Jim Stapleton had a helluva run, in court houses and on tennis courts. His friend, Michael J. Daly, retired editor of the Opinion page of the Connecticut Post, viewed him from both those perspectives. He shares this commentary, the first exclusively for OIB, with more to follow.
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Jim Stapleton, the lawyer and former judge whose death was announced this week, was an eminence in Connecticut’s legal and political circles, a man who could be both intimidating and considerate and one who leaves some lessons behind. He was my friend.
As was his wife, Peggy – Margaret Stapleton, nee Daly, though no relation. It was with Peggy, who bore up under a debilitating lung issue in her later years, that the tender, considerate side of her husband was most evident.
Stapleton, who died last month at age 93 at his home in Florida, was well known state wide, but his impressive story and achievements are rooted in Bridgeport, where he was born in 1932, and where at least twice he put a lasting handprint on the city’s picture.
In 1971, while an attorney with the firm Marsh, Day and Calhoun, he led a group of Republicans – they called themselves the Republican Action League – in an uprising to get rid of an entrenched party chairman. With a door-to-door registration effort, they reinvigorated the party and capped their effort with the election that year of their candidate, Nick Panuzio, a shocking, nine-vote win in heavily Democratic Bridgeport.
Stapleton became city attorney, later sat on the Bridgeport Board of Education and in 1973 was named a Superior Court judge.
He resigned from the bench in 1978. It was a difficult time for the Stapleton family. Their son Brian was being treated for cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and Peg was essentially living there. Brian died in July of that year. Things, frankly, were tight on the $35,000 annual salary of a judge.
Brian was an excellent tennis player, 10 years my junior and before his illness took hold, we played occasionally at Beardsley Park.
In 1983, Stapleton represented Bridgeport’s colorful police chief, Joseph A. Walsh, against an attempt by then-Mayor Leonard S. Paoletta to oust the chief.
The case dominated headlines for weeks in Bridgeport and beyond.
One illustrative courtroom moment occurred one day when the trial had broken for lunch. There was some disagreement about how boxes of evidence would be guarded in the adjourned courtroom. An argument developed between Stapleton and Frank DelToro, a body-building, pro-Paoletta cop the size of a cathedral door.
The two men got close to each other, DelToro’s face reddening.
“You want to punch me, Frank, right? Why don’t you,” Stapleton goaded. A punch from DelToro could have ended a lot of things for Stapleton. DelToro displayed saintly restraint.
Stapleton and Walsh ultimately prevailed.
Though a Republican to his core, Stapleton’s political influence was much broader. He was, for instance, a champion of a colleague at Day, Berry and Howard, Stefan Underhill, when Underhill was nominated by President Bill Clinton for an appointment as a U.S. District Court judge.
After retiring from active legal practice, Stapleton worked as an arbitrator and mediator.
My friendship with Stapleton, as so many of mine have, developed on a tennis court. While many people appear tall to me, Stapleton was well over six feet tall and played basketball at Fairfield University.
He was not the most graceful figure on a tennis court, but, as he was in court, so was he on court: aggressive, combative and fiercely competitive.
He won any number of championships at the Black Rock Yacht Club, where he and Peggy were members for years. And, in fact, on the permanent Men’s member-guest championship trophy kept at the club, my claim to tennis fame is my name and Jim’s etched into that trophy for our victory one year in a somewhat truncated version of the tournament.
I last talked with him on July 2, a couple of days after his 93rd birthday. His voice wavered a bit, but he was perfectly lucid. We talked about the usual things: tennis, Bridgeport and the lovely woman, Margaret Crabtree, a warm, engaging widow he met after Peg’s death in 2011.
We talked about Lake George, where the ever-expanding Stapleton expanding family went every summer. For the, oh, hundredth time he told the story about bouncing a little speedboat they had at the lake, squealing kids on board, across the wake of a ferry that periodically passed.
The ferry captain, he said, would yell at him to stop.
As he always did when he told the story, Stapleton laughed.
That ferry captain had no idea who he was dealing with.
Godspeed, James.
Michael J. Daly is retired editor of the Opinion page of the Connecticut Post. Email: mjdwrite@aol.com.
