On April 25, 2016, the Mifflin Country Kitchen and Dance Hall was packed with over 1,000 people, which is more than the actual population of Mifflin. Mifflin is an unincorporated community in Chester County in rural West Tennessee, a little over 80 miles east of Memphis and 130 miles west of Nashville.

The crowd was gathered in the warm spring afternoon to witness the swearing in by Gov. Bill Haslam of Chester County’s first Tennessee Supreme Court justice, and the first justice from rural West Tennessee in decades.

The county population is about 17,000. There’s no Walmart. Only one high school. Lots of farmland.

So a Supreme Court investiture is a pretty big deal, maybe even better attended than the county’s annual BBQ Festival.

But Justice Roger Page, who retired from the Supreme Court on Aug. 31, wouldn’t have been sworn in to the state’s highest court anywhere else but his hometown. “When I was campaigning for Circuit Court judge, I told people I was from the tri-cities area: Mifflin, Luray and Huron.”

Roger Page, age 6 or 7

Born in 1955 to parents who were cotton farmers, Page had a typical rural upbringing for that time. “I went to school for the first two years in a one-room schoolhouse. There were about 20 of us spanning grades 1 through 8.” In the early 1960s, the county consolidated all the one-room schools into two elementary schools in the county seat of Henderson. “By third grade they had built East Chester Elementary, and that was the first time I had indoor plumbing at school,” he says.

Part of a large, close-knit family on both sides, Page helped his parents on the farm and played sports when he got to Chester County High School. His maternal grandparents lived in Henderson, and he was with them most afternoons between school and sporting events. His paternal grandparents and several of their children lived within a few miles of his parents’ farm, so he and his siblings were never without the company of their Page cousins for entertainment.

Pharmacy Sounds Good

In high school when it was time for him to think about college, Page got a scholarship to the University of Tennessee at Martin, but he had not declared a major. “In the spring of my senior year in high school, I went into a meeting with the guidance counselor who said, ‘You’ve got to pick a major.’ And I asked what my friend who met with her before me had chosen. He was going to major in pre-pharmacy, so I said I would do that, too.”

Page and his father, Amos

He entered UT Martin as a pharmacy major. He was there for two years and was accepted into the University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy in Memphis, which was a three-year program at the time. In the middle of the second year, he had a class on pharmacy law and Page realized that was what he actually wanted to do. “All the cases were so interesting, and I went to the dean and told him I was going to drop out of the pharmacy program and go to law school. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re more than halfway through. You’ve got to finish this.’

“I had to have an undergrad degree to get into law school anyway, so I asked Memphis Law if they would accept a B.S. in pharmacy and they said they would.

“I finished the pharmacy program.”

Page would not go directly to law school, however; instead, he worked for three years as a pharmacist at a Walgreen’s in Memphis. “I needed to save up some funds and pay some bills, so I worked full time for a while.” Page remains the only licensed pharmacist to have served on the Tennessee Supreme Court and one of just a handful of pharmacists-turned-justices in the country.

He entered the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law (then Memphis State) in 1981 and put himself through law school, working nights and weekends as a pharmacist. He served as an editor of the Memphis Law Review and graduated fourth in his class.

After law school, Page was hired as a law clerk to Judge Julia Smith Gibbons of the U.S. District Court. “I had a one-year clerkship with Judge Gibbons and learned so much from her,” he said. “She was a mentor and a friend. She’s always supported me.”

Private Practice in the Big City

Many, if not most, law students find summer associate work in law firms and gain experience in that environment during law school. But since Page worked as a pharmacist and was never a summer associate, his first taste of law firm life was with Peterson, Young, Self & Asselin in Atlanta. This was quite a jolt coming from Mifflin and Memphis.

“After commuting to downtown Atlanta,” Page recalls, “I had to park in a 13-floor garage, then walk a few blocks to my building where I was on the 33rd floor. By the time I got downtown I was still 20 minutes from my desk!”

He worked mainly on federal cases and had his first jury trial in Atlanta.

