THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 5, 1995 TAG: 9501050043
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Profile
SOURCE: BY ANGELITA PLEMMER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 211 lines
ON HIS LAST DAY in office, Justice John Charles Thomas could barely speak as he placed his court keys and identification card into the hands of Chief Justice Harry L. Carrico.
There were tears and moments of awkward silence as Thomas said goodbye to colleagues and staff at the Virginia Supreme Court in Richmond. As he made his way to his car, passers-by were oblivious to the internal battle raging inside Thomas, who was leaving office at the peak of his career.
``I would have stayed if I could have stayed,'' Thomas recalled.
Just six years earlier, at age 32, the Norfolk native had made history as the first black and the youngest lawyer ever appointed to Virginia's highest court.
But on Oct. 4, 1989, Thomas abruptly announced his retirement. He cited ``a potentially serious medical problem'' but gave no details. He left office just halfway through his 12-year term.
The announcement shocked many and made headlines statewide. Only a close circle of friends and relatives knew the series of events that led to Thomas' painful departure.
Last month, for the first time since his resignation, Thomas talked publicly about his illness and why he walked away from one of the highest honors an attorney can achieve.
It started in March 1989.
Thomas, famous for his attention to detail, had been gulping coffee and poring over legal briefs for 48 straight hours, trying to finish some opinions at home.
``I was behind and I was trying to catch up the way I used to do in college and night school,'' he said.
When his eyes could no longer focus on the small print in the books, he took a break. He poured himself a glass of gin and tonic and popped a movie into his VCR.
Later, he went to sleep. He awoke with an ambulance crew standing over his bed.
Thomas had had a seizure.
Doctors thought the episode was caused by sleep apnea, when tissues in the throat and tongue block the airways, preventing oxygen from entering the body. They thought the incident stemmed from his extreme fatigue, aggravated by coffee and alcohol.
``I couldn't rouse myself . . . because I was beat and I just laid there and the oxygen levels in my blood just kept dropping and dropping,'' Thomas said. It ``dropped to the level where I thought I was being killed, like when you're being strangled . . . and so they thought I was having the last convulsions of being alive.''
Thomas had a history of sleep problems. Twice before, in 1984 and after his first seizure in March 1989, he had had nose and throat surgery to correct the problem.
They didn't work. In June 1989, he had another seizure. It, too, came when he was exhausted, after going to the scene of an accident involving his sister-in-law.
But this one was different.
This time, doctors at the hospital scanned Thomas' brain and found a small spot deep behind his right eye. The spot on his right temporal lobe was about the size of the tip of his pinky finger.
``They said, `Justice, it looks like you might have a tumor,' '' Thomas recalled. But ``it was so deep in my brain that even if they tried to do a biopsy, they were afraid they would give me a stroke.''
Doctors told Thomas they would have to remove the top two-thirds of his right temporal lobe to get at the tumor. His smell, sight and memory could be affected.
``Most likely you will not be the same person,'' doctors told him.
His thoughts raced. Thomas remembered his close friend George Stoddard, a former press secretary to then-Gov. Charles Robb. In September 1988, Stoddard had died of a malignant brain tumor, just months after Thomas had officiated at his wedding.
``I'm feeling like this is it for me,'' Thomas said.
Thomas was prepared for the worst. If he died, he would leave behind a widow, Pearl, with three small children: Charles Jr., Ruby Virginia ``Ginger,'' and Lewis.
``We didn't know what was going to happen,'' Thomas said. At best, ``I was looking at a life on state disability.''
So Thomas quit the Supreme Court.
``My heart went out to him,'' his wife recalled. ``I knew that he was leaving something that he was very proud of.
``It was kind of difficult for him to make that decision. He was afraid of not knowing what the outcome would be, and he was afraid that his family wouldn't be taken care of the way he thought they should be.''
Returning to private practice ``was very unselfish of him,'' his wife said. ``He did it with love for his family.''
Thomas returned to the law firm of Hunton & Williams, where he had started in 1975, to provide his family with better insurance and other benefits.
Then Thomas and his wife traveled to hospitals all over the state, seeking medical advice and a successful treatment.
``I thought about it as a lawyer, in terms of what the hourly rate must have been, with all these physicians and surgeons standing in the room together talking about my case,'' he said. ``I knew I had come up hard enough, been through a lot of things, seen a lot of things and then to figure I'd be sitting in a chair, not really being able to function. . .''
The oldest of four children, Thomas was born in the upstairs rooms of his grandparents' house at Washington Avenue and Proescher Street in Huntersville, one of Norfolk's poorest neighborhoods.
As a boy, he earned extra money delivering the Journal and Guide newspaper in his neighborhood. Later, his family moved to Liberty Park, a public housing neighborhood near Norfolk State University that was later torn down and turned into Middle Towne Arch.
``At the time, everybody lived there,'' Thomas said. ``There were teachers, insurance men and business people who lived in the projects - folks who had jobs but didn't make a lot of money. But they had hopes and aspirations.''
