For re­tired U.S. Dis­trict Judge Ter­rence “Terry” McVerry, be­ing a ju­rist seemed to come nat­u­rally.

“He was just born to be a judge,” said for­mer U.S. Dis­trict Judge Robert J. Cin­drich, his long­time friend, for­mer law part­ner and col­league on the fed­eral bench. “When you think of some­one who would make a great judge, you would think of Terry McVerry. He had all of the char­ac­ter­is­tics.”

Known for his em­pa­thetic, even­handed and plain­spo­ken man­ner, Judge McVerry never strayed far from the val­ues he learned grow­ing up in a tiny coal patch in Ce­cil.

“He never lost the foun­da­tion from those roots,” said his col­league U.S. Magis­trate Judge Mau­reen Kelly. “Terry was al­ways about treat­ing ev­ery­one with the ut­most re­spect when they came in front of him, no mat­ter who they were.”

Judge McVerry died at his Mt. Leb­a­non home on Mon­day of com­pli­ca­tions from a re­cent fall. He was 77.

Una­fraid of hard work, Judge McVerry, who lost his mother at the age of 11, put him­self through col­lege and law school at Duquesne Univer­sity work­ing in a strip mine and at his fam­ily’s tav­ern and con­fec­tion­ery in the ham­let of Hill Sta­tion.

“Most peo­ple in town ei­ther worked in the coal mines or at May­view State Hos­pi­tal,” Judge McVerry re­called in the Pitts­burgh Post-Ga­zette in 2002, shortly af­ter he was ap­pointed to the fed­eral bench. “My broth­ers and I not only worked in the busi­ness, but we all worked in other jobs. My dad couldn’t af­ford to send any of us to col­lege.”

After briefly serv­ing in ac­tive duty with the Army Re­serve, Judge McVerry joined the Air Na­tional Guard for sev­eral years as a cap­tain.

In col­lege, he met Judy Kausek and the cou­ple wed in 1966.

Their se­cret to a long and happy mar­riage? Respect and time to­gether, Mrs. McVerry said.

“We just made it a point to do things to­gether,” said Mrs. McVerry, a re­tired math teacher. “We raised three won­der­ful kids that we doted on and loved ev­ery minute of it.”

After law school, Judge McVerry went to work as an as­sis­tant dis­trict at­tor­ney in Al­le­gheny County, where he of­ten faced off with Judge Cin­drich, who rep­re­sented the pub­lic de­fender’s of­fice.

“We were ad­ver­sar­ies and that’s how I got to know him, al­though we played high school foot­ball against each other grow­ing up,” Judge Cin­drich re­called. “In court he was the most hon­or­able, forth­right per­son you can imag­ine. He was al­ways kind to ev­ery­body and he was never rude or crude to a de­fen­dant. For those of us pub­lic de­fend­ers that was un­usual — most peo­ple didn’t treat us or our cli­ents like that. I ad­mired that and we be­came close friends.”

While serv­ing in their re­spec­tive gov­ern­ment jobs, the two, along with the late Fred Bax­ter, started a pri­vate prac­tice that even­tu­ally grew to in­clude sev­eral other at­tor­neys.

From 1979 to 1990, Judge McVerry served as GOP state rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the 42nd Leg­is­la­tive Dis­trict in the South Hills.

In 1997, Judge McVerry was ap­pointed to the eight-mem­ber com­mis­sion that drafted a home rule char­ter for Al­le­gheny County.

“He was in­stru­men­tal in build­ing the new gov­ern­ment,” Judge Cin­drich said. “I think that kind of launched his ca­reer in the ju­di­ciary.”

By 1998, he was tapped by Gov. Tom Ridge for the county Court of Com­mon Pleas, where he served an un­ex­pired term for two years in fam­ily court.

When the home rule char­ter was ap­proved by vot­ers, Judge McVerry worked for two years as the first so­lic­i­tor in the new form of gov­ern­ment with Jim Roddey, the first county ex­ec­u­tive.

He was nom­i­nated by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush in 2002 to the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the Western Dis­trict of Penn­syl­va­nia, hav­ing been rated unan­i­mously by his peers in the Amer­i­can Bar As­so­ci­a­tion as “well qual­i­fied” — the high­est rec­om­men­da­tion from the or­ga­ni­za­tion. Judge McVerry was con­firmed by the U.S. Senate in a bi­par­ti­san 88-0 vote.

His years on the fed­eral bench were marked with mo­men­tous and long-rang­ing de­ci­sions.

