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The personable judge, who never allowed his judicial stature to overshadow his friendships and love of his Olympia community, is not discarding his black robe by choice. After 17 years on the state’s highest court, Alexander must step down because he reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 this year.
“I don’t like it, but it’s in the state constitution,” Alexander said recently as he prepared to return to the nonjudicial life he left behind when then-Gov. Dan Evans appointed him a Thurston-Mason County Superior Court judge on July 16, 1973, in a sweltering,
packed courtroom in the old Thurston County Courthouse on Capitol Way.
“I have to leave one year before completion of my term – that bothers me,” Alexander told a gathering of Panorama Republicans earlier this month.
But Alexander is not one to harbor resentment or anger. He leaves behind a reputation as a hard-working trial judge who treated defendants and plaintiffs with empathy and a Supreme Court justice who made the state’s highest court less imposing and more accessible to the residents of the state.
A case in point: He helped introduce public television to the Supreme Court 16 years ago and, inversely, resisted efforts to install metal detectors at the entrance to the court’s Temple of Justice domain after 9/11.
“This is the people’s building – it should be open to the public,” he said simply.
TRIBUTES
As Alexander’s judicial career winds down, tributes roll off the tongues of those who know him well, including U.S. District Court Chief Magistrate Judge Karen Strombom of Tacoma.
As a young woman 40 years ago, Strombom served at Alexander’s legal secretary in an Olympia law firm. “He was a very hard worker who took the time to teach me about legal issues,” she recalled. “I used to love to go up to the courtroom and watch him try a case.”
Inspired by Alexander, Strombom returned to college, earned her law degree and served as a Pierce County Superior Court judge for 13 years prior to joining the federal judiciary.
“He is my mentor and so highly regarded in the legal community,” she said.
Olympia attorney Steve Bean has known Alexander for more than 60 years and was one year behind him in law school at the University of Washington.
“Since 1965, I’ve known every chief justice of the Supreme Court and by far, Alexander is number one,” Bean said. “He has no agenda, just an innate sense of justice and fairness.”
“When you think about all the things that make up Gerry Alexander, there is a pattern – he loves people and he has a sense of responsibility to serve and improve their lot,” Supreme Court Justice Barbara Madsen said.
STANDOUT CASE
In his time on the state Supreme Court, Alexander heard more than 2,300 oral arguments and wrote some 400 opinions. He said the case that garnered the most attention was a 5-4 decision in 2006 that upheld 1998 state legislation that banned same-sex marriage.
Alexander, a court moderate and often a swing vote when the nine-member court is sharply divided, sided with the majority in a case where emotions ran high among supporters of traditional marriage and gay rights advocates.
“We were very, very disappointed when Alexander joined the (Justice Barbara) Madsen majority,” recalled Josh Friedes, director of marriage equality for Equal Rights Washington, a Seattle-based gay rights group. “Justice Alexander failed to understand the lives of gay and lesbian families.”
Twice married and the father of three children and nine grandchildren, Alexander said his personal opinion on gay marriage is evolving.
“Eventually the state Legislature will write a statute, or the citizens will approve by initiative, allowing gay marriage,” he said. “As a citizen, I would probably vote for broadening the definition of marriage.”
HISTORICAL INJUSTICES
During Alexander’s time on the Supreme Court, cases involving historical racial injustice have been handled in interesting ways. For instance:
• In March 2001, the court took up the case of Takuji Yamashita, who immigrated to Tacoma from Japan in the 1890s and was a member of the UW law school’s first graduating class in 1902. But the state Supreme Court denied him citizenship, which barred him from practicing law.
In a Tacoma courtroom packed with hundreds of supporters, including relatives from Japan, the Supreme Court posthumously admitted Yamashita as an honorary member of the Washington State Bar Association.
“That was a proud moment and my first year as chief justice,” Alexander said. “We try to undo mistakes of the past.”
• In December 2004, Alexander helped arrange a historical court of inquiry, which convened in the basement of the state Historical Museum in Tacoma to hear arguments in the case of Nisqually Chief Leschi, who was executed for the alleged murder of Washington territorial militia Col. Abrams Moses in 1855.
The seven judges, headed up by Chief Justice Alexander, ruled that Leschi was an enemy combatant of the Indian Wars of 1855-56 and not guilty of murder.
While the ruling had no legal standing, it was a moment of vindication and pride for tribal members.
