Category | Arts & Living

TV personality pays a visit

Published on February 12, 2008 by The Sentinel

    “The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear.” On
Feb. 5 the Honorable Judge Glenda Hatchett started her lecture with
this famous quote by Paul Robeson. The Atlanta native shared her life
experience to convey reality throughout the night.

It being that it was
Super Tuesday, her visit was the hope that people needed to show that
Hatchett starts with the story of the start of her career.

      Never aspiring to be a lawyer or a judge she went to Emory Law School
looking for new options in her life. Falling in love with the field of
litigation, she later worked for Delta Airlines. Excelling
tremendously, she felt that her job with Delta would retire. Years
passed and she was offered the position as judge of the Juvenile Court
system, succeeding the late Judge Powell.

    Debating her decision, being a mother of two, Judge
Hatchet decided that it was her time to give back to the community, and
was sworn in on Oct. 1, 1990. She states, “This was the hardest job I
have ever had in my life, but the one that I love most in my life.” She
finished with stories that she has experienced in her court, showing
how we as a community need to come together to help raise our children.

    She concluded her lecture with an exhortion of hope.
She exclaimed that there are 500,000 children in the world who are in
foster care and need love and support. She illustrated the plans that
are needed to save the children of Atlanta, because we must start at
home first. She not only encouraged the audience to get involved, she
encouraged the students to keep their dreams alive, not letting anyone
say what they can and can not do. Her last story was the story that
touched the heart of every person in the room that night, the story of
her first grade book.

    Being young, she did not understand why she and
other black children could not get new books. She went to her father,
telling him to go talk to the teacher and tell her she needed a new
book. Her father instead told her to write her own story.

    Not understanding as a child, years later she was
able to write that story with a successful ending. So she encouraged
the audience to write their own story, not just for themselves, but
also for the generation that is yet to come.