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The quotable Cathell
Retired Court of Appeals judge finds ‘a few things to say’ in newly published memoir
Listen to this articleJudge Dale R. Cathell recalls the knife fight that changed his life, recounts carrying a concealed handgun on the bench, blasts dilatory appellate jurists, bemoans retirement and contemplates death in a recently published, some-holds-barred memoir.
In “Wading Through the Swamp: The Memoirs of a Bad Boy,” the retired Maryland Court of Appeals judge reveals a childhood marked by the loss of his father, who died when Cathell was 3, and too many fistfights in and around his Eastern Shore home to remember before he made a life-changing decision at age 18.
Cathell said he wrote the book for himself and for younger generations who never knew a time before television and refrigerator-freezers.
“I had things to say and I was getting old and afraid I would die before I got to say them,” Cathell, who turns 77 on July 30, said in a telephone interview. “Really, it’s just about a trip through life.”
With self-effacing humor, Cathell recalls in the book that several of his childhood fistfights arose because he had the same first name as 1940s movie actress Dale Evans, which “all the local guys thought… was a girl’s name.”
In the interview, the Berlin native said fistfights also were a common occurrence in the fishing industry, in which he worked before college.
“When you’re working on the boats, you’re associated with a lot of tough people, so you end up living a rough life,” he said.
But one fight in particular was life-altering and set him toward a career in the law.
Cathell was 18 in August 1955, when he was among a group of “young hooligans” who got into a fight with a similar group just north of Ocean City.
“I don’t remember what the fight was about, if I ever knew,” Cathell writes. “In any event, knives came out and people were cut. It made me think about where I would end up if I kept doing idiot things and I didn’t like where that place was going to be.”
He enlisted in the Air Force the next day.
“I got the heck out of there,” Cathell said. “I figured it was time to make a change.” In the book, he calls it “one of the best decisions I would ever make.”
After four years in the Air Force, Cathell went to the University of Maryland, then to Mt. Vernon School of Law before joining the Maryland bar in 1967.
Cathell returned to the Eastern Shore and spent the next 13 years in private practice and as city attorney for the Town of Ocean City — a time marked by frequent battles with then-Worcester County State’s Attorney John L. “Jack” Sanford, who, according to Cathell, went from fixing traffic tickets to thwarting a murder investigation.
After receiving death threats during those years, Cathell said he armed himself with a shotgun but fortunately never had to use it.
It would not be the last time Cathell carried a gun on the job. He was named to the District Court in Worcester County in 1980, marking the start of a judicial career that would land him on all four levels of the Maryland court system — and one that would make him a few enemies.
When he was named to the Court of Appeals in 1998 and for years thereafter, the building had no security at the entrance. This was especially disconcerting to Cathell when the Maryland State Police told him that someone he had sent to prison for 30 years was now being released after 20 and had threatened to kill him.
“I had made up my mind that I wasn’t taking any chances — and I wasn’t given much choice,” Cathell writes. “Accordingly, I wore a handgun to the Court of Appeals (I had a concealed weapon permit) and sat with it on under my robes for several months even when I was on the bench, until security was approved for the court.
In the interview, Cathell said he told his fellow judges about the .40 caliber gun, spurring those on either side of him to slide their chairs over a few inches.
He still arms himself “when necessary and appropriate,” he writes — and so does his wife, Charlotte. “We always have quick access to weapons at home.”
Morality and mortality
In his book, Cathell said the Court of Appeals has been rightly criticized in recent years for having issued many decisions years after the cases were argued, calling timeliness a matter of “moral and professional authority.” The delays spurred Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera to announce last September — about two months after she succeeded Robert M. Bell — that the court’s decisions would be rendered no later than the Aug. 31 after the cases are argued.
The Maryland Constitution forced Cathell from the Court of Appeals on July 30, 2007, when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. Cathell recounts that he did not handle the “traumatic event” of retirement well.
“I’d been going all out for around forty years, and all of a sudden I was sitting too often in a chair on a week day looking at trees and birds instead of listening to some of the finest lawyers in the world explain complex legal issues,” Cathell writes. “But you make do — rather your wife makes you do.”
These days, Cathell continues to hear cases by special assignment from Barbera when an active member of the court recuses himself or herself from the case. He also does mediation.
In the book’s final chapter, Cathell writes of his own mortality.
“I suppose that when the end is near, I’ll want as many extra days as I can get,” he states. “But I’ve known for my whole life that I was going to die someday, so it will come as no surprise. It’s expected. Hopefully, I’ll do it right — if there is a right way to die. And I suppose that when I’m gone someone will say words about me. I wish I could hear them — or maybe not.”
