THE FLAGLER TRIBUNE    

THE FLAGLER TRIBUNE
Bunnell, Florida
Thursday, September 28, 1978

 

The Flagler County Circuit Court Judge died at the age of 64 about 4 p.m. Friday at his home, 45 Florida Drive, Palm Coast.

At his side when he breathed his last breath were his wife of 35 years, Frances, and his three daughters, Wilhelmina (known as “Prunie”), Mrs. Gail Shephard of Deland and Mrs. Susan Roberts of Lakeland.

The funeral service is scheduled for 2 this afternoon at St. Marks by the Sea Lutheran Church in Palm Coast where Judge Wadsworth worshipped for the past couple of years with Pastor Marc Ottervein officiating.

According to the family, interment will follow in Hope Cemetery on Old Kings Road, just off State Road 100.

Billy, as most of his Flagler County neighbors called him affectionately called him, was a man of contrasts, according to biographical material furnished the Tribune by a former news writer from DeLand, Barbara Kenny, who was a close friend of the Wadsworth family.

Wadsworth proudly called himself a “cracker,” and was a man of the earth where he grew up, Flagler County, and especially Bunnell where he made his home for many years.

But he was also urbane, known for his polished rhetoric and oratory that brought acclaim wherever he went, whether it was Tallahassee or at a National Judge’s Conference in another part of the county. His wit and intelligence were always manifest, making it appear he had the world at his fingertips.

Some call him rumpled and a “product of cracker county” and he was. But when he served his first term as a State Legislator, Tick Tuttle, then Capitol Press Bureau Chief, wrote in one of his columns:  “Down in Flagler County, which is mostly palm trees, turpentine stills and small farms, Wadsworth is a big name…..William L. Wadsworth is a lawyer and State Representative……but no one would accuse Bill Wadsworth of looking ‘rich.’ He’s something of a sartorial wonder. He always looked rumpled, rather like an unmade bed looking for a sleeper. But Wadsworth’s mind is far sharper than his attire. And his humor contains little barbs or nuggets of wisdom. He’s the closest thing the Legislature has to Will Rogers.”

That look changed in recent years after his family begged him to give up his black suits which had long been his trademark. He started wearing a plaid suit and admitted it made him feel younger.

Pleased as he was, the Judge  loped - - he never walked - - through the Courthouse as if nothing had changed, smiling as he went.

That smile became one of Judge Wadsworth’s trademarks, but only after he lost his first case in Volusia County just after he was graduated from Stetson’s Law School.

As a new member of the bar, he presented his case in a serious mien, talking studiously in tones he thought befitted him as an attorney. That tactic caused him to completely lose the jury and the case. Deflated, the young Wadsworth picked up his papers and was heading back to Bunnell when former Judge - - later Assistant Secretary of the Navy - - Francis Whitehair called him to the bench.

Whitehair said: “Do you know why you lost that case, Billy?” Getting a negative answer, the Judge gave Wadsworth some advice he never forgot to use:  “Smile. No matter what’s happening, keep smiling and no one will ever know what you are thinking.”

At home, Judge Wadsworth became simply, and most importantly to him, “Papa” to his three girls and later to four grandchildren. He wasn’t a quiet father but vocalized on almost any subject his chose.

His eldest daughter, Susan, followed in her father’s footsteps by becoming a lawyer then the first woman Judge in Polk County and all of Florida. She garnered and “A” in undergraduate school for her “Vignettes of Papa,” a series of short tidbits about his preference for hot coffee, hatred of musty wash cloths and girls who “took too much time primping in the bathroom.”

The second daughter, Gail, wife of Kenton Shephard, a DeLand CPA, remembers “the windows might shake at his wrath, but every outburst was recognized by the family and friends as his special way of just being ‘Papa’ and accepted as an outburst filled with love. In fact, for years I remember calling him ‘Sweet Papa” until we found out the term has a different connotation.

It was Mrs. Shephard who presented the Judge with his first grandchild, a girl named Frances. There are now three more grandchildren, Carson, Webb and Whitney.

Late in life there came a surprise to the entire Wadsworth clan when in 1956, Wilhelmina Littledale Wadsworth was born to Billy and Frances (Because she was so wrinkled she had henceforth been known as Prunie)

This little tyke toddled through the woods with Papa to see the tall pines, turpentine stills and, most important, learning to love Flagler County just like her father.

Judge Billy spent a lot of time in the woods of Flagler County. He was an indefitable “digger.” He searched out the location of old kitchen mittens and attacked them with his trusty shovel, searching for bottles and other relics of days gone by when the area was filled with sugar mills, plantations and settlements.

In August of this year, at the age of 21, Wilhelmina became the 24th member of the Wadsworth family to graduate from Stetson University.

Family man, judicial and prudent, devoted to his beloved Florida and Flagler County, Judge Wadsworth left his mark on the land and its people. He would have been on the bench for 12 years had he lived until the first of the year. His judgements will stand as a symbol of his judicial craft, his family is an honorable mark of love and devoted home life, but in one of the courtrooms of Volusia County there is a unique mark.

At the close of one of Judge Wadsworth’s trials, the defendant was found guilty. He became so enraged when he stood for sentencing that he gathered up all the papers on the desk and flung them into the air, all the way to the ceiling above. There the seemingly impossible happened: the papers lodged firmly in the glass chandelier. Judge Wadsworth just smiled.

Those papers are still stuck in the chandelier, a mark to remind courtroom followers that Judge Wadsworth was here.

At the end of a hearing in his Daytona Beach chambers a couple of months ago, the editor of this newspaper was in another office, commenting to some rival lawyers about the rapidity which Judge Wadsworth had conducted the pre-trail hearing.

In his inner office, Judge Wadsworth heard the comment. He called out: “Gordon, you know I like to work fast. I don’t like any grass grown under my feet."