After a couple of years, he decided he’d had enough of the big city and moved home to West Tennese to the firm of Holmes, Rich, Sigler & Page in Jackson. “When I got to Jackson, I drove up, parked in the parking lot and walked right into my office and thought ‘these people don’t know how good they have it.’”

From left: Carol McCoy, Chancellor Russell Perkins, Chancellor Anne Martin, Justice Sharon Lee, Page, Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal

 

Moving to the AG’s Office

 

After about five years in private practice, Page moved to the attorney general’s office as an assistant attorney general. “I wasn’t really getting much jury trial experience, and I wanted to branch out,” he says.

He was an assistant attorney general from December 1991 to December 1998 when he decided to run for circuit court judge for the 26th Judicial District, covering Chester, Henderson and Madison counties.

“This was a new circuit judge position, and I announced my campaign in January of 1998,” says Page. “It was a four-person race, non-partisan, no run-offs. Just get the most votes on Election Day. My family and all my friends worked really hard on it; my mother and aunts went through the voting rolls and called people to urge them to vote for me.”

Their strategies worked: Page finished first in the race by almost 3,000 votes. He served as Circuit Court judge from August 1998 until he was appointed to the Court of Criminal Appeals by Gov. Bill Haslam in 2011.

“Justice Page’s knowledge and breadth of experience built during his career as a trial and an intermediate appellate judge will be sorely missed on our court,” notes Justice Jeff Bivins. “His affable personality always helped to create a very good environment for the whole court. He has been a faithful and effective public servant.”

Page with his grandchildren, Greta, Sam and Will

On to the Supreme Court

In 2015, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Gary Wade announced his retirement from the court. Page told his wife, now-retired Davidson County Chancellor Carol McCoy, that he was thinking about applying for the vacancy and that a few others had encouraged him to do so.

“He did not think he’d get it,” says McCoy. “I believe what sealed it were his personal interviews with Gov. Haslam and his staff: each of the three finalists were given two cases from out of state and asked to analyze them and share how they would handle them.

“One of the things I admire most about Roger is he’s a quick read. He has an innate ability to digest, analyze and synthesize information and then present it to someone in a clear and concise manner they can easily understand. He’s not blustery or bombastic and that comes across in his written decisions and opinions.”

Page and Brandon Gibson, Chief Operating Officer in Gov. Bill Lee's office at Lee's inauguration.

The First Confirmation

Indeed, Page was nominated by Gov. Haslam to the Tennessee Supreme Court in January 2016. He was the first justice to go through the confirmation process under the new “Tennessee Plan,” which was ratified as a state constitutional amendment in 2014.

In February 2016, the legislature voted to confirm Page’s nomination, which also created a Republican majority for the first time in modern history on the five-member court.

“During my tenure as counsel to the governor,” says Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Dwight Tarwater, “I was privileged to shepherd then-Judge Page through his unanimous confirmation to the Tennessee Supreme Court by a Joint Convention (a roll call vote of both Houses of the General Assembly seated together). This was the first time in history that this process, known then as Amendment 2, was implemented. It was a remarkable day for our state, and Justice Roger Page made history.”

Page with former law clerks, Maggie Teichmann (left) and Courtney Reedy

Chief Justice Page

After a little more than five years on the court, on Aug. 24, 2021, Page was elected to serve a two-year term as chief justice of the Supreme Court, marking the end of a nearly 30-year drought of chief justices from rural West Tennessee. Justice Lyle Reid of Brownsville served as chief justice from 1990-1994.

Fewer Tennessee justices, let alone chief justices, have come from rural backgrounds than urban. A court made up of justices with wide-ranging backgrounds benefits the people of Tennessee, especially as 78 of the state’s 95 counties are classified as rural, according to the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development. Cases that are centered in the urban and large suburban areas often get the most attention, but justice happens in the small towns and communities, too.

Page's brother-in-law, Nick Reyes, (second from right) was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in September 2017 by Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes (second from left). Page's sister, Lisa Page Reyes, is at right.

