About Me

The day after high school graduation, I was at Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego. I enlisted for the same reason eighteen year-olds always have signed up – I needed money (the economy in the late 70s was not great).  Also I knew I’d live forever, and I was patriotic. It was a few years after Vietnam, and I knew how rotten that draft was.  And I literally owed my life to America – my dad came to the United States when he was seven, fleeing with my Jewish grandparents from Hitler’s Germany the last year before WW II began.  I had been raised on tales from my mother’s family of ancestors who fought with Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys in the Battle of Saratoga during the Revolution.  I also sensed I needed discipline.  My parents were divorced, and I ran a little too wild in high school.

I learned two key lessons in the Marine Corps.  First, as my drill instructors taught, we all wore green. Black or white, city or country, rich or poor, we were all Marines.  I also learned “Semper Fi,” always faithful.  If you promise to do something, you do it. Period.

I wasn’t a great Marine.  I was much more Gomer Pyle than Chesty Puller.  I was a Remington warrior, a clerk who typed DD-214s, a peacetime reservist for six years.  I got more from the Corps than the Corps got from me.

My parents had been a “Bridgette loves Bernie” couple – an Irish Catholic woman with a Jewish boy.  The marriage was not ideal – they divorced when I was thirteen.  My dad climbed the economic ladder like so many immigrants before him.  He became a professor at Washington University.  As he would later admit, he cared more about his laboratory than his family.  But he taught me this: Work hard. Then work harder.

After my parents separated, my mom needed a job so she went to community college to get certified as a paralegal.  I washed dishes after school and gave her most of the money. We depended on food stamps during that time. Mom needed a hand up, not a hand out, and she got it from the government.  She worked as a paralegal for decades.  From Mom I learned optimism, resiliency, and responsibility.

With scholarships, student loans, work-study, pay from Uncle Sam, and help from family, I graduated from Colgate University magna cum laude in 1983 and Duke University Law School with high distinction in 1986.  I worked for a little more than a year as a baby securities lawyer in St. Louis to pay off my student loans quickly.  The pay was good, but the work was dull.  So I became a public defender in St. Louis.

I tried a lot of cases in St. Louis and learned my trade. And I learned how messed up laws can be, just in time for the crack epidemic that swept American cities in the late 1980s. Crack was a form of cocaine generally smoked by ghetto blacks.  It was severely punished.  Powder cocaine was generally used by suburban rich white kids, snorted in discos, and much more lightly punished.  I tried a lot of cases in St. Louis and learned my trade.

My life had big changes in 1990.  I took a job as a district public defender in Farmington.  It was a promotion and paid better.  My district covered Ste. Genevieve, St. Francois, Washington, Madison, Iron, and Reynolds counties.  I was the boss of two other attorneys.  (The Farmington public defender office now has about fifteen lawyers.)  I moved to a house on a hillside near Lawrenceton in Ste. Gen county, a beautiful area ten miles west of Bloomsdale.  About all I knew about Ste. Gen County was from camping at Hawn State Park in wilder high school days.

But the biggest change in 1990 was marrying Holly Gayle Simons from Oklahoma City.  For twenty-six years we lived contentedly in the boondocks.

    My first jury trial down here I defended a guy accused of trying to run over a state trooper in St. Francois County.  I got snookered by the St. Francois County prosecutor, a fine lawyer named Gary Stevenson.  I wanted the trial to be moved away from Farmington and he suggested Perry County.  I figured, why not?  When I arrived for the first day of the trial in Perryville I saw the stone commemorating Trooper James M. Froemsdorf  who died in the line of duty with the Highway Patrol on I-55 near Brewer.  I lost the case. 

But I didn’t always lose cases.  I won a murder trial in Ste. Genevieve.  The sheriff then was Robert “Rabbit” Macklin.  After the trial, Rabbit asked if I’d run for prosecutor in Ste. Genevieve County.  I told him I wasn’t from Ste. Gen, I wasn’t a church goer, and that Holly and I were basically hermits. He said, “Run anyway,” which I did.

I was elected prosecutor and held the post in Ste. Gen for a total of 20 years.  For the first twelve years, the position was part-time, so I had a private law practice as well.  I then ran against an incumbent circuit judge in the Democratic primary in 2006.  I knew I had only a ghost of a chance, in part because our circuit judges seem to always come from St. Francois County.  I came close, but fell short.

After four years in private practice I again was re-elected prosecutor, which then became full time.  I served for eight more years. In 2017,  I decided not to run again, largely because I was tired of judging people.  With so many cases resolved with plea bargains, a prosecutor often does more judging than the fellow on the bench in the robe. 

My last term as prosecutor brought one other change.  My wife Holly went for two days unable to keep food down.  She never liked seeing a doctor, but I badgered her to go. She wound up in the emergency room at Jefferson Memorial.  I drove there like a bat out of hell. 

It was bad. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.. Chemo didn’t work. Ultimately nothing did.  She wanted to die at home, looking over our beautiful valley. It never came to pass.  She died April 19, 2017 at Jefferson Memorial, age sixty.  I muddled through with help from many.  God bless them all.

I have been amazingly lucky in some respects.  I had Holly for 26 years. And I have since married a wonderful woman, Susie Johnson.  Sometimes lightning – the good kind - strikes twice.

Susie and I now live in an old house (1845) in downtown Ste. Genevieve with two dogs who don’t like the way I garden. For the last eight years, I have continued practicing law but consider myself now retired. 

I was thrilled to receive the award of Contract Public Defender of  the Year last spring for work I’ve done representing poor folks accused of crimes. I am still asked how I could bring myself to represent people I knew were guilty.  The answer is simple. The Constitution provides all of us with the right to counsel.  The hard job was representing people I believed were innocent.  They also have that right and you then have the weight of the world on your shoulders, trying to get them justice.

I have dreaded writing this short autobiography.  But I think every candidate owes voters an explanation of who they are and how they got here. I fought loads of fights in courtrooms, although no more. I still have plenty of fire in my belly but feel the fight’s moved elsewhere.  America is under the worst threat of my lifetime.  Please let me fight for you and our country.