William Obanhein

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Officer Obie in Buffaloo Games' jigsaw puzzle version of Norman Rockwell's The Runaway

William J. Obanhein (October 19, 1924-September 11, 1994), sometimes better known as Officer Obie, was the chief of police for the New England town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He was a member of the Stockbridge police force for 34 years, allegedly being forced into retirement in 1985 for hitting another officer during the course of an argument. Though little known by name, Obanhein possessed a remarkable, if inadvertent, ability to show up in American popular culture. He was made marginally famous by Arlo Guthrie's 1967 talking blues song "Alice's Restaurant", and played himself in the 1969 movie of the same name, telling Newsweek magazine (September 29, 1969, where his photo appears) that making himself look like a fool was preferable to having somebody else make him look like a fool.

He twice posed for the artist Norman Rockwell. In Rockwell's famous painting The Runaway, originally published as the cover of the Sept. 20, 1958, issue of The Saturday Evening Post, Officer Obie sits at a lunch counter while he and a short-order cook smilingly convene with a little boy running away from home. Obanhein also appeared in print advertisements for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance and for Goodwill Industries.