Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson
In her home and office, Judge
O. Rogeriee Thompson has many photos, taken with family and friends, with
government leaders and even the President of the United States.
But she says one of her all-time favorites was taken at St. Anthony Catholic School more than 50 years ago.
“They dressed the kindergarten valedictorians as a nun and a priest,” the federal appeals judge said from Boston. “It was so cute.”
Judge Thompson is a new member of the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, nominated last fall by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, 98-0, in March 2010.
Thompson is the first African-American judge on the First Circuit, just as she was for the state district and state superior courts she had served for more than 20 years.
The federal bench in New England might seem a long way from St. Anthony School, where Thompson graduated from 8th grade in 1965.
Thompson sees a clear link.
“I remember it as a place where a lot of learning occurred, in a nurturing, disciplined and supportive environment,” Thompson said. “Learning right and wrong was an important part of the education.”
Thompson said she remembers the nuns who taught her as kind and warm, but also firm and very organized. Many of the then-new school’s classrooms housed two grades. With up to 25 students in each class, there were often nearly 50 children in a classroom.
“I’m still amazed at how one nun could teach two classes at the same time,” she said. “The classes were so organized and well-disciplined that when she was teaching the other class, it wasn’t a distraction.”
After St. Anthony, Thompson, whose mother and father were both educators, attended segregated Sterling High School in Greenville for two years, then finished high school in New York. She attended Brown University in Rhode Island and Boston University’s law school.
While she didn’t seriously contemplate law as a career until she was in college, Thompson said that even as a young student in Greenville during the Civil Rights era, she “was acutely aware that courts were issuing decisions that impacted me.”
Judge Thompson and her husband have three grown children, a daughter who is a multimedia specialist in Rhode Island, a son, who lives in Spain and works as a teacher and translator, and daughter who lives in California and has followed her parents into work in law.
Asked what advice she’d offer current St. Anthony students, Thompson said: “I’d want the children to appreciate that learning is best done one step at a time…concentrate on the task at hand because it will be the foundation for the next step. But don’t be afraid to take chances, to try things. Don’t be afraid of failure.”
