Posted on Mon, Jan. 08, 2007

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One of state's first Appeals Court judges to retire

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. - One of the first judges on the South Carolina Court of Appeals is retiring after 23 years.

Bert Goolsby, 71, plans to leave office June 30 to under state law that says he can't keep his position after age 72. He is the last of the original six members of the state appellate court to retire.

The native of Dothan, Ala., has agreed to help the court part time with tasks such as reviewing the thousands of motions it receives each year, Chief Judge Kaye Hearn said.

"He is the quintessential judge," Hearn said. "When I was first elected in 1995, he took me under his wing. He has been my sounding board on many issues."

After attending the University of Alabama for a year, Goolsby was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1954.

"I fought communism with a snare drum," he said of his tour playing drums in an Army band after the Korean War ended.

He went to The Citadel on the G.I. bill and earned a bachelor's degree in 1959. He earned a law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1962. He spent 20 years in the state Attorney General's Office, rising to chief deputy before being appointed to the Court of Appeals.

One of his fellow prosecutors then, Travis Medlock, who would later go on to be attorney general, said Goolsby "has great integrity and tremendous talent as a jurist."

But it is another talent that may keep him busy in retirement.

Goolsby is a writer and not just of the usual legal books such as the ones he wrote about the death penalty and the state's Tort Claims Act. Since the 1990s, Goolsby has written two novels, "Her Own Law" and "Harpers' Joy," and several short-story collections including "The Box With the Green Bow and Ribbon" and "Sweet Potato Biscuits and Other Stories."

He has a new novel "Rubber Guns and Slingshots" looking for a publisher.

Goolsby's legal background is easy to spot in some of his writing. He said "Harpers' Joy" is loosely based on a 1946 South Carolina murder case in which a man was charged with killing his landlord after discovering the landlord had been raping the man's wife for years.

Goolsby started writing fiction after answering an ad in the mail from a Connecticut correspondence school that taught short-story writing.

"I don't play golf, hunt, fish or play tennis," he said. "My hobby is writing."

When he's not in court, Goolsby can be found with a local writers group called the Inkplots.