I was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar when John T. Broderick Jr. was chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court. I lived in Boston at the time but satisfied the requirements to “waive in.”
One July day, our group, mostly out-of-staters like myself, entered the courtroom. As the clerk prepared to administer the oath, Broderick spoke up and said, “I will swear in Mister Steinfield personally.”
In the early 1970s, Broderick was a young lawyer at a Manchester law firm. Norman Stahl, then a senior partner in the firm and later a federal judge, invited me to pay a visit and he introduced me to John, whom I remember as a tall, handsome, serious young man. He went on to become head of the firm’s litigation department and president of the New Hampshire Bar Association.
In 1995, trial lawyer Broderick became Justice John Broderick of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. In 2004, he became chief justice and served in that position until 2010. He then became dean of the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law.
You would think that was enough for one lifetime – leader of the New Hampshire bar, distinguished jurist and head of the state’s only law school. As it turned out, all of this was prelude. Broderick had yet to take on what he calls “the most important work I had ever done.” Those words appear in his recently published book, “Backroads and Highways: My Journey to Discovery on Mental Health.”
Having “grown up in a different era with a strongly rooted culture of silence around mental illness,” Broderick explains his“ mission of change,” which is to talk to young people about that forbidden subject. He does so candidly, and the students listen. No one has ever spoken to them the way he does. And after he speaks, he stays behind for a while so that students who want to talk with him privately can do so one-on-one. He listens, he understands, and he encourages them to get help. He also gives them a hug.
The story of how he became a mental health missionary begins with unrecognized mental illness in his own family. Twenty years ago, he nearly died at his son’s hands. The Broderick family went through “agonizing years of despair, self-blame and embarrassment,” but they survived as a family and re-emerged whole.
Looking back, John says, “I was ignorant then. I’m not ignorant now. I was apparently tolerant of intolerance then. Not anymore.”
His book is about more than the tens of thousands of miles driven and the hundreds of speeches given over the last six years. It is a plea to all of us to recognize that growing up in today’s world creates stress and anxiety, even more so now than in earlier times. As he knows first-hand, we ignore the subject of mental illness at our peril.
Broderick is now senior director of external health at Dartmouth Health. He no longer practices law or wears a judicial robe. Instead, he travels “back roads and highways” in his jeep and speaks and listens to young people. He is an agent for change. His family’s experiences opened his eyes, and the result is an eye-opening book.
I greatly appreciated Broderick’s kind gesture when he swore me in. I have admired this lawyer, judge and educator for many years, but never more so than I do now. Thanksgiving seems like the perfect time to pay tribute to the Honorable John T. Broderick, Jr.,
Joseph D. Steinfield lives in Keene and Jaffrey. He can be reached at joe@joesteinfield.com.