It didn’t take long for the bona fides to start stacking up after that call, Phyllis Stewart said, Tuesday.
She’s talking about the one that came in from the office of Larry Starcher, who had just been elected as circuit judge for Monongalia County in 1976.
Stewart was a young Black woman known for her outreach in her community.
Starcher was a young, white Morgantown-based attorney known for his work as director of the North Central West Virginia Legal Aid Society.
From its offices on Listravia Avenue in Sabraton, the storefront firm counseled the clients who couldn’t always afford the attorneys on High Street.
Both the new judge and fledgling activist would continue to grow in their respective fields as time unspooled.
Stewart retired as chief probation officer of Monongalia County, after three decades-worth of case work, with all the literal trials and tribulations, filling the docket in that office.
Starcher, who died last week on the day before Christmas at the age of 80, would go on to earn a place on West Virginia Supreme Court before he was done.
It was always about social justice, Stewart said.
Which included giving legal voice, she stressed, to those who might not have one otherwise.
In her case, what it wasn’t about, she said, was race – for the sake of race.
Or, quotas over quality.
“Judge Starcher wanted his office to reflect what society really looks like,” Stewart said.
“I was the first African-American president of the West Virginia Association of Probation Officers and I’m proud of that – because he taught me to be proud of who I am.”
Beginnings
Starcher grew up in Roane County and motored straight to Morgantown and WVU after his graduation from Spencer High School in 1960.
Four years later, he was in possession of a bachelor’s degree, and three years after that, he turned his tassel with the WVU College of Law’s Class of 1967.
As a young Morgantown attorney, he was elected to city council in 1970 and made an unsuccessful run for sheriff in 1972.
He won another election four years later, though, as circuit judge, where he was known for his blue jeans, which could be spied under his robe.
Jack and Jean Hammersmith were part of that first star-spangled campaign.
The husband and wife got to Morgantown by way of WVU, where Jack was a professor in the Department of History, with an expertise in Chinese and Japanese society and culture.
Jean, also an educator, worked in Monongalia’s school district. She was the local director of Head Start, a federal program geared to the empowerment of children and their parents from economically disadvantaged households.
She also taught advanced placement history at University High School.
History and politics were always part of their dinner table discourse.
The couple on their first night in Morgantown unpacked their car and listened to radio reports of the contentious 1968 Democratic convention as they settled into the place where they would make their lives.
Sitting around the Starcher table during those Sunday afternoon campaign sessions was heady stuff, Jack Hammersmith said.
There was always a pot of chili and coffee going. And campaign signs to be painted.
Starcher kids romped with Hammersmith kids, while the big people in the kitchen talked politics, the professor said.
“We were part of something.”
Achievements (and missteps)
In Mon’s court rooms, Starcher heard asbestos-injury cases and was a proponent of alternative learning options and community service for nonviolent offenders, be they juvenile or adult.
In 1996, the denim-clad circuit judge was elected to the state Supreme Court, serving as chief justice from 1999-2003.
There, he often helped editorial writers and opposing pundits make political hay.
That’s because he was outspoken – and he didn’t always recuse himself from cases where a conflict of interest (for him) easily became part of the argument.
Even so, Jack Hammersmith contends, those negatives didn’t intrude on Starcher’s ability to preside over cases fairly.
“He had a real instinct for the underdog,” the professor said.
Drywall justice (and one more thank you)
And loyalty, he added, chuckling.
While he and Jean were sitting in Starcher’s kitchen helping plan the campaign, a contractor was working in their own kitchen.
That is, until he found out the people who wanted the new cabinets and countertops were campaigning for Starcher.
Then, he bailed.
Leaving a partially completed kitchen, which stayed that way – until Starcher intervened.
“Larry knew how to do all that stuff,” Jack said. “He finished our kitchen.”
Both the Hammersmiths and Stewart said the judge finished his time on Earth, on his terms.
He fought a debilitating and deadly illness right up to Christmas Eve. Survivors include a wife and three grown children. His funeral plans weren’t immediately known.
Starcher and Stewart talked regularly, after both had retired and especially during his illness, she said.
“I’m sad I won’t be able to pick up the phone now,” she said.
What would she say?
“I’d say, ‘Thank you, Judge Starcher. You believed in me and gave me a career. May you rest in peace.’”
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