Tom Archdeacon: For the judge and the bailiff, a 'paradise' partnership in Dayton comes to an end

Dec. 28—It was one of the last days of their "paradise."

Government offices were closed in downtown Dayton on Tuesday, the day after Christmas, but Municipal Court Judge Dan Gehres and Chuck Taylor, his bailiff, returned to their Courtroom 4B to look back over their 36 years together.

Theirs is a partnership like none other in the Dayton courts. Not just in their unequalled longevity or even their distinctive tonsorial style — Gehres with his gray ponytail, Taylor with his neatly trimmed head of white hair — but in the unwavering friendship they've forged from their disparate backgrounds and differing current situations.

On Sunday, the 70-year-old Gehres will retire from the bench. He's being replaced by his 37-year-old son, Frank, who's been an assistant Montgomery County prosecuting attorney and is being sworn in today.

Taylor, who is 60 and has known Frank Gehres since he was a toddler, will stay on as his bailiff.

Dan Gehres, who aged out of his judgeship — you must be sworn into your position before you turn 70 — and is also fighting two bum knees which force him to use a walker and often require Taylor's help in matters of transportation, steps, and other daily challenges, said "it's time" for him to hang up his black robe.

"I don't want to be the pitcher who stayed too long in the game, the quarterback who stayed too long on the field," said Gehres, using a reference to sports, a passion he and Taylor — once a well-known local athlete and coach — have shared since the day they met.

"I'd say my feelings are mixed," Gehres admitted when asked about leaving the bench. "I'm going to miss the people, the other judges and especially Kelly (Kolb) my assignment commissioner; Katie (Bligh) my court reporter; and, of course, Chuck.

"I can't think of a better guy to have spent the last 36 years of my life with than Chuck Taylor. He's the kind of wingman who would step in front of you when (danger loomed) and take the brunt of it to spare you. He's as good of a man as there is."

That helps explain both the small sign on the judge's bench and the larger plaque that's fastened to the wall next to the door leading to Gehres' chambers, an office which is more like a museum, or a hoarder's hideaway, depending on your appreciation of floor-to-ceiling stuff, from toy collectibles to sports memorabilia and curios of every other stripe.

The signs read: "Another Day in Paradise."

"That's his mantra," Taylor said with a grin.

He and Gehres agree that paradise point of view is underscored by their mutual love of Dayton.

Taylor was born into it, a son of West Dayton who helped lead Roth High to the state basketball crown in 1981 before playing football at Howard University and then coaching back in Dayton.

Gehres acquired that love after being raised in Van Wert in northwest Ohio and then matriculating at Manchester College in Indiana before graduating from the University of Dayton law school and eventually raising his family with wife Virginia on Wroe Avenue in the diverse Five Oaks neighborhood.

His and Taylor's embrace of the city plays out in their courtroom, sometimes taking them into terrible situations — where they try to sort out some semblance of what is right — and other times surrounding them with uncompromised expressions of love and hope.

"It's like in the movie 'Forrest Gump,'" Gehres explained. "That's where he said his mama always told him: 'Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get.'

"That's how it is for us in here every day.

"And I remember one day in particular, and I know Chuck remembers it, too.

"It was the end of December, during the Christmas Thrill Killings of 1992."

Gehres was referring to the four young people, ages 20 to 16 — they called themselves the Downtown Posse — who went on a killing spree for no reason other than the urging of 16-year-old assailant Laura Taylor who, testimony showed, urged them: "Let's get some drama in our lives."

In a 48-hour span between Christmas Eve and Dec. 26, they viciously murdered six of the eight people they shot — including a 38-year-old mother who handed over the $44 in her cash drawer at a convenience store and then was shot in the face and 18 year-old girl (who was a high school senior and had a 2-year-old child) who was speaking on a pay phone and killed for her tennis shoes.

"The four got caught and I was in arraignment," Gehres said. "When they brought the two oldest ones (19-year-old Marvallous Keene and 20-year-old Heather Matthews) in front of me, the courtroom was packed. All the TV cameras were here from the Dayton stations, Columbus, and Cincinnati. You couldn't get another person in the courtroom."

I was there that day and remember the scene, especially the sobbing relatives and friends of the victims holding photos of their murdered loved ones.

"Marvallous came out and looked around and was not bothered one bit," Gehres remembered. "I always try to make eye contact, but when I looked him in the eyes, it was like looking into the eyes of a shark. There was nothing. Nothing, but emptiness. He could have cared less about the bail I set."

Gehres ordered him held on $5 million bail.

It was the same for Matthews.

"I remember she was sobbing and shaking," Gehres said.

Keene was executed in 2009, and the other three remain incarcerated.

"As bad as that was that day, two hours later I officiated a wedding in here," Gehres said. "How different is that? Two extremes of life."

Over the thousands of cases that have come before Gehres, some of his best known — or, at least, the most popular — have been the annual mock trials: State of Ohio v. Big Bad Wolf.

They started back in 1989 as a way of teaching young children about right and wrong, talking to strangers and other issues.