With the ad­vent of in­ter­net chat­rooms and the fledg­ling so­cial me­dia scene in the 2000s, his were among the first key rul­ings in what was un­charted ter­ri­tory.

His 2007 de­ter­mi­na­tion about whether a high school could dis­ci­pline a stu­dent for an in­ter­net par­ody of his prin­ci­pal on Myspace.com had re­ver­ber­a­tions for years to come.

In a much-pub­li­cized de­ci­sion, he ruled that with­out ev­i­dence of sub­stan­tial dis­rup­tion to the school sys­tem, the stu­dent was pro­tected by his First Amend­ment right to free speech.

“Pub­lic schools are vi­tal in­sti­tu­tions, but their reach is not un­lim­ited,” Judge McVerry wrote in his opin­ion.

Judge McVerry rel­ished his time in the fed­eral courts, see­ing it as the cap­stone of a long and re­ward­ing ca­reer in the law.

“I had as­pi­ra­tions of be­ing a [fed­eral] judge for a long, long time,” he said in the 2002 Post-Ga­zette story. “But you never know whether those as­pi­ra­tions will be ful­filled. I see it as [achiev­ing] a goal and the cul­mi­na­tion of a ca­reer.”

Be­fore his re­tire­ment in 2016, he was one of the hard­est-work­ing mem­bers of the court, said Judge Kelly, who also got to know Judge McVerry and his wife as fel­low pa­rish­io­ners of St. Anne Cath­o­lic Church in Cas­tle Shan­non, where the cou­ple served as Eucha­ris­tic min­is­ters, de­liv­er­ing Com­mu­nion to shut-ins for many years.

“Terry was ex­tremely dil­i­gent and con­sci­en­tious about ev­ery­thing he did,” she said. “He was in the court­house, work­ing at his desk ev­ery morn­ing by 5:30.”

“He loved ev­ery minute of ev­ery day,” his wife said. “There wasn’t a day that he dreaded go­ing to work.”

“Be­cause his ca­reer was so var­ied he saw things from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive,” said his daugh­ter Erin Crow­ley, of Bloom­ing­ton, Ind. “He was fair-minded, ded­i­cated and re­ally very pas­sion­ate about the law. He brought a lot of wis­dom to the bench.”

And he wouldn’t brook dis­re­spect in any form in his court­room, Judge Kelly said.

“He was al­ways an ad­vo­cate and sup­porter of women in the le­gal pro­fes­sion, and I think that’s re­ally im­por­tant,” she said. “He treated women the same way he treated men and if a male law­yer wasn’t re­spect­ful to a fe­male law­yer, he im­me­di­ately ad­dressed it. He called them on the car­pet. I can tell you that from my own ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Known as “tickle mon­ster” to his nine grand­chil­dren and as a lover of sum­mer­time at the beach, a good game of Hearts and jaunty Ir­ish jigs, Judge McVerry knew how to let his hair down.

“Even when we were kids, I re­mem­ber how play­ful he was,” Ms. Crow­ley said. “He’d whisk us all off to the pool in the sum­mer or sled­ding in the win­ter.”

When her father once man­aged to jam 18 kids into his con­vert­ible to get ice cream, he in­stantly be­came the neigh­bor­hood hero, said his other daugh­ter, Brid­get McVerry, of Re­dondo Beach, Calif.

“He was the dad who would do that,” she said, laugh­ing at the mem­ory.

Along with his wife, daugh­ters and grand­chil­dren, Judge McVerry is also sur­vived by his son, Bryan, of Mt. Leb­a­non.

Friends will be re­ceived at Laugh­lin Cre­ma­tion & Funeral Trib­utes, 222 Wash­ing­ton Road, Mt. Leb­a­non, from 2 to 7 p.m. Fri­day. Mass of Chris­tian Burial will be on Satur­day at 9:30 a.m. at St. Paul of the Cross Par­ish, St. Anne Church, 400 Hoo­dridge Drive, Cas­tle Shan­non.

In lieu of flow­ers, the fam­ily re­quests me­mo­rial con­tri­bu­tions to Neigh­bor­hood Legal Ser­vices: www.nlsa.us or with a check made out to Duquesne Univer­sity School of Law, Attn: Alumni Of­fice, 600 For­bes Ave., Pitts­burgh 15282. Please note the Honor­able Ter­rence F. McVerry En­dowed Schol­ar­ship Fund in the memo line.

Janice Crompton: jcrompton@post-gazette.com.

First Published: March 11, 2021, 10:45 a.m.