Courtman — Part 1

Law, basketball and tennis Williamsport’s Ronald Carl Travis has engaged in all three pursuits during his lifetime. And with his clear dedication to excellence in each, he has gained a degree of fame for his accomplishments in or on all three courts.

Ron Travis, Esq. first became interested in going to law school in his late teens, when, as he said, “Some friends of mine had some legal problems, and the lawyer who jumped into the case saved their futures, as well as their freedoms. It seemed to me that earning a living with one’s mind and being able to help others who were in need was a good way to support myself.”

After graduating from Lycoming College in 1967, Ron matriculated at Dickinson Law School that fall. He did extremely well academically his first year, and was invited by the Law School Dean to join the Law Review there, considered “the highest goal of the students,” according to Travis. He told Dean Laub, “’Thanks, but no thanks,’ because I wanted to be free to play basketball, and the Law Review took your every non-classroom minute.”

As shocked and upset as Dean Laub was at first (he even “made noise about not allowing me the scholarship which I won for being in the top 10”), a few years later as Ron’s graduation neared, it was the Dean who set up a law clerk job interview for Ron with the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Philadelphia, John C. Bell. Ron got offered and accepted the job. Ron believes that, ironically enough, Dean Laub had actually grown to like and respect him, and then helped him get that important first job because “I was the only person who ever turned down the chance to work on the Law Review so I could play basketball!”

After a year in the City of Brotherly Love, Travis and his wife, Pam, decided to return to Williamsport to live and work, and to be near his wife’s family. They figured that life back in good old Northcentral Pennsylvania had to be better than in Philly, where in a one-year period, their apartment had been broken into twice.

By August 1971 the Travises were back in Billtown, with Ron employed by the law firm of Candor, Youngman, Gibson and Gault, doing insurance and criminal defense work. Newly admitted to the federal bar, Lawyer Travis was assigned his first criminal case, one he described as “a real ugly alleged rape of one inmate by another at Lewisburg Penitentiary.”

Travis successfully defended his client, obtaining “a finding that the sex was by consent to pay off a gambling debt,” averting “a possible 40-year sentence in isolation if convicted of rape.” The gratitude his client showed him (he still hears from him several times a year now, over 35 years later) convinced Travis to continue taking federal appointments during his career.

Those appointments have included eight first-degree murder cases. In 1996 the federal death penalty was reinstituted, and since then Travis said, “I have tried the only two death penalty cases which have gone to trial here.” The first resulted in a death penalty, but which was later vacated; the second in a life sentence verdict instead. In two other cases, Travis was able to convince the Attorney General not to seek the death penalty. And in the fifth death penalty in which Travis was involved since 1996, the federal government dismissed the case.

Of these defense efforts, Travis stated, “The death penalty work is what is most rewarding to me since I do not believe that society should kill someone to establish that it is wrong to kill someone, as this just keeps the circle of violence spinning.” And of his federal inmate clients, he said, “Most keep in contact with me, at least around the holidays, and they do appear to really appreciate that lawyers are willing to help them even though the rest of society seems to treat them with scorn.”

Of his civil defense work, Lawyer Travis said, “I also have some good memories, but the one which sticks out is that of a young man from another county who suffered a serious head injury as a child. He was on a bike and was struck by a car. For whatever reason, his parents never did anything about that, and they went to a lawyer five years after the incident and wanted to do something. The lawyer told them the statute of limitations had passed and they were out of luck.

“The parents happened to talk with someone who knew me from basketball in that other county and told them to call me. They did and because the accident happened when the child was under 18, the statute was tolled (the running of the time period suspended) till the child turned 18, and there were two years after turning 18 to do something about the case.

“I took the case and was able to get him a nice settlement, which is in trust and enables him to have a normal life. Every Christmas he sends me a card and a little gift and gives me an update on what is going on in his life.

“When I hear the jokes about what scum lawyers are, I am tempted to tell that story, but I realize that people do not really care about the good lawyers do. Heck, I once got an intersection changed to make it safer to enter a major highway as part of settling a traffic accident case. But what the public wants to do is talk about the hot coffee case.”

When asked to comment about his present law-related experiences and about his future plans and possible retirement some day, Lawyer Ron Travis replied, “Two former clients (a married couple) were in town for Thanksgiving and stopped in the office to tell me how they have gotten out of the drug life and what they were doing. They had told their children, ‘This man saved Mommy and Dad’s lives.’ They told me that they have a picture of me hanging on their wall in their house, and when people ask who that is, they tell them that I saved their lives. How can one have a greater reward than that?

“Along those same lines, about six months ago I had a 20-year-old black kid who was being sentenced for selling drugs. He came from a broken home, dropped out of school and had been raised in the thug life. He told the judge in open court that I was his hero and that no one had ever cared as much about him as I had. He promised that when he got out of federal prison he was not going to go back to that life and that he was going to get a GED and take some college courses and try to get into counseling when he was released. The court reporter was so moved by what he said that she drew up the transcript and sent it to me, as she had never in 20-plus years heard a client say anything close to that about the lawyer.”

Ron Travis is happy about the body of work that he has accomplished so far in his law career in Williamsport. “I cannot second guess the decision to return to Williamsport to practice law,” he said.

About the possibility of retirement, he mused, “Each February I go away for the month and, lying in the sun, the temptation of retirement does loom. Yet, after about two weeks, I miss the work and worry about cases, and by the time it is time to leave, I am ready. I just do not see retirement as an option as long as I am able to work, as long as my mind holds out, and I hope to continue to do what I have been doing till the day I die.”

Coming in next week’s Webb Weekly: Ron Travis’s adventures on the two other courts in his life—basketball and tennis.

Part 2 - January 16, 2008

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