The gist of the case each year is that the Big Bad Wolf allegedly ate Little Red Riding Hood's cookies. The defense argues that the wolf is innocent, sometimes citing a case of mistaken identity, other times insisting he really was helping Little Red Riding Hood.

She claims otherwise, as does McGruff the Crime Dog, who, in the Dayton version of the age-old tale, is the arresting officer.

The jury is made up of young kids, often preschoolers to first and second-graders.

If convicted — which only has happened twice in all the years, because much of the rest of the time the case has ended with a hung jury — the Wolf is sentenced to the "time out" chair where he must sit for being out of line. Afterward Grandma hands out all the cookies to the kids as a treat.

The last Big Bad Wolf trial was in May.

Gehres presided and his wife, Virginia Platt Gehres, played the part of Grandma. Katie Bligh was Little Red Riding Hood. Officer Eric Miller was McGruff and, as always, the Big Bad Wolf was played by Taylor, who wore a mask and a colorful costume so as to not frighten the children.

"I remember the first time I did it," Taylor chuckled. "I was thinking, 'No, I don't want to do this. This isn't what I signed up for.' But I grew to like it."

A classic photo from that first trial in 1989 now resonates today as Frank Gehres is sworn in.

Back 34 years ago, a Dayton Daily News photographer captured Taylor sitting in the witness chair wearing his wolf mask, a jauntily tilted red beret and a matching red vest.

Gehres is looking down at him from the bench and in his lap is a 3-year-old Frankie, as he was called then, wearing his Cincinnati Reds cap and an enthralled look as he too listens to the Wolf.

Today, the trio will be united in mesmerizing circumstance, once again.

'We just hit it off'

Gehres and Taylor met through C.J. McLin, the longtime member of Ohio's House of Representatives and an iconic figure in West Dayton.

"When I ran in 1987, I had his support," Gehres said. "He was a very powerful man, and he really helped me. He was very interested in placing people in city and country government, and he sent Chuck down to me to be interviewed.

"And we just hit it off. He was a football player. A nice guy. I liked everything about him."

After finishing at Howard and coaching football briefly in the Washington D.C. area, Taylor moved back to Dayton and took his resume to McLin, who knew of him.

Chuck and his three brothers were well-known athletes in the Dayton area. Keith played football at the University of Cincinnati, Mike also played football at Howard, and Kirk, the Dunbar star who was the MVP of Ohio's AAA high school basketball tournament in 1987, then played at Michigan.

"I went down to see the judge and he was a great guy," Taylor recalled. "We talked sports the whole time and I knew then I better take this job. This was a good guy.'"

Gehres laughed: "Yeah, but I didn't know he was a Michigan fan! I bleed scarlet and gray, and I never asked."

In the end, that, like any of their other differences, didn't matter.

"I think we have a shared humanity," Gehres said. "After I came to UD, I fell in love with the city and all it warts and problems. And I saw Chuck loved the city and its people, too."

Taylor agreed: "We've been here 36 years now and I think we've treated people with respect. And the judge has a lot of street cred because he lives in Five Oaks.

"I'm out in the hallway a lot and I hear people say, 'The judge don't care. He don't understand.' And I say, 'Well, he lives in Five Oaks.' He knows our clientele and what they go through. And people eventually see that."

Beginning in 2005, Gehres became the docket judge for the Recovery Now program, and he said that brought every prostitute into his courtroom.

"And one day I'm driving one of the boys, I can't remember if it was Frank or Marty, to basketball practice," he said with a laugh. "The car is full of kids and we're going up Main Street and, all of a sudden, one of my boys brags to the rest: 'Yep, my dad knows all prostitutes in Dayton!'"

Leaving a legacy

"Right now, I've been thinking about the relationship between Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo," Taylor said of the Chicago Bears' backfield mates who became good friends in the late 1960s and the first interracial roommates in NFL history until Piccolo death from cancer in 1970. Their relationship was chronicled a year later in the popular movie "Brian's Song."

"I remember how Gale Sayers had to have knee surgery and Piccolo helped him," Taylor said. "And later, Sayers helped him. Now the judge has knee problems and needs some help.

"With us, it goes back to sports stories like that, but it's also that we look at each other as family. And there's just that love."

Taylor helps Gehres get in and out of the car and up the seven steps at the back of the courthouse.

He's also helped the judge pack up some of the avalanche of keepsakes that fill his chambers.

Although Gehres said his office is "only a shell" of what it once was — he notes they took "nine pick-up truck loads" of stuff out — he said his son, Marty (the clerk of courts), told him "not even half" of the stuff is gone.

Once the rest is removed, the office will finally be rewired so a computer can be brought in — the judge has none — and life will go on in Courtroom 4B, Gehres said with wistfulness:

"I'll just be a memory."

Not quite.

His son will be the judge.

His longtime pal still will be the bailiff.

And up on the bench and outside the judge's office, he will have left both of the "Another Day" signs that served him and Taylor — and the people of Dayton — so well.