By Frank Weir
Legal News
Federal Magistrate Judge Virginia Morgan, well known in the local legal community, is concluding a 26-year career with the Eastern District Court on Friday, April 29.
Most don't know that she began her work life as a teacher on a Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico, the result of an early-on desire to "make the world a better place."
That interest followed in other life activities involving not only the law, but in service to a childhood camp she attended and to her college sorority.
After earning a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Michigan in mathematics, chemistry and anthropology, Morgan made her way to the reservation to teach high school math.
"I taught there for two years and it really gave me an appreciation of other cultures and the positive values that they bring to us," she said. "We have much to learn from them.
"For me it was especially interesting because when I was there, there still was a large cultural component in daily life on the reservation. Ninety-five percent of my students were still speaking the Navajo language. That has really changed over the last 40 years. And tribal social relationships were still very strong.
"One of the innate cultural values was of non-competitiveness. If I would hold a particular student's paper up for being especially well done, that student would not produce that quality of work again because it was viewed as wrong to try to stand out from one's peers.
"The idea was that all worked together for the common good and that it was wrong to try to make yourself stand out.
"Although we certainly continue to live in a competitive society, it seems that similar cooperative learning styles now are pursued in many of our schools and universities.
"I also remember trying to incorporate some of their wonderful mythologies and spiritual beliefs into my teaching. They have wonderful myths involving the natural world and its animals particularly involving the coyote in explaining the sources of life and so forth.
"We created plays and other activities involving the coyote not only to enrich their learning experience but to give them a positive feeling about their culture.
"As many know, in the distant past, there were efforts by society to squelch Indian culture, to try to make it disappear but that attitude was long gone by the time I began teaching there."
Morgan moved on to teach math in California and then in her birthplace of Toledo where she began attending the University of Toledo College of Law nights while continuing to teach.
After graduation and bar passage in 1975, she became Washtenaw County Prosecutor William Delhey's first female assistant prosecutor. She moved to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1979, becoming a magistrate judge in the office in 1985.
Over her 26 years on the bench, she's seen the types of cases before her change significantly and, in many cases, alarmingly.
"When I first came to the office, we saw lot of criminal cases over a wide gamut including mail theft, armored car and bank robberies, embezzlement. And along with that, we saw drug and fraud cases of course.
"But now, there are many more drug and gun cases, as well as more fraud cases. And now we see a good deal of Internet sex and child pornography cases. Bank robberies are rare now.
"Economic crimes tend to be far more sophisticated such as Medicare provider fraud crimes and mortgage fraud with a sole monetary incentive. Back in the day, you might see someone embezzle from a bank because of a hidden cocaine habit or gambling addiction.
"Also, the drugs and guns defendants are very young now compared to what I saw in the beginning and many of them are involved with gang activity."
Although the criminal cases seem to fascinate the public, Morgan notes that 75 percent of her work involves civil cases. "I'm involved in pre-trial case management, facilitated mediation, decisions on summary judgment motions, consent cases.
"The criminal work involves arraignments, detentions, arrest warrants, motions to suppress and dismiss, evidentiary matters, habeas corpus; civil case management basically."
Morgan states that she will miss the relationships she has had with those around her at the court and her mediation responsibilities.
"The best part of my job are the facilitated mediations on the civil side. You get to see the case as a whole when you are mediating and you help people reach a resolution that makes sense to them. And closing cases is a good thing for the court.
"And when you mediate and settle a case, it's a good thing. You feel good about that and it's a chance to touch other's lives in a good way.
"Of course I'll miss the lawyers I see in front of me and Judge John Corbett O'Meara who has been delightful to work with. He's a very special man. And there are many people in the Detroit office that I'll miss. I was there for 25 years coming to Ann Arbor only when Steven Pepe retired two years ago.
"There've been many others I've been involved with professionally who I'll miss including fellow magistrate judges and district judges from the third, ninth and of course the sixth circuit. I had the honor of knowing Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist who appointed me to a long-range planning committee and after that, to the board of the Federal Judicial Center which he chaired.
"We met three times a year, twice in Washington and once in Arizona. There were only seven of us on the board and I had some wonderful interactions with impressive federal jurists.
"And I attended many meetings and seminars with Article Three judges and magistrates and bankruptcy judges. These were really unique opportunities and made the job that much richer."
In retirement, Morgan hopes to continue her life-long involvement with two activities that have meant much to her including Camp Newaygo, north of Grand Rapids and her college sorority, Alpha Gamma Delta.
"I attended Camp Newaygo for several years as a kid and have remained involved. It's a Newaygo County Community Services (NCCS) affiliated girl's camp that grew to mean a lot to me. It offers a phenomenal opportunity for girls of all ages as well as young women. It made a big difference in my life.
"I was able to meet girls from all over with different backgrounds. There was a strong environmental component along with a strong spiritual emphasis too. We developed self-discipline and self-reliance along with having great outdoor activities.
"And I was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta when I was an undergrad at Michigan from 1964 to 1968. It's a wonderful group of young women with grounded values, and a strong commitment to education. From 2000 to 2005, I lived at the sorority house on the Michigan campus as it was being recolonized.
"Truly I've been very lucky and I owe a lot to camp and the sorority. I have a lot of institutional loyalty to the court because of the influence of these other institutions in my life. In all of them, camp, the sorority, the justice department, there is a high amount of integrity, ethics, hard work, and a commitment to the institution.
"It's frustrating to me to see what I think is unfair criticisms against those who work in these institutional environments because no one certainly is there to get rich.
"They all want to make the world a better place and that's what I've tried to do and would like to continue to do: make the world a better place.
"I've tried to do that in this job and in other aspects of my life and I'd like to try to keep doing that.
"How that will happen after I retire, I'm not entirely sure. But that's what I want to do."
Published: Thu, May 5, 2011
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