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Even In Death, An Honorable Man

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 24, 2008

She reached out and touched his hand. It was spontaneous; the instinctive response of a sister's pride, almost oblivious of the crowd that was gathered around.

She was his sister, after all, and she touched his hand. It was a large, strong, athletic hand, resting on a book of law, but it must have felt hard and cold when her warm hand touched the bronze.

The Honorable Judge George E. Edgecomb died of leukemia at the age of 33, less than three years after becoming the first African-American to be invested as a judge in the 13th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida.

Family, friends, mentors, and the judges who followed him gathered in the sparkling new courthouse that bears his name to unveil his bust, sculpted by Tampa artist Harrison Covington. His daughter, who was 5 years old when he died, spoke on behalf of his wife and Middleton High School sweetheart, Dorethea, who has followed her late husband in public service as a member of the Hillsborough County School Board.

Around the room I saw men and women who carried the scars of the civil rights struggle in Tampa that prepared the way for Judge Edgecomb to go on the bench; black folks who remembered segregation; white folks who went against the current of their times to join the followers of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in the conviction that "liberty and justice for all" really meant "liberty and justice for all."

He died too young. He had always been a leader in high school, at Clark College and Howard University, with the Urban League, in his church and community.

The forceful form of his chiseled face and the way his eyes gaze into the future made me wish I had known him. Who knows how different this community might be if he had lived longer.

All I know is that when his sister touched his hand, I saw her pride. And it made me proud, too.

Jim Harnish is pastor at Hyde Park United Methodist Church.

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