Judge Edward O’Farrell retires
Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Judge Edward O’Farrell retires after 39 years on the bench.
This is part one of a two-part story about Judge Edward O’Farrell.
Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Judge Edward O’Farrell gives the impression of a much younger man. At 74 "and a half," as he says, he is square-shouldered, erect, clear-eyed and vigorous, bounding up the four flights of steel stairs to his chambers each morning, breezing past panting colleagues half his age.
His well-known collar-length pepper hair is thick and scarcely touched by the salt of gray, his speech precise and effective without the need to pause in search of any word. His long, fine hands are unspotted and his trim body the result of regular workouts and distance running, coiled with ready energy.
Clearly, many years of hard work at the judge’s bench lie ahead, but those years are denied him. Ohio ends the careers of judges at 70, after which age they are no longer permitted to run for the job.
O’Farrell’s longtime seat will be filled in January by Judge-Elect Mike Ernest, and while O’Farrell wishes his successor well, he does not go eagerly into retirement while he remains at the top of his game.
Born in the small riverfront town of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin in 1946, where his father was the town pharmacist and mayor, O’Farrell’s early career was marked by restlessness, disappointments and the kinds of tests thrown in the way of some who are destined to make a mark in their own times.
“At 17,” O’Farrell said, “I had just graduated from a well-respected Catholic boarding high school and was preparing to enter a path for the priesthood. The school was a Jesuit school, and, of course, the Jesuits are educators. I come from a large, very Irish-Catholic family with five siblings and made the decision early on to continue study with the Jesuits. The path of study would have been a full 15 years from the beginning of studies to ordination.”
A young man barely out of school and bursting with energy, O’Farrell found himself in a monastic seminary in Minnesota in which speaking in Latin was required and isolation from the outside world was nearly total. “We were allowed to speak English for only one hour each day, were unable to communicate with our families and didn’t have access to news from any source,” he said.
O’Farrell found the study of classics and overall questions of faith and philosophy to be interesting, even as his interest in his chosen path waned, and for five years kept up preparations for a career in ministry, believing it was the will of his family he do so.
“I also believed in the mission of the Jesuits and the things they stood for but knew I didn’t want to continue to the priesthood,” O’Farrell said.
Eventually, he had to confess to his Jesuit brothers he doubted donning a black cassock was the best use to which he could put his life, and they sent him for more worldly study at Spring Hill College, a small campus in Mobile, Alabama with Jesuit connections.
“They wanted me to get greater experience of actual work in the outside world,” O’Farrell said. “And I got my undergraduate degree there.”
Much of the accumulated study to that point transferred easily as he entered more general studies at Spring Hill, and he graduated in two years, ready for law school.
Back in Wisconsin, O’Farrell had to come to grips with his doubts and brought them, not without fear, to his family. Their reaction to his news of career change surprised him.
"They said they had doubts about my starting out on a major life decision at such a young age. They were very supportive and encouraging of my switch to law. I thought they would be pleased and proud of me if I became a Catholic priest. It turned out they had doubts about such a pursuit themselves," O’Farrell said.
Applying at several institutions, O’Farrell entered the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana to begin studying law for the next three years. While there, an opportunity came from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to serve in the environmental section to work on cases in environmental law.
“I had no connection to Ohio at all up to that point. I had an offer from a firm in Wisconsin, another in Washington, D.C., and decided to take the offer from the Attorney General’s Office in Columbus, Ohio in 1973,” O’Farrell said. He was hired as a legal intern.
There was one more hurdle to clear before beginning the practice of law proper. “I had to take the Bar Examination, and I took the 24-hour essay and multiple-choice exam in July of that year. And I failed it the first time I took it by half a point. You have to accumulate a score of 270, and mine was 269 and a half. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I called to get the results, and the person was away from the phone so long I knew I’d failed. I felt like my whole life was hanging on this exam,” O’Farrell said.
Determined to not let things go, O’Farrell visited the two lawyers who administered and graded the test to see if he could get one to budge the half point.
“Neither of them would do that — no deal,” O’Farrell said. “At that time you could only fail the Bar Exam three times. After that you could not take it again and would have to find another career. I took it again in 1974 and failed again, this time by six points. I was up against it.”
O’Farrell had been undone again by his lack of interest in areas of law he did not intend to pursue — tax and business. “I had no interest in that work at all,” he said.
Of necessity, O’Farrell resigned his job at the Attorney General’s Office and took a job as assistant manager at a hair salon. “I had two children at home and needed to care for my family of course. So here I was, not working as a lawyer, not a lawyer, no future as a lawyer unless I passed that test. I skipped taking it the next year. I knew that if I failed it again, I was done,” he said.
Fortunately, the third time brought success. “They called me and said, ‘You made it — by three points,’” O’Farrell said. He was finally admitted to the Bar as a lawyer in 1975. He had no car and got around Columbus on a 10-speed bicycle.
At about the same time, O’Farrell had an experience that, for an aspiring young lawyer, was almost too good to be true. He found himself with the best seat in the nation for one of the biggest trials of the 20th century: the Watergate hearings.
It had come to light there were tapes of conversations made in the Oval Office between President Richard Nixon and others, and the tapes were going to be played in open court.
“This was a huge trial, likely to be the biggest of my lifetime, and I wanted to make sure I was in that courtroom to hear it. The 'smoking gun’ tapes were going to be played on a Monday morning, and I started hitchhiking from Columbus to Washington, D.C. at 7:30 on Saturday morning. It’s unbelievable, but I had my thumb out maybe 45 seconds and the second car stopped. The guy was on his way to Washington and gave me a ride the whole way,” O’Farrell said.
At 6 a.m. Monday morning, O’Farrell was at the federal courthouse for the trial, only to find a long line stretching around the block and virtually no possibility of getting in. The seats for observing lawyers were already filled.
“I was waiting in the corridor among all these people, and the court took a recess to prepare to play the tapes. A lawyer for Attorney General John Mitchell, Richard Hundley, passed by as court resumed, and I burst out and said, ‘Mr. Hundley, I’m an aspiring young lawyer from Columbus, Ohio. I’ve hitchhiked all the way to D.C. for this trial, and I can’t get in. Is there anything you can do to help me?’ He looked at me like ‘who the hell are you?’” O’Farrell said.
A few minutes later, a bailiff appeared at the open door to the courtroom and gestured to O’Farrell to come inside. “My heart was racing a mile a minute. I entered the courtroom, and there were the defendants and all the lawyers, and the bailiff said to me, ‘You can sit over there.’ The only seat was at the defense table beside Attorney General John Mitchell. And I sat down and held that seat for the next four days,” he said.
It left an indelible impression on the young man and fed his enthusiasm for his chosen career in law.