This Memorial Day weekend, I lost my grandfather and Maine has lost one of her most dedicated public servants. The aging process does not discriminate, and after a long and healthy life, Justice James P. Archibald of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine has finally left us, this time irrevocably at the age of 94.

Although his physical person is no longer with us, his legacy of wisdom, reasonableness, fairness and dedication to public service lives on in the countless people he touched and the many institutions he helped build.

Whether it is the Houlton Regional Hospital, the County Courthouse on Court Street, the First National Bank, the Houlton Farms Dairy or the Unitarian-Universalist Church, his imprint on the town of Houlton and the state of Maine is palpable everywhere. A walk through Houlton with my grandfather, where he was affectionately referred to by so many as simply “the Judge,” was the most thrilling experience for a grandson. Most exciting of all were the occasional policemen pulling up to his house on Putnam Avenue in order to ask the Judge a question or execute a warrant.

Every grandchild looks up to his elders, but in my case it was that much more obvious to me, even as a 7-year-old, that my grandfather was a man of influence. He must have been aware of how I and his other grandchildren looked up to him; he was our hero.

All seven of us live in different states and countries, yet we all internalized the lessons he taught each and every one of us: treat everyone, irrespective of their station in life or personal views, with dignity and respect and above all to be reasonable.

Dignity, fairness, reasonableness and respect were the organizing principles of his long and distinguished judicial career. I marvel at how careers and legacies are built by happenstance. Having already served as the Aroostook County Attorney, in the United States Navy, and as Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Maine, my grandfather was not foreign to public service. However, when he received the call from then-Gov. Edmund Muskie asking him to consider an appointment to the Superior Court in 1956, the salary for a Superior Court Judge was $7,000, and the court traveled across the state while in session, meaning a lot of time away from home.

This was not insignificant for a family man with a wife and two young children who was finally settling down into private practice. The day he received the call, he came home to discuss the exciting opportunity with my late grandmother. Like any good lawyer, he prepared a sheet with two columns; the column on the left was entitled “pros,” and the column on the right was entitled “cons.” The left side of the list was long and the right

side of the list was short.

As he began going through his reasoned analysis, my grandmother cut him off and asked him a simple question: “Jim, do you want to be a judge or don’t you?” Somewhat startled, he responded, “I suppose I do.” In that moment a 50-year judicial career at the trial, appellate and supreme courts was born.

Over the last number of years and particularly while in law school, I would ask my grandfather theoretical questions about “the role of the judge” in search of his overarching legal and judicial philosophy. My grandfather explained to me that he understood and approached the law pragmatically . He was not interested in “theoretical problems brought before theoretical courts”; on the contrary, he was interested in how to solve the practical problems of actual litigants brought before him.

As he once noted in a speech to the Unitarian-Universalist Church, “my colleagues on the appellate court often accuse me of being pragmatic in my approach to the law –

if that is the case, I plead guilty.”

My grandfather’s pragmatism is rooted in New England’s political philosophy and recalls a quote attributed to a student of the great German philosopher Hegel: ” Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

My grandfather’s world was Houlton, Maine, New England and the United States. He worked to change that world by striving to be fair, honest and reasonable in every challenge he took up. He changed the world by affecting each and every person he encountered, lighting up a room with his humor, and steadying difficult situations with his reserve and sharp mind. Houlton and Maine were very fortunate to have had him.

As he noted in an interview on these pages nearly 10 years ago, my grandfather’s closing argument summarizing his career was his hope that others considered him to have been a “fair” and “reasonable” judge.

Rest assured, grandfather, the verdict is in: you are remembered by so many as the fair and reasonable “Judge,” and you are remembered by us as our beloved grandfather. We miss you already and will remember you always.

Ben Archibald is an attorney and lives in Manhattan with his wife Abigail. He spent many summers visiting his grandparents in Houlton.