This month, I was planning to write about bankruptcy reform which is still rumbling its way through Congress. It is an immense issue, and as I write this, in the end of March 2005, the act has not quite yet passed through Congress. However, much has been written about this by other people, and there are other issues on my mind. It may be the course of wisdom to hold off writing on bankruptcy reform until the act clears congress.

What is on my mind at present is the passing away of a judge I knew very well. Joe Gwaltney became a judge in the General District Court in Arlington County, Virginia in 1976. He served more than twenty years on that bench, retiring as the Chief Judge of the Arlington County General District Court. The General District Court has jurisdiction of civil matters under $15,000.00, misdemeanors, and traffic offenses. As you might suspect, the General District Courts of Virginia do a volume business. In the two-plus decades he was on the bench, he never forgot who he was, where he came from, and what he was doing.

I attended his funeral in the company of what must have been hundreds of members of the Arlington Bar and several other local jurisdictions, as well as judges, sheriffs, policemen, politicians, and people who just plain knew Joe. Those who spoke at the funeral all had the same impression of Joe: he was a good man.

A judge has tremendous power. A judge's courtroom is a miniature version of a king's court. He has bailiffs and the power to do things, good and bad, to those who have come before him. Clearly, while a judge is limited by rules, statutes, and the Constitution, it is known to whoever is on the bench that the power is theirs. Speaking informally with some judges, I have heard them say that when they were "elevated" to the bench, they became taller, better looking, and all their jokes were funny. It is no secret that some judges, after this "elevation," seem to experience an increase in ego as well. This never happened to Joe Gwaltney, and everyone who knew him can testify to this.

Joe was a product of his times. He was born in 1926 and his mother died when he was one year old. He was raised by his grandparents. His grandmother taught school in a one-room schoolhouse. Joe entered college at the age of 16 in Ohio. For health reasons, he moved to Arizona. He took on many jobs, to include manual labor. I learned from the bulletin at the memorial service that when he was in the Southwest he "operated a monument company." Others at the funeral told me that he drove trucks and had to go into Mexico on Monday mornings to pick up his day-laborers after their weekend at home. Joe was no stranger to hard work and physical labor. Joe came up the hard, old-fashioned way.

Maybe that is what made Joe different when he was on the bench. No matter how irritating the litigants before him were and how irritated he may have been, he was never impolite, especially so to attorneys. One attorney who spoke at the funeral said that one morning he asked Joe, while on the bench, to do something that was clearly beyond the range of things that attorney should appropriately do. Joe would not do so, and was perhaps a little strange with him. The next morning, that attorney was before Joe again. Joe invited him into chambers and apologized for being unpleasant the day before. In fact, Joe remarked that he had not been able to sleep that night and had gone to church early that morning because it had bothered him so. He apologized voluntarily without shifting any blame to the attorney. In fact, a judge is the king in his courtroom, and a king has no reason or need to apologize to his subjects.

That is what made Joe different and remarkable. Although a judge has no need or compulsion to be humble, Joe was always humble and polite. As a young attorney in the courtroom, as I made the mistakes that all young attorneys make, he was never condescending or derogative. I know of no one who knows of him acting that way, unless it was followed by an immediate apology from him.

Over the years, I got to know Joe outside of his courtroom. I found out that he had a tremendous interest in history, especially the World War II era. At one point, I had some Life magazines from World War II. On a slow day, I brought them into chambers and he and I spend some time discussing them. I learned a lot about his life and times in the late '30's through '40's. While Joe was a judge, he was a judge I liked as a person, and I will miss him.

In later years, I got to know him even better. I worked for his son-in-law, and one year I was invited to have Thanksgiving dinner with Joe. I was able to learn even more about him. Very few people know that the headquarters for the American Nazi Party was located in Arlington County, Virginia for several years. Joe was a prosecutor in Arlington, as well as a Clerk of Court. During those times, Joe made sure that the American Nazis in Arlington County had their freedom of speech but did not let that freedom of speech hurt anyone else. While many of Joe's generation may have fought the Nazis overseas, Joe fought them here, during and after the war.

Joe represents one of the great generation. This is the generation we are slowly and steadily losing: the generation that suffered through the depression, the War, and the booming '50's and '60's. There are a few other judges in Arlington I know of from that time. They all seemed to have the same spirit of respect for humankind and not forgetting who they were, and where they came from.

As this generation passes, the next generation is coming forward. The judges of the new generation seem to be different. This generation is made up of people who went directly from college to law school, and then from law school directly into practice, all the way to the bench. While the competition for the few places on the bench grows more and more difficult with the ever-growing number of lawyers, it seems natural that these ranks will be filled with people who have devoted their entire life to law. But by reading the biography published on the back of the bulletin from his funeral, I learned that Joe only began to practice law when he was thirty-nine. Perhaps the intervening years taught him more about life than he would have learned had me made the path directly to practicing law.

I learned a great deal about Joseph C. Gwaltney when he was alive and even more now that he has passed away. What I have always known is that he knew how difficult it was to be a lawyer, either just learning the ropes or seasoned with experience, as well as to be a person in front of a judge, at his mercy. He was known for apologizing to litigants and criminal defendants for having to rule against them. When he saw a clear injustice, he knew enough to stop it and used his power to stop it. But no matter what the situation, Joe kept the same perspective on life and had a basic underlying respect for all people he came into contact with. He remembered where he started and how hard it was to get to where he was.

So, while the dust settles on the new bankruptcy amendments, and we are all worried about what this will to do us prospectively, I have taken the time to think about and appreciate Joseph C. Gwaltney. The new bankruptcy act will undoubtedly cause much litigation, and there will be many winners and many losers. But I know we are all losers when someone like Joe passes on. The practice of law is somewhat poorer for his absence, and I will miss him.