The road to becoming a judge was one filled with challenges for Bruce Anderson Jr.
Thankfully, he had some guidance along the way.
His parents — a Navy father and a seamstress mother — didn’t have a lot of money but raised him to work hard and pursue a solid education.
A high school guidance counselor led him toward academic success.
A college basketball coach broke a hard but necessary truth.
A Sunday school teacher who doubled as a county court judge piqued Anderson’s interest in law.
They were public servants in their own right and “all sacrificed to help me get there,” said Anderson.
He’s worked at Terrell Hogan for 11 years, checked off his legal “bucket list” and made a healthy living. But as his parents instilled, “It’s more important to help others than yourself.”
Pursuing that mentality was the reason Anderson entered law and why he decided to run for an open circuit judge seat.
He fulfilled that goal Tuesday. How he got to that point was filled with sacrifices of his own.
Basketball dreams, academic success
Anderson arrived in Jacksonville via the Navy like so many others.
His father was in the service, but also would come home to pack a lunch and thermos to work his second job at the Jacksonville Shipyards.
His mother still is a talented seamstress who worked from home, often hosting girls needing work on their prom dresses.
They made it clear from an early age there wasn’t a college fund. There wasn’t a rich relative, either.
They still expected him to go to college, whether it was on an academic, ROTC or athletic scholarship.
Anderson was a big kid. Not wide but tall and lanky.
Naturally, he took to basketball and cross country where his nearly 6-foot-6-inch frame in high school helped him excel.
He wasn’t quite good enough to land a scholarship.
Instead, he excelled in academics with the help of his guidance counselor who steered him right. She recommended advanced placement courses that helped him enter Jacksonville University as nearly a sophomore with a full scholarship.
Still, Anderson loved basketball. He was working as a bagger at the Jacksonville Beach Publix when the JU coach at the time, Tates Locke, noticed him and invited him to walk on. The Bobby Knight mentor was a “tough, no nonsense” coach who ran two-a-days.
After two weeks of practice, Locke sat him down.
The coach told Anderson he was proud of the effort, but he didn’t have the skill set. The young player could stick around at the end of the bench, but the coach suggested academics instead.
“It was kind of crushing,” said Anderson, who said he respected the coach’s advice so early in his attempt.
That freshman year was even more crushing when Anderson found out his father had terminal cancer.
Five months after being diagnosed, his father passed away, which Anderson took hard.
It wasn’t fair. He was bitter. It took a couple of years and the help of his college friends to be more at peace with it.
He said the silver lining was that he wasn’t taken suddenly. There was time to talk, like when Anderson contemplated quitting school to support his mother and sister.
He thought it was noble. His parents thought it was foolish — he wasn’t going to throw away all his hard work. It would work itself out, they said.
Anderson graduated from JU with degrees in commercial art and marketing, but after a couple of internships he decided it wasn’t for him.
“I wasn’t passionate about it,” he said. “I wasn’t making my community better.”
That was why he turned to law.
The grind of law school
Growing up, Anderson went to Sunday school taught by Duval County Judge Ray Simpson.
Sessions were shifted to the old courthouse when the judge had the occasional weekend duty.
After a few Bible passages, the class would watch as those arrested for drunk and disorderly, DUI and the like were marched in for first appearances.
The takeaway for the class: You have freedom of choice. You don’t have freedom from consequences.
During those sessions, Anderson took an interest in the prosecutor’s role.
“I thought it’d be kind of cool,” he said.
So when the artistic side didn’t appeal, he enrolled at the University of Florida law school. He had no scholarship, though, and financial aid then was limited to $5,000 a year — enough for tuition and little else.
When that first installment was late, Anderson was left scrambling. He ended up selling his beat up 1967 Firebird to make the first tuition payment and mainly used a 10-speed bike to get around campus.
He worked at Chaucer’s, a health food restaurant now called The Swamp. Anderson’s schedule was always packed. Classes in the morning until just after lunch, work daily from 4-10 p.m. and study time until 2 a.m.
He lived in what was called the “student ghetto” in the 1980s — empty lots with old Army barracks and cracker-style houses where people with fixed incomes and students lived.
His place was owned by Chaucer’s landlord, a 1920s law grad who offered him a deal because he knew Anderson’s tight budget.
The two-room cracker house was $90 a month, but he was on his own to fix it up.
“Oh, it was bad,” Anderson said, with a laugh.
Cobwebs, musty furniture and fixtures — the place felt like it really had come from the 1920s.
Anderson gutted the place, cleaned it out, gave it a fresh coat of cheap paint and found a broken porch swing in a nearby garbage bin.
The house didn’t have heat or air conditioning, which led to some Gainesville winter nights sleeping in the sole booth at Chaucer’s.
He’d often been studying there anyway, guzzling as much free coffee he could handle. He could sleep in the clothes he’d wear the next day and maybe catch a shower at the gym.
