Judge Paul Braden and Dr. John Broome, who were both honored posthumously with Luminary Awards by Leadership Tri-County Thursday evening, were two great men I feel privileged to have known personally.
Judge Braden loved being a judge. (I never could make myself call him by his first name.) Even when he didn’t have much time left, Judge Braden was still hearing cases on the bench.
I can remember one trial towards the end where he had another local judge on standby to take over in the afternoon, if he wasn’t feeling up to it after lunch. (It was kind of like a relief pitcher in a baseball game.) I remember one day the second judge, Rod Messer, ended up taking over in the afternoon for him.
In addition to serving as a Whitley and McCreary County Circuit Court Judge, Judge Braden was also named Chief Regional Judge for the Cumberland Region in 2009.
He was a student of the law. When the Kentucky General Assembly would pass new laws, Judge Braden was one of the people who would study those new laws and then teach the other judges about them.
He was so punctual you could set your watch by him. He very rarely ever started court late and on the occasions he did, there was always a good reason for it.
After he died in 2011, they dedicated a plaque in his honor in the Whitley County Judicial Center (the new courthouse in Williamsburg). Whitley Circuit Court Clerk Gary Barton and local attorney Howard Mann were in charge of the ceremony.
As the ceremony was getting close to starting late, I told two men, “This is for Judge Braden. We can’t start it late or he will come back and haunt all of us.” (I am pretty sure he would have too…LOL.)
Judge Braden always got up before the crack of dawn and exercised religiously. He often walked at the Corbin High School Track even in the rain. He didn’t eat sweets and had a very healthy diet. This was ironic given that he died from stomach cancer or something along those lines. Judge Braden, who maintained a very healthy weight, just kept losing pound after pound until his death.
For a college professor, Dr. Broome (I never could make myself call him John) was surprisingly tough guy. The second to last time I ever saw him was at a Williamsburg High School football game. He was sitting in a chair along the sidelines not far from the field of play.
All of a sudden, two players went barreling towards him as the play went out of bounds. Dr. Broome got knocked over like a bowling pin.
The two players rushed over to check on him. The 80-some-year-old popped right back up like it was nothing, which is something I doubt I could have done at the age of 20 years old.
The first time I ever heard Dr. Broome’s name was during freshmen orientation at what was then Cumberland College. I went to meet with my advisor who told me, “Dr. Broome wants you to take his class.”
I remember thinking, “Who the heck is Dr. Broome?”
As it turned out, Dr. Broome had my dad in class when he went to Cumberlands and remembered him. As I would later learn, Dr. Broome was someone who remembered most of his former students.
I never told Dr. Broome this, but I would have preferred taking U.S. History rather than World Civilization, which is what Dr. Broome taught. Nevertheless, I signed up for World Civilization in the fall and the second section of the class in the spring after Dr. Broome signed an override to get me into the full class.
It is obvious sometimes what a professor’s political leanings are – whether it is left or right – based upon what they say in class. I had no clue what Dr. Broome’s political leanings were until years after I took his class. I always just found that particularly impressive about the man.
Over the years, I would periodically run into Dr. Broome on the streets of Williamsburg, or he would come by my office to see me.
He read the newspaper regularly and my columns. This isn’t to say he always agreed with the opinion in my columns. We had a few, shall we say, spirited debates about some of them.
When he felt strongly about a few of columns, I encouraged him to write a letter to the editor outlining the other side of a particular argument. I am happy to say that at least a couple of times he did. He always had some good points.
One thing about Dr. Boome and Judge Braden is both men were wise enough to live by the principal of intelligent people can agree to disagree, which is something our society seems to have largely forgotten.
Maybe reading this column will encourage others to realize just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean you should hate them or they hate you. It is alright to agree to disagree. If anyone can take this message away from what you are reading here, then perhaps Dr. Broome and Judge Braden will have taught one more lesson.
