One in a series on local judges.
by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
It was the best $50 John Moran ever spent.
Back when Moran was a young man, long before he joined the Duval County Court bench, long before his regular white water rafting trips with the boys, long before law school, children and cares, his father gave him a $50 bill.
“It was for emergency from my dad,” he said.
He managed to keep it for years. Through college, he resisted spending it on emergency beer rations. He didn’t squander it on books. It didn’t help fill his gas tank in a pinch. Nor did he hand it over in moments of debilitating hunger.
He spent it on a girl.
In the early 1980s, Moran was working in Dallas for Montgomery Ward’s security department. His criminology degree from Florida State was a distant decade behind him and a nagging feeling of stagnation had started a slow creep through Moran’s thoughts.
“I had worked for 10 years and I wasn’t where I wanted to be and I didn’t have the level of satisfaction I was looking for,” he reflected. “I got tired of it. My brother was a county judge at the time and I thought his work was fascinating. The law was interesting. Also, the financial rewards of being a lawyer are significant.”
At 31, he dropped his security career, left Montgomery Ward and pointed the car toward Oklahoma City, where he would begin his legal studies at Oklahoma City University. He wanted to be a prosecutor.
College being the great incubator of relationships that it is, Moran met a young girl named Audrey McKibben. Fresh out of Syracuse University, Audrey decided to spend a year doing public service work before law school.
“She just happened to rent an apartment beside a buddy of mine,” said Moran. “She got another girl and they decided that, even though they were living on a stipend, they were going to pool their money because they didn’t want to live in a bad neighborhood.”
Moran’s buddy took note.
“He came to school and said, ‘Hey, some new chicks just moved in next door. Why don’t you guys come over and we’ll scope ‘em out?’ So we did,” he remembered.
Dancing followed the scoping, which led to dating. John and Audrey hit it off. Still, Moran’s $50 bill remained resolutely lodged in his wallet. It was never used to buy her roses. It didn’t buy them a night at the movies. Valentine’s Day bon-bons were not good enough for Moran’s $50 bill. Nor were cards, dinner, gifts or anything else. Sweet nothings whispered in his ear could not separate Moran from his money.
Everything was fine until Moran graduated and took a job with the State Attorney’s Office back in Jacksonville. Audrey didn’t follow. She wanted to go to law school in California. He lobbied for anything in the Southeast. A long distance relationship loomed and Moran knew he was doomed. Finally, he convinced her to give Duke University in North Carolina a try. Audrey relented, but she didn’t have money for the application fee, which was . . . none other than . . .$50.
The wallet opened and out came the bill.
Audrey went to Duke. The two continued dating and were soon married. Audrey McKibben became Audrey Moran. Most know her these days as Mayor John Delaney’s chief of staff. Seventeen years later, they’re still together with four children.
It was the best $50 he ever spent. Moran got the girl, wound up in his home town and successfully nurtured his new law career into a spot on the county bench. He even landed in the same building as his inspiration and older brother, Don, who is chief judge of the 4th Judicial Circuit.
Of course it’s not all easy street for Moran. With two Morans in the Duval County Courthouse, some confusion does occur.
“I get his phone calls. He gets my mail and vice versa,” said Moran. “It does happen. People will, with the slip of the tongue, call me Don or call him John. The other thing a lot of people say is we favor one another. The other day, we were with him and his family. His son, who’s about 16 or so, grabbed me around the waist and said, ‘Hey, dad.’ Then he said, ‘I’m sorry, Uncle John. I thought you were my dad.’”
For the last 15 years, Moran has been a member of a small fraternity of daredevils. Maybe not quite daredevils, but certainly thrill-seekers. It’s nothing fringe or weird, but just a bunch of guys who go white water rafting twice a year. No work. No office. No young ones. No women. Just the guys.
“It’s me, John Delaney, Rick Mullaney, John Jolly, Howard Maltz and George Bateh,” said Moran. “We go up the Gauley and New River. It’s about a 10-hour drive. Part of the fun is riding in the van for 10 hours just chewing the fat and finding out what everyone has been doing the last six months. Fortunately, all of us have pretty interesting jobs and we all kind of know the different players.
“It’s a great group of guys. We get along great. We’re like a bunch of old women; we’ve kind of got a little routine down. We wind up eating at the same restaurants each time and doing the same things at the same time.”
Plans are in the works for a trip down the Colorado River next year. Delaney will be out of office and Mullaney, his general counsel, will be on his heels. Jolly, a City attorney, may or may not have to find a job.
“Most of these guys will be unemployed,” he said. “We figure hey, they’re getting ready to lose their jobs anyway, why not have some fun?”
Moran can sit tight, however. Although he must run for reelection every so often, his job is about as secure as an elected position gets. At 52, he is in no hurry to follow his brother to Circuit Court, though it might figure into his future plans. In the meantime, he’s comfortable where he is. He has long found his stride as a county judge — when to be compassionate and when to lower the boom. It does raise concern, however, when he can draw close parallels between himself and the people that appear before him in court.
“It’s funny, the other day I had a lawyer in court,” he said. “He was trying to sell me on putting his client on house arrest. He said, ‘Listen, judge. The guy, all he can do is go to work and go home and on Sundays he can go to church or go to the grocery store.’ I was thinking about it. That sounds just like my life. I’ve been under house arrest for a few years and didn’t realize it.”