Portrait of a judge: MacKenzie is honored in Morristown

When Kenneth MacKenzie was a kid in the 1940s, he walked past the Morris County Courthouse every day from his Western Avenue home to the Maple Avenue School.

Beyond Court Street, at the bottom of Ann Street, was a blacksmith. Morristown, evidently, had horses back then.

The horses and blacksmith are long gone. So is the Maple Avenue School. But the courthouse remains. And it’s where MacKenzie, who spent 33 years there as a judge, looks forward to spending eternity.

His portrait was unveiled Friday before friends and family, and it will occupy a prominent place in Courtroom 17, where he presided for much of his career.

“I will be hanging around there,” MacKenzie, 86, joked after a series of emotional, and sometimes humorous, testimonials by jurists and former law clerks who praised him as a mentor and role model.

MacKenzie left the bench in September 2006 upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70. He described the portrait as his legacy to a place that is dear to him.

“It’s kind of reassuring to know that when my time is up on this earth and I move on to the next challenge, I’ll still be here at the same time!”

After graduating from Morristown High School and Princeton University–where his basketball play landed him on the cover of Sports Illustrated–MacKenzie earned a law degree from Rutgers and started a private practice. His judicial career spanned the gamut of cases, from criminal to chancery.

Forty-seven of his decisions were sufficiently precedent-setting to merit publication by the judiciary, an “amazing” record for a trial court judge, said Superior Court Judge James DeMarzo, who presided over Friday’s ceremony.

Appellate courts upheld MacKenzie’s rulings 97 percent of the time, according to retired state Supreme Court Justice and fellow Morristown High alumnus Stewart Pollock.

“Even Aaron Judge couldn’t beat that,” Pollock said, getting a laugh from the packed gallery in the building’s Historic Courtroom.

That’s where Antoine LeBlanc was sentenced in 1833 to hang on the Morristown Green for a triple murder–a trial that MacKenzie, an avid historian, has re-enacted over the years.

‘DUBIOUS, AT BEST’

Friday’s testimonials painted a picture of a fair-minded jurist with compassion and a wry wit.

Gillian Hemstead, who clerked for MacKenzie, said his example continues to inspire her as an assistant public defender.

A sharp legal mind with a “steady moral compass,” the judge also “demonstrated remarkable compassion and empathy for all who entered his courtroom. He understood that justice is not only about interpreting the law, but also about understanding the human condition,” Hemstead said.

“In every case that came before him, he took time to listen attentively, to weigh the evidence, to deliver verdicts that were not only legally sound, but also considered the impact on the lives of those involved.”

Superior Court Judge Michael Paul Wright, the only African American judge in the Morris-Sussex vicinage, fondly recalled how MacKenzie mentored him as a young lawyer.

“Judge MacKenzie taught me…it is not enough to be a good judge. Rather, it is far more important to be a good person,” Wright said. “And I’ve learned over the decades you cannot truly be the former without first being the latter.”

A gifted singer, Wright closed the ceremony by duetting with a video of himself performing God Bless America. He credited MacKenzie with boosting his confidence as an attorney.

Early on, the judge took him to the tony Grand Café, and to the Morristown Field Club. (MacKenzie drubbed him in tennis). Wright said they even teamed to wallop members of the New York Giants in a charity basketball game.

A pivotal career moment, Wright said, was Judge MacKenzie entrusting him to represent someone as a medical guardian. Wright remembered his trepidation a week later, when MacKenzie summoned him to explain his bill for that representation.

What Wright heard from the judge astonished him.

MacKenzie informed him that while he appreciated his attempt to not over-bill, “an attorney deserved recompense commensurate with the quality of the work performed.”

“He tore up the bill and told me to try again,” Wright said, his relief still palpable.

Tom Reed, a retired Sussex County assistant prosecutor, traveled from New Hampshire to wax nostalgic about his 1981 clerkship, “an absolute hoot.”

“You can’t imagine how much fun we had,” said Reed, one of 33 aspiring lawyers trained by MacKenzie over the decades.

The local court system was smaller in Reed’s era–the Morris County Courthouse still had a law library–and the legal community “actually socialized,” with cocktails on Friday afternoon and trips to Yankee games, he said.

And the state criminal code was in its infancy. “There were a lot of gaps to fill in,” Reed said. “Being the judge’s clerk was a lot of fun, intellectually.”

DeMarzo said MacKenzie’s love for the law was infectious.

“When you left Judge MacKenzie’s courtroom you always felt smarter…he always made you feel like a lawyer, whether you won or you lost.”

MacKenzie also had a genteel way of letting attorneys know when their arguments were weak. DeMarzo marveled at one such courtroom pronouncement:

“Sir,” MacKenzie told a lawyer, “I find your contentions to be dubious at best.”

MacKenzie shared his bemusement at the jubilant reaction of a defendant who misconstrued an admonishment about his “incredible” story. The defendant’s case was not credible. He lost.

‘IT LOOKS BETTER THAN ME’

MacKenzie said he liked the portrait, even though it portrays him with eyeglasses he no longer needs after cataract surgery.

“I think it looks better than me,” he quipped, after family members tugged off the drape, to applause from the gallery.

When Assignment Judge Stuart Minkowitz proposed the portrait last year, MacKenzie said, “I almost fell off my chair–and I was standing.”

Minkowitz snapped a photo, to spare MacKenzie from having to find time to pose. He maintains a busy schedule these days. His forced retirement didn’t sit well with him at first, however.

“New Jersey presumes that a judge has become senile by the time he or she reaches 70,” MacKenzie said at his retirement luncheon.

Justice Pollock offered his newly jobless friend some advice: “You really have to redefine yourself.”

That took about a month. Now, MacKenzie insists he does not miss the bench at all.

In addition to spending more time with Barbara, his wife of 58 years; daughters Amanda and Kara; and grandchildren Anabelle and Mack Plante and Teddy and Eloise Benchley, MacKenzie has immersed himself in civic life.

That includes lunch every other month with his buddies from Morristown High School, at a luncheonette owned by a friend and classmate who came to Friday’s unveiling.

“We usually count on 14 to 16 people, and we’re planning to have an official reunion this year,” said MacKenzie, from the Class of ’53. “We don’t think any class has had a 70th reunion before.”

The judge also is a member of the Caring Committee for the Princeton Class of 1957, which keeps in touch with classmates who are ill or face other difficulties.

“I think it’s important to keep the connection that was once strong, but grows weaker as people can’t directly participate,” he said.

MacKenzie has screened scholarship applications for the Community Foundation of New Jersey, and he enjoys emeritus status on the board of the Washington Association of New Jersey. With the Morristown Shakespeare Club, MacKenzie has recited Hamlet, Romeo and other famed characters, at readings in members’ homes.

His talks for the Great Horizons lecture series of the Morris School District Community School regularly sell out. And he continues his education at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Florham Institute for Lifelong Learning, a program enabling seniors to audit or enroll in classes on academic and informal topics.

Minkowitz had to attend another judge’s funeral on Friday. Judge DeMarzo, his pinch-hitter, praised Minkowitz for the portrait tradition, and for honoring retired judges while they still are alive.

DeMarzo, a judge since 2010, called it an “absolute privilege” to preside over MacKenzie’s day in court.

Smiling, he gave a personal account of MacKenzie’s talent for calming people down, even in retirement.

Awhile back, DeMarzo was umpiring his son’s Little League game. He called his son’s side out during a close play at first base.

“Booing was immense,” DeMarzo said. From behind him, he heard a voice:

“That was probably the toughest decision you made all week.”

It was Judge MacKenzie.

Correspondent Marion Filler contributed to this report.