“From my own experience and perspective, I’ve learned to value Justice Page for many reasons, including his humility, his quiet but very present sense of humor and his desire to look at people and circumstances objectively,” says John Talbott, a lawyer in Page’s hometown of Henderson. “He’s always understood the importance of his background, his rural upbringing. His attitude toward the importance of his community in his own development reminds me very much of the statement that Harry Truman once made about his own career and retirement: ‘I always tried to remember who I was, where I’d come from and what I’d be going back to.’ For me, that also sums up the attitude my friend Roger Page has taken over the span of his own career. Our profession has been the better for his presence.”

Tennessee Supreme Court 2021-2023; from left: Justice Sharon Lee, Justice Holly Kirby, Chief Justice Page, Justice Sarah Campbell, Justice Jeff Bivins

Lessons Learned

Page says the biggest change over his tenure in private practice and on various courts has been technology. “When I started practicing, we had to look up cases and statutes in books by hand, and you were always afraid of the one case you might have missed. Now, with a computer as big as my hand that I carry in my pocket, I can be confident that if I’ve entered the search terms correctly, I’ll find everything I’ll need.”

Page, right, swore in Chief Justice Holly Kirby in August 2023. Kirby's husband, Russell Ingram, is at left.

When asked what he thought was the most important decision of his time on the bench, Page says, “Every decision is important to the litigants involved. I’ve served alongside six different justices, and every one of them has worked so hard and tried to come to a consensus and do the right thing in every case without bending to political pressure or worrying about the next retention election.”

When he was a trial judge, he said he always had a contingency plan in case the next election didn’t go his way. “I wasn’t going to let the threat of losing my seat get in the way of doing the right thing.”

McCoy agrees. “Roger has an innate intelligence and humility that goes with it. He never shines a light on himself. I tell him he keeps all of his God-given talents under a bushel, and he should take credit for the things he has accomplished on behalf of others.”

Page recalls one piece of advice he received that has stuck with him: a lawyer early in Page’s career told him, “Before you leave every day, return all the phone calls, whether it’s opposing counsel or your client.”

He says that treating everyone – clients, opposing clients, opposing counsel, everyone at the court – with respect is of utmost importance. “Sometimes in the heat of battle in the courtroom, it’s hard to keep your composure, but if you can treat the other side respectfully, you’ll end up in a better position. And when you make a mistake, admit it.”

McCoy admires his compassion for others and his warmth to everyone he meets. “He truly is a country boy who is tied closely to his roots,” she says, “who loves the people he grew up with and the people he meets, of all ages and backgrounds.”

Page says that in 2018, the Tennessee Supreme Court amended the oath that lawyers take to add the word “civility:”

I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Tennessee. In the practice of my profession, I will conduct myself with honesty, fairness, integrity and civility to the best of my skill and abilities, so help me God.

“Whichever justice is swearing people in points out the addition of ‘civility,’” Page adds.

“Justice Page’s remarkable judicial career spanned more than two decades and three courts,” Justice Sarah K. Campbell points out. “It is difficult to overstate his contributions to the Tennessee judiciary. He cares deeply about Tennessee’s courts and his judicial colleagues, and he has been an especially strong advocate for Tennessee’s rural counties. I admire his ethical leadership, humility, intellect, even temper and quick wit.”

From left, Gov. Bill Haslam, Page and McCoy at Page's April 2016 investiture.

Looking Forward to Retirement

In retirement, Page plans to rehab his parents’ farmhouse in Mifflin, splitting time between the farm and Nashville. He retains close ties with many high school and college friends and looks forward to renewing old acquaintances. He also plans to travel and spend time with his children, grandchildren and their families.

“Justice Page’s work on the Supreme Court was marked by intelligence, wisdom, pragmatism and old-fashioned common sense,” Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Holly Kirby says. “His heart never strayed far from his upbringing in rural West Tennessee. Our recent progress in gaining more resources for representation of indigent citizens comes from years of collective effort, and as chief justice, Justice Page used his considerable people skills to elevate the issue with our state’s policymakers. Our forward movement in funding for indigent representation is an important part of Justice Page’s legacy. We will all miss working with him.” |||

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Julia Canada Wilburn is the editor of the Tennessee Bar Journal and a fellow graduate of Chester County High School, albeit a few years later than Justice Page.

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