His parents separated when he was a teenager. His mother, a registered nurse and civil rights worker, raised her family alone.
``I was raised by . . . a committee, and the committee was my grandma and granddaddy and my aunts and uncles and neighbors,'' Thomas said. ``If I did something bad, before I would get home, somebody would call my grandmama.''
His punishment, he recalled, was a spanking with his grandmother's ``bolo bat,'' a wooden paddle with a ball on the end, followed by an additional spanking when his mother came home.
He was an honor student at Maury High School, then won a four-year scholarship to the University of Virginia from the National Achievement Scholarship Program for Outstanding Negro Students.
He graduated from the U.Va. law school in 1975, then joined Hunton & Williams, eventually becoming a partner in the firm that once had fought to keep schools segregated.
Just eight years after becoming a lawyer, Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court.
At Thomas' swearing-in ceremony in 1983, Robb said, ``I suspect that . . . Virginians of all races are going to walk just a little bit taller because John Charles Thomas - Justice John Charles Thomas - will be sitting on the highest court.''
As a judge, Thomas quickly distinguished himself as unabashedly frank and self-assured. His aggressive questioning of lawyers changed the court's genteel temperament.
``I had a different attitude,'' Thomas said. ``I believed that if you came before the Supreme Court of Virginia, you were here to answer our questions, not just make a speech. . . . I think our bench got hot.''
Norfolk lawyer Conrad M. Shumadine appeared at the Supreme Court several times while Thomas was on the bench.
Before Thomas' arrival, the justices simply listened to lawyers argue their cases, without interruption, Shumadine said. Later, however, Shumadine watched fellow lawyers squirm in the ``hot seat'' under Thomas' scrutiny.
``Justice Thomas tended to ask more questions than any other judge who was sitting on the court,'' Shumadine recalled. ``His questions tended to cut to the heart of the issue. If you didn't know the answer, it was going to be a very rough experience for you.''
Everything changed after discovery of the tumor. Suddenly, there was something more important than torts and demurrers. Finding the cause and cure for his tumor became all-consuming.
The breakthrough came at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. While chatting with a neurologist, Thomas revealed an important part of his medical history.
As an undergraduate senior living in an honors room at U.Va., he had contracted meningitis. He had walked to the student health center with a fever of over 106 degrees.
After the illness passed, Thomas continued to suffer ``little spells.''
``It wasn't anything bad. It was just different,'' Thomas said. ``I might be talking to you and the colors would become just slightly more vibrant for a minute.''
In 1982, he had told doctors about the incidents, but a brain scan revealed little.
The neurologist at MCV made the crucial connection.
``He said, `For you to have meningitis in '72 . . . I bet you those high temperatures damaged a piece of your brain.' ''
It had. The high temperatures had caused scar tissue to form on Thomas' brain, causing weak spots.
A visit to the Mayo Clinic confirmed the neurologist's hunch: Thomas did not have a tumor after all, only scar tissue from the earlier bout with meningitis. The dreaded brain surgery was unnecessary.
Doctors also had been right when they said initially that 48 straight hours of work had caused Thomas' earlier seizure. Fatigue can trigger a seizure in individuals prone to them. And with each seizure, it becomes easier for more seizures to follow with less provocation.
Today, Thomas' seizures are controlled with medication. A few short beeps from his watch remind him to take a dose of Dilantin three times a day.
Thomas still must use a machine to help him breathe at night, but he sleeps easier now, knowing that his nightmarish bout with what he thought was cancer is over.
He is still stung, however, by rumors that he left the Supreme Court simply to regain a six-figure salary. As a judge, he was paid $65,400 a year.
``Some people thought I was lying,'' Thomas said. ``But you just don't want to tell everybody everything.''
In Richmond, Thomas now heads Hunton & Williams' appellate division. Recently, he was appointed by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to a committee studying federal appeals court rules.
It's been five years since he left the bench, but he is still called ``Judge Thomas'' or ``Justice Thomas'' by associates, friends and even family members.
``I think a lot of folks in the black community who knew that we went for hundreds of years without a justice, they still love to say `Justice' because they knew how hard it was to have a justice on the court,'' Thomas said.
When Thomas talks about why he left the bench, he hesitates often, still reluctant to discuss details. At one point in his recollections, he cried. He said constant prayers and family gatherings pulled him through the ordeal.
``My faith has been a constant faith for years and years, and I knew that only God could help,'' he said. ``I prayed all the time. . . .
``I don't know about going back and retracing steps. You can't recapture things that are done in life. I liked being a justice because you knew that your work was efficacious. You knew that it meant something.''
Now, Thomas said, ``I just want to read books and write things and play with my children.'' ILLUSTRATION: TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff photo
Former Norfolk resident John Charles Thomas and his wife, Pearl, now
live in Richmond since he stepped down in 1989 as a Virginia Supreme
Court justice.
Thomas, who was the first African-American named to the court,
enjoys a holiday visit with relatives in Suffolk.
by CNB