Former judge Eugene Pincham dies at age 82

Well now this happened recently for sure!!! I think I ran into a party for him last year sometime when I noticed another party held outside of a house that doubled as a community center. Anyway from the Sun-Times today...

R. Eugene Pincham, a former judge who ran for mayor of Chicago on the Harold Washington Party ticket, died this morning, his family said. He was 82.

Pincham, who served both as a Cook County judge and Illinois Apellate Court justice, was known as a vigorous critic of the criminal justice system.

He became a Circuit Court judge in 1976 and was assigned to the Criminal Division, where he served until 1984. Pincham went on to become a justice of the Illinois Appellate Court.

Pincham resigned from the bench in 1989 and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. In 1991, he became the Harold Washington Party's nominee for mayor of Chicago. He lost but carried 19 of the city's 50 wards.

Pincham was born on June 28, 1925, in Chicago but grew up in Alabama.

After his high school graduation in 1942, Pincham attended LeMoyne College in Memphis and, in 1944, transferred to Tennessee State University in Nashville, where he earned a bachelor¹s degree in political science in 1947.

In 1948, he married his college sweetheart, Alzata C. Henry, and that same year enrolled in Northwestern University School of Law. He worked his way through school, waiting on tables at the Palmer House Hotel and shining shoes. He earned his law degree in 1951.

It wasn't that long ago that I saw him in person. Actually it was when I was still in high school. He was giving us some young buck some advice or inspiration. Actually I barely remember this assembly or why it was convened. I can't even tell you what the lesson was.

I suppose that's just an indicator that I didn't want to be there anyway. That or I was just plain ready to go and I wouldn't have appreciated being there in the first place. Certainly the guy was around beyond this assembly as I would see him on TV from time to time on Chicago cable access.