RUNNING FOR JUDGE
In his five decades as a trial and appeals court judge, Alexander faced only three contested elections, He won them all, but his 2006 re-election bid for Supreme Court was a bruising affair.
Political ads paid for by the building industry in support of conservation property rights attorney John Groen of Bellevue attacked Alexander as too old to capably serve on the Supreme Court. With more than $2 million spent by the candidates and their backers, it was the most expensive race in state Supreme Court history.
“That race was tough on Alexander – it aged him,” Bean said.
Alexander disagreed with his old friend.
“There were no lingering effects from that race – it sort of energized me,” he said. “I look back on it as a good experience. A tough campaign like that gets judges out of the ivory tower.”
However, he said, there was one campaign ad against him paid for by the Building Industry of Washington that angered him to no end.
The ad showed Alexander in a show of support in 2003 for fellow Supreme Court Judge Bobbe Bridge the day after she was arrested in Seattle on charges of drunken driving and hit and run. The ad did not include his statement that she would have to pay the legal consequences of her actions.
“They made it sound like I thought Bridge was above the law – now that really irritated me,” Alexander said.
As the longest-serving Supreme Court chief justice in state history, Alexander worked to increase state funding of the courts system, took the Supreme Court on the road so residents around the state could see it in action, and helped to limit closed-door proceedings and the sealing of court files in the lower courts.
Over the years, the doors to his chambers were open and he accepted phone calls without screening.
“I’ve tried to make the courts more open and transparent,” he said. “I’m an accessible person, and I do like people.”
HE HIRED LOCAL
Over the years, Alexander has served with 20 percent of the Supreme Court justices, going back to statehood. He’s also had 31 law clerks. Qualified candidates from Olympia always had a leg up on the rest.
“I did try to hire local people,” he admitted. “And I do keep tabs on my clerks after they leave – they are like family.”
“It was an amazing experience,” said Olympia attorney Jennifer Ammons, who clerked for Alexander in 2006-07. “I respect him so much.”
Ammons said Alexander has a knack for basing his legal opinions on case law and the state constitution, not allowing his own political beliefs to influence him.
“He looked at the law for what it was, not what he wanted it to be,” Ammons said.
While on the bench, Alexander maintained his strong ties to the community, staying active in the Olympia Rotary Club, the Olympia High School Alumni Association and the Thurston County Bar Association, to name a few groups.
Olympia High School student body president in 1954, Alexander has fond memories of high school and keeps his 1954 high school annual in his Supreme Court chambers to share with visitors. He was inducted into the high school’s Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame in the first class in 2004 and since then has served on the committee that picks each year’s inductees.
“He’s very unassuming and the most civil man I’ve ever met,” said Charlie Kirry, OHS alumni assocation president. As with many Olympians, Kirry has a personal connection to the retiring justice.
“I was his next-year neighbor as a boy and used to mow his lawn,” Kirry said.
Alexander also helped establish a schloarship fund on behalf of a high school classmate and football teammate – Ron Dodge, an all-American baseball player and Navy fighter pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and died as a prisoner of war. (Dodge was a cousin of staff writer John Dodge).
“Here’s something you may not have known about your cousin,” Alexander said during an interview in his chambers. “He brought an egg salad sandwich for lunch every day in high school.”
STILL ON THE JOB
As for the future, Alexander has announced he’s joining the Olympia law firm of Bean, Gentry, Wheeler & Peternell, PPLC, specializing in mediation, appellate case consulting and judge pro tem assignments.
First, he has some Supreme Court cases to wrap up in which arguments have been heard but opinions are still pending. He’ll be assigned a small office in the Temple of Justice to complete his high court tasks.
“It takes about a year to completely flush a justice out of the system,” Alexander said.
Then he’ll be able to shed his judicial persona, which court observers have labeled assiduously apolitical.
“One of the first things I want to do is put a political election yard sign out in my yard,” said Alexander, a self-described progressive Republican.
At a Temple of Justice celebration of Alexander’s career this month, more than 400 people attended. “I’m really humbled by this,” Alexander said as he looked out on the appreciative crowd that included teammates from his 1954 Olympia High School football team, law school classmates, fraternity brothers, neighbors, fellow Olympia Rotarians, history buffs and, of course, a whole lot of lawyers and judges.
“How privileged I feel to have served for 381/2 years,” he said. “I loved being a judge from the moment I was sworn in.”
John Dodge: 360-754-5444
jdodge@theolympian.com
