It was the Friday before Christmas, the courts were closed and Judge John Corderman had the day off.
So he did the things that people do: He went shopping. He bought presents. He had lunch with friends. He went home and wrapped gifts.
Then, in the afternoon, he left his apartment and took a present to a friend. The friend wasn`t home, so Corderman propped the package against the friend`s door.
It is the kind of thing people do in places like Hagerstown, the small town in western Maryland where Corderman lives. ”It was a day like all other days,” he said.
Which we know by now is not true.
Because on this day, John Corderman, a little-known circuit court judge, would make national news. He would become America`s latest pipe-bomb victim. And his name would be spoken in solemn tones by Brokaw and Jennings and Rather.
A few days before, a judge in Alabama and a lawyer in Georgia had been killed by pipe bombs. We will never know about those awful moments when the bombs exploded. But Corderman can tell us about his.
”The box was leaning against my door when I got home,” he told me.
”Just like I had put a box against my friend`s door. I picked it up. I took it inside.”
He opened it. And three of the four bombs in the package went off.
They were meant to kill him; the authorities have no doubt about that. This was not a message, not a warning. Someone wanted John Corderman dead.
The shrapnel tore into Corderman`s lower stomach. Part of one finger was blown off. His eardrums were ruptured. He began bleeding profusely.
Yet Corderman stayed not only alive but also alert. He staggered into the hallway of his apartment building and pulled the fire alarm. Then he went back inside and called 911.
”I knew I was in trouble,” he said. ”There was a lot of blood. My neighbor gave me a towel, and I held it against what I thought were my wounds. Then I lay down on the floor.”
On the floor, he began saying what he calls ”The Serenity Prayer.” He was 47 and was reasonably sure he would live no longer. With his damaged eardrums, he couldn`t even hear himself say the words, but he said them anyway.
”God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” he said, the blood soaking through the towel. ”The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.”
There are two ways of looking at that prayer: Either Corderman was asking for the serenity to die in peace or he was seeking the courage to keep fighting for life.
”All I can say is that as I was lying on the floor saying that prayer over and over, peace and serenity came over me,” he said. ”I just felt whatever happened was God`s will.”
He lived. He is reasonably well now, though he has difficulty hearing. He will soon begin medical treatment by a specialist.
But he does not know if he still wants to remain a judge.
There are, contrary to popular belief, easier ways to make a living.
Corderman has always believed that being a judge involved more than handing down verdicts and sentences and clearing dockets and moving on to the next case.
He thought it had something to do with justice, with helping society, with improving America as a whole.
But as he lay on the floor of his apartment, his lips moving in prayer, he wondered why he had bothered.
”There is no way I should have survived,” he said. ”No way I should be alive. And though it was a personal attack on me, it has a larger dimension. It is an attack on the system I serve. I am deeply disturbed by the level of violence that seems to go unabated in our society.”
Judges, of course, are supposed to be doing something about the level of violence in our society. By dispensing justice, judges are supposed to make our lives better and less violent.
That is what they tell the new judges anyway.
”In a way, I represent the 200 judges at the trial and appellate level in Maryland,” Corderman said. ”I go to work every day and I am asked to make difficult decisions. Decisions that affect people`s liberty, personal wealth and the fabric of their lives. I try to make those decisions in an informed and just way. But the public just doesn`t understand what we judges are about.”
That`s what they do not tell the new judges. They don`t tell them that in big cities they`ll be anonymous and often hated and that in the small towns they`ll be very well known and often hated.
That they`ll sit up on the bench in their black robes, remote, austere, forbidding. And that no matter how they struggle with a sentence or a verdict- and the good judges struggle-somebody may hate them for it.
And the number of somebodys who hate them does not matter. All it takes is one.
”It is a troubling time for me,” Corderman said. ”I feel particularly vulnerable, yet I am no more vulnerable than any other judge. I just don`t know what I did or didn`t do to make someone want my children to lose their father at Christmas.”
He paused. Having recently faced the bleakness of death, he wanted to make clear that life, no matter how miserable it might seem to a person, is never as bleak as that. He wanted, just for a moment, to reach out to whoever had tried to kill him.
”No pain is so great that it can`t be lessened,” he said. ”And no hate is so deep that it cannot be diminished.”
No obvious suspects
Corderman has a daughter 16, and two sons, 15 and 12. They know all about what their father does for a living. It is in the newspapers every day. In a large city, an armed robbery verdict, for instance, is unlikely to make the media. In Hagerstown, it will.
”Besides which I deal with the families of people my children go to school with,” Corderman said. ”It is not just criminal cases I hear. But domestic cases, family cases. You are well known in a small town.”
Everybody knew Judge Corderman. And one person wanted to kill him.
He has gone through the lists in his mind. The names. The cases. He has told authorities everything he can think of. But he doesn`t really know.
”It is someone who has no appreciation for human life,” he said.
”Anybody could have opened that package. Anybody could have been around me.”
He thinks about that. About how his children could have been with him. He has been separated from his wife since spring, but he was supposed to spend Christmas Eve with his children.
”My boys deliver newspapers and they had read about the death of that judge in Alabama,” he said. ”When they heard of my bombing, they thought:
`Daddy`s dead.` ”
Corderman managed to spend Christmas with his children. It was a bit hurried. For a while nobody knew how bad off he was and then nobody knew if he would get out of the hospital in time, but he did.
”It was the most remarkable Christmas I`ve ever had in the best possible way,” he said. ”Some of the presents weren`t wrapped and that was okay. Some of the cards didn`t make it, and that was okay. Because I had the gift of life. That made everything material pale in comparison. I survived that explosion by the grace of God. I firmly believe that.”
`I give people a chance`
He has received hundreds of messages from well-wishers. Not just from friends, some of whom he had not heard from in 35 years, but also from strangers to whom he had rendered justice.
The adjectives that usually are appended to Corderman`s name are
”controversial” and ”outspoken.” He is a believer in individual responsibility, in tough handgun legislation (though he owns three handguns), and in fighting drugs. He is a giver of speeches and a writer of letters to the editor. A former prosecutor and state legislator, he has been in public service for 18 years, 12 of them as a judge.
”I heard kind things from people I never knew, people for whom I was the only judge they had ever come in contact with, people who felt I had helped them,” Corderman said. ”Until now, I really had no awareness of the lives I had touched or in what ways I had touched them.”
We forget about that when we hear that a judge has been bombed. We think only of all those people that he has angered over the years. We forget all the good he has done, all the lives he may have saved by donning a black robe and making the tough decisions.
”They are portraying me as tough, but I give people a chance all the time,” he said. ”I modify sentences all the time. I give people a chance to take a different path.”
A couple of years ago, when pro-gun groups were making life tough on Corderman and trying to get him off the bench, he was asked in an interview if he would keep on fighting. He answered without hesitation. Enemies sought ”to intimidate me, to silence me, but they are not going to do that,” he said. He was a judge and that is what he would remain.
Six days after a bomb went off in his hands, he was asked if he would remain a judge.
This time, he paused.
”This . . ., ” he said. ”This is a real fragile time for me. I am trying to do just what I have to do each day. Today, for instance, I paid my real estate taxes.” He laughed a small laugh.
”I . . . I don`t know about tomorrow,” Corderman said. ”I don`t care about tomorrow. I just want to take my time. And enjoy my todays.”
