone under arrest was a great responsibility because it could cause a person to lose everything so that is your last resort. I guess God needed him more than his family and Union County did.“
It wasn’t immediately clear when Cudd got sick or how he contracted the virus.
In the days leading up to his death, family members, friends and colleagues gathered at the Union County Courthouse for a prayer vigil. Masks were encouraged.
“It saddens us to have such a man down like he is right now,” Bailey told a crowd of a few dozen people who gathered on the courthouse steps at dusk. “But don’t ever count Tommy Cudd out, he’ll be back, I promise you that. With prayer he’ll be back.”
His wife Beth Cudd said he loved Union County and couldn’t wait to get back to work.
“I’m telling him everything, all your messages, I’m sending them straight through to him,” she said. “I’m just humbled and touched, and I thank my God above that today when I went we had a better day. We’re going to pray that tomorrow is at least as good as today was — and I’ll be happy with that.”
It was Kevin Smith, Cudd’s colleague at the sheriff’s department and a family member, who asked to hold the vigil. But he wouldn’t take credit for the gathering, saying instead that God had nudged them together.
“The puzzle is not complete here, there’s one piece missing,” he said as the vigil ended. “And that piece is going to be found, that puzzle is going to be put back together.”
