Once a boy with an uncertain future, retiring Columbus judge reflects on journey to bench
Billy Rumer was 12 years old when he decided he wanted to become a lawyer, after reading about Abraham Lincoln in the school library at Johnson Elementary in Columbus.
He loved history books, and was impressed by stories of Lincoln trying cases as a young circuit lawyer.
He was well on his way to a career in law in the early 1970s, when he and his father Edward drove past the Columbus Government Center that back then was brand new. His father pointed to it and said, “Billy, one day you’re going to be a judge in that building.”
The son scoffed.
Many days have passed since the father’s prediction came true, and today Judge William Rumer at age 71 is starting to see his career in the rearview mirror.
He retires Aug. 31, intending to travel abroad with his wife of 45 years, Becky, and spend more time with his four children and seven grandchildren.
Both his father and his brother Danny died at 72, he said, and he’s mindful of his mortality. His spouse and children feel he’s worked enough, though he hopes to continue serving part-time as a senior judge.
If appointed a senior judge, he still may have an office somewhere in the Government Center, as his father foresaw 50 years ago, but it won’t be the one he has now, on the 10th floor, with expansive views of the horizon from north to west. (And with occasional flooding from recurring problems with the aging building.)
Rumer leaves as Columbus decides whether to replace the government complex, and as the courts finally rebound after a year-long COVID-19 lockdown.
‘Can’t let the bad guys keep you from having a life’
The pandemic was a factor in Rumer’s retirement, he said: He didn’t like the online Zoom hearings the courts had to switch to, as the coronavirus prevented people from gathering in-person.
“Personally, I like to see live people,” he said. The coronavirus crisis was a sign to him that, “This is probably a better time for me to stop.”
He no longer will face the courtroom drama of presiding over major murder cases, nor the threats on his life like he got in 2015, during the trial of Michael Jerome “Big Smoove” Johnson, convicted of killing a Columbus jewelry store manager during a robbery.
Before he was sentenced, Johnson cursed the court and claimed he was railroaded. Rumer let the profanity pass, pausing only to ask whether Johnson’s attorney had anything to add.
“After he said that to me, I knew what he wanted: He wanted me to blow up and be a television judge,” Rumer recalled. “I knew what response he wanted from me, and I knew he absolutely wasn’t going to get it.”
Rumer sentenced Johnson to life without parole. Having been hunted by one of Johnson’s relatives, the judge left the Government Center that evening with a deputy escort, yet he still got stopped at a state patrol license check on River Road, where he had to warn the state trooper he was armed with two guns, he said.
Despite the risk of retaliation from vengeful criminals or their allies, the judge typically walks alone to lunch each day downtown, a habit he’s always had, he said. Sometimes he has a gun, sometimes not, he added.
“You can’t let the bad guys keep you from having a life,” he said. “They don’t know if I’m carrying a gun or not.”
Though he let Johnson’s outburst go, he emphasizes proper courtroom etiquette, insisting attorneys be punctual and prepared, and laments a certain loss of civility. “We’re not as courteous as we once were,” he said.
As a young lawyer, he was impressed by the dignity with which older colleagues solemnly stood and buttoned their coats before addressing a judge or jury.
He also was influenced by Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” about a white attorney representing a Black suspect in the Jim Crow South. He first read the book at age 16. As a judge, he has made pilgrimages to Monroeville, Alabama, on which the story’s setting is based, and joined re-enactments of the novel’s courtroom scenes, once serving on the jury.
He keeps the audio book on CDs in his car, occasionally replaying a disc at random.
Early family struggles
Though his career trajectory now seems like a predictable arc, starting from his seventh-grade interest in the law, his future was not certain, because his childhood was not secure.
Born in Columbus, he was the second of four siblings, his brother Danny three years older, brother Bobby five years younger, and sister Louise eight years his junior.
His father came to Columbus from Keyser, West Virginia, after serving with Gen. George Patton’s army in World War II, and married his mother here. But Rumer’s restless father did not want to stay. The family moved often, to Washington, D.C.; Bethesda, Maryland; Atlanta and Waycross, Georgia; and to various homes in Columbus, where sometimes they were evicted, after his father lost his job, Rumer said.
Today the judge counts 26 different homes he moved to in just a few years, and remembers going hungry when times got particularly hard.
“Me and my Dad sometimes would knock heads together,” Rumer said. “He was not a great provider, so we had some periods of time when things were not great. We moved a lot, got put out a lot, got collected on a lot. I would run out of school and not be able to eat, things like that.”
Because of his experiences growing up, he was thrifty with his finances: “I’m tight as a tick,” he said. He made sure he would never fail to provide for his own family.
Appointed to the bench
To hone his public speaking skills, as a teenager, he competed in speech contests and joined a debate team in high school. One competition took him to Emory University in Atlanta, where he fell in love with the campus, on a crisp autumn afternoon. He got a bachelor’s degree in history there in 1972, when an advisor told him he could go on to get a doctorate and become a professor.
He chose instead to take a scholarship to the University of Georgia, where he got his law degree in 1975, and came home to Columbus to marry Becky, with whom he would have two children, adopt two more, and foster five.
Later specializing in family law, he first joined a firm of eight lawyers who took a range of clients. He also got involved early on in Republican politics, and because of that partisanship, he had no chance at being appointed a judge until Republican Sonny Perdue defeated incumbent Democratic Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes in 2002.
Perdue appointed Rumer to the bench in 2010, to replace Judge Robert Johnston III, who resigned.
Eleven years later, the judge says his only advice for his successor is to find a good administrative assistant, like Ashley Yates, who has worked for him for 13 years, and handles scheduling and other routine office affairs so he doesn’t have to.
Deciding who will be the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit’s next Superior Court judge is left to another Republican governor, Brian Kemp, who will get a list of top nominees from the state Judicial Nominating Commission.
As Rumer spends time with his own family, in retirement, the one he grew up in is not the same. His mother died at age 58, in 1978. His Dad died in 1992, after following Rumer’s sister to California, where she’s a photographer. “He was just a rambling man,” the judge said.
After his father’s death, each child got a check for $22.78, from his estate, Rumer said. It has become a jest he can share with his own children: When his time is up and his will is read, they each may get a check, for $22.78, a wry gift from a man who worked hard so that they would always have a home, and never go hungry.