“It was a different existence than most law school kids had,” he said. “I didn’t think that much of it.”
The work paid off in 31/2 years with an opportunity back home.
‘They’re never going to hire you like that’
Close to the end of his law school career in the late ’80s, Anderson pursued a job at the 4th Circuit State Attorney’s Office.
His first interview was with then-director Brad Stetson over lunch at Bono’s. It went well enough to secure a formal interview with others at the office.
That trip started in Gainesville, where Anderson rode his bike to the bus station praying for no rain. Over his shoulder was a suit bag containing his only suit — a Navy blue number given to him by a family friend.
After a quick change in the Jacksonville bus station, he walked to the office.
A receptionist stopped him before he could make it much further. Anderson was about to walk into the interview carrying his book bag and garment bag holding his jeans, T-shirt and sneakers.
“’You look like a hobo carrying all that stuff,’” Anderson remembers her saying. “’They’re never going to hire you like that.’”
She let Anderson stow his belongings behind her desk. He was nervous but even more grateful, having never been coached on interview etiquette.
In he went, where he sat across from revered State Attorney Ed Austin and lawyers like Stetson, John Delaney, Rick Mullaney, Audrey Moran and James Ruth.
“I thought it went really well,” he said.
Weeks later while working at Chaucer’s, the phone rang. He didn’t pick it up, though — a female co-worker answered, loud music blaring in the background.
She didn’t hold her hand over the receiver when she yelled for Anderson, saying it was someone from the State Attorney’s Office. She also loudly questioned if he had gotten into trouble last time he was home.
No, he hadn’t, Anderson said. It was the place he had interviewed and was praying to land a job.
Anderson snatched the phone and stretched the cord as far as it would go outside and into the alleyway.
It was Mullaney.
“Yes sir, thank you for calling,” Anderson recalls saying, a kid at the time offering professional pleasantries.
Mullaney said the office would like to hire him. Happy tears filling his eyes, Anderson immediately exclaimed he’d take it.
There was a pause on the other end. Mullaney was perplexed. Didn’t this young attorney want to know what it would pay before accepting?
“No, it doesn’t matter to me,” Anderson remembers saying.
It was close to $23,500, but he would be a prosecutor.
Anderson loved his time in the office, especially the example Austin set. Always look the part, do your best and “do the right thing” as so many prosecutors from that era reminiscence.
After about three years, Anderson left like many others when Austin prepared for his successful run for mayor.
Anderson spent much of the next decade as a solo practitioner before joining Terrell Hogan in 2005. It was a natural fit that let him work on a plethora of areas and help him check off his legal “bucket list.”
Being a judge was still on the list, though.
The campaign and a ‘quick’ trip
Anderson since December 2014 was a candidate for the circuit court seat being vacated by the retiring Henry Davis.
At one point in the late 1990s, Anderson applied via the Judicial Nominating Commission but knew he had no shot. He just wanted to go through the process. He decided then he wanted to let voters choose.
He campaigned sporadically, but really ramped it up when David Trotti filed this year.
Like other political campaigns, Anderson went door to door. Unlike other political campaigns, he had to remain steadfast to Florida Bar rules governing judicial campaigns.
“If you ever want to be brought down as a judicial candidate, just go door to door,” he said while laughing.
Many doors were slammed when he couldn’t answer who he was voting for in the president’s race or give his opinion on other hot-topic issues.
He couldn’t answer them because of those Bar rules that maintain he can’t be political.
There are stories he won’t forget, such as the polite man in July who couldn’t be bothered because it was the second quarter of a football game he was watching.
Not soccer, but football. In July.
“It’s important,” Anderson said the man told him. “It’s the Florida Gators.”
It was a game from 1996 being rebroadcast.
One couple voted for him because their dogs liked him.
Another was interested enough to spend 30 minutes talking issues, only to say he lived out of state but would vote Anderson if he could.
Like other candidates, Anderson worked hard in those final days. Last Monday, he loaded up an SUV with signs for supporters on the Northside.
He left about 9 p.m. but on the way noticed some precincts where he could display more signs. He put a few down.
Then another precinct popped up. So he put a few more down. And hey, there’s another precinct. A few more down.
The ”quick” trip lasted until 6 a.m., when a tired, muddy Anderson returned home for a couch respite before his wife, Donna, woke him up half-an-hour later. It was Election Day. Time to get up, take a shower and get back out there.
Anderson was out until his watch party that evening at Bono’s, the same restaurant where he had his state attorney interview and has since dined weekly.
He was tired and drank sweet tea all night to stay caffeinated, but perked up when the results were announced. Donna was ecstatic and planted a huge kiss on him.
“I wish I could bottle up her emotion and reaction from that night,” he said. “She was great.”
After making it home, he didn’t last much longer. He was asleep by 10 p.m. on the couch.
He had done it, though.
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