Fayette’s president judge looks back at legal career
William Franks is, well, frank about his dislike of goodbyes. “I’m just too sentimental for it,” he said recently.
So even if the state says he has to leave the county judgeship he’s held for the past 25 years, Franks hopes to stick around – as a senior judge.
If the state Supreme Court approves his request to become a senior judge, Franks could serve across the state and will have an office in the Fayette County courthouse. As a bonus, he could even be assigned to handle some things in the county.
Going on with work, even though he’s nearing his 71st birthday, is what Franks said he was brought to up to do.
His father, Ralph, retired from mining at 65 and then sought a job as a custodian. He stayed in that job until he was 90.
Franks hopes to follow in his father’s footsteps, working as long as he can. After all, as he said, he isn’t much for tinkering at home.
“I don’t know the right end of a screwdriver,” Franks said.
But as much as the mild-mannered Franks jokes, so does he mist up, sad to leave the post of judge, a job that’s been his life for a quarter-century. He said he will take cases up until the last day of his term, and he presided over criminal cases through the November term of criminal court week.
Franks ascended to the bench in 1978 after a successful campaign bid for the seat vacated when Judge James A. Reilly retired. And when former Judge Richard Cicchetti stepped down as the county’s president judge in 1995, Franks took over as the head of Fayette’s judges.
Judge Conrad B. Capuzzi will be the county’s new president judge.
Before his time as a judge, Franks spent 20 years practicing law in Fayette County. The two years prior were as a judge advocate general during his service in the Army.
Franks said he enjoyed legal practice, but he would not advise any lawyer now to be a sole practitioner, working with all different types of law alone.
“It’s too much work,” said Franks, who often worked 15-hour days six days a week to keep on top of his caseload as an attorney. He said he luckily had an understanding family, who took vacations without him so that he didn’t get too behind on his work.
But his time in the office was well spent. In addition to garnering legal experience that later helped him to become a judge, Franks learned practical lessons.
As a man who admittedly could not say “no” to anyone, Franks said he once took on a client who wanted to pay him for services with a cow.
At that point, he learned the value of “no” and refused the cow.
Although he never got paid for that legal service, he did learn a lesson from the experience. A few years later when a different client wanted to pay him with snow tires, he accepted.
When he first set up practice in the county in 1959, Franks said, his office was next to the courthouse, and he had a deal that lawyers today just won’t find.
For $35 a month, he rented an office that included a desk, bookcase and coat rack, and he was able to use the law library of other lawyers in the building. He borrowed a fellow attorney’s secretary to do typing and run the office.
During his 20 years of legal practice, he spent eight years as an assistant prosecutor for the county.
Although he is glad for the honor of being a county judge, Franks said he didn’t start out with ambitions to be one.
“I was satisfied to be a lawyer,” said Franks, but Reilly’s retirement offered an opportunity that he took.
So, for the past 25 years, Franks is the first to say that the law has been his life.
“I truly enjoy it. There have been ups and downs, but you learn to roll with the punches,” he said.
While he found the administrative part of the job tedious, Franks said he enjoyed hearing cases. His favorite to preside over were adoptions. People who took in children and made them a part of a family has warmed his heart over the years.
“There has to be a reward for them someplace,” he said.
Conversely, Franks said he had the most difficulty handling custody cases, in which parents often used their children as pawns in divorce proceedings.
“On one end of the spectrum, you have cases of people who want to adopt kids, and then there are people with children who don’t know where they’re going to sleep tonight (because of custody proceedings),” he said.
His departure from the day-to-day duties of a judge was not marked with a big farewell party.
Franks’ stenographers asked court employees to come and have coffee with their boss early one morning. The flier they passed out said “No gifts. No goodbyes. Just coffee.”
“I just don’t do well with goodbyes. I kept telling them, ‘I’ll see you later,'” said Franks.
He said he is hopeful to hear from the Supreme Court soon, affirming his petition to be a senior judge. But he hasn’t ruled out mediation or teaching if that doesn’t happen.
“I’m healthy. I feel good. I don’t know what I would do sitting at home,” he said.