In the twilight of his life, James F. Mossey penned a memoir for his family at the urging of his wife, Diane. True to his form, its narrative jumped around, the memories firing in spurts: the time he got caught in a hurricane while in the Navy, when he provided security for a young rock band from Liverpool, and his nearly three decades leading the Crystal Police Department.
"He'd come up with these stories that were so interesting," Diane Mossey said.
Mossey, 80, died Jan. 2, peacefully and with family nearby: a wife of 32 years, three adult stepchildren "inherited" during his second and ultimate marriage, and seven grandchildren.
Mossey's story began in Indiana, where at a young age, he moved with his family to a housing project in South Bend. With the University of Notre Dame campus nearby, he sneaked into the college's fieldhouse with friends on Sundays to play basketball. He later joined the Navy, where he eventually spent four years on a wooden minesweeper in the Mediterranean Sea — at one point battling a two-week hurricane.
"We bounced around like a cork," he wrote.
Mossey eventually came to Minnesota while looking for work in the years after his Navy service. Dissatisfied with odd jobs, he began his career in law enforcement in the early 1960s at the Minneapolis Police Department. One night, four moptop singers from England needed a security detail as they exited the old Curtis Hotel amid a throng of screaming female fans.
"I believe the group's name was the Beatles," wrote Mossey, who had never heard of them at the time.
While working for the Minneapolis police, Mossey graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1971, majoring in criminal justice studies and serving as an adviser for other students. He also spent time on Minneapolis' tactical squad, then called the "flying squad," which included assignments like policing the 1967 riots in north Minneapolis.
