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Travelin’ Man

Denton lawyer Walt Palmer has retired, but he plans to stay busy

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DENTON – If you know Walt Palmer, you know he’s always on the move.

Whether walking to his law office at 108 Market Street, heading over to the Caroline County Courthouse or leading Scout Troop 165 on their many hikes, he’s a Denton icon.

Walter Butler Palmer III, a lifelong Denton resident and lawyer for 45 years, retired in December 2024. He had to. Mary Ann Porter Palmer, his wife of 44 years, kept him to the promise he uttered years ago. He glibly tossed off 70 as the age he would take down his shingle.

“In my line of the Palmer family, the retirement plan is you die young and you don't have to worry about it,” he quipped.

With his dry sense of humor, a razor-sharp memory and an easy laugh, Palmer reflected recently about growing up in Caroline County, his career as a small-town lawyer and his longtime commitment to scouting.

Growing up in Denton

It was his Methodist faith heritage, family values, scouting and music that combined to shape Palmer’s character, choice of career, service to the community, and long marriage.

Born in Easton and growing up at 209 South 5th Avenue, Palmer was active in scouting from the get-go. When he earned his Tenderfoot badge as a cub scout, he was at a crossroads: he could leave scouting or continue on. He opted for scouting and went on to become an Eagle scout, one of 83 Eagle scouts Troop 165 has produced since 1934.

Palmer was inspired to continue a tradition modeled by his Scout Master, Sonny Callahan of Denton.

“We had a ceremony when about six or eight of us got Tenderfoot, … and I remember Sonny Callahan saying nice things about me, and how proud my dad was because he was in attendance,” Palmer said. “So, I make it a point, for any rank that any Scout gets, to say something nice about each and every Scout when we have a ceremony the parents attend.”

Scouting helped foster Palmer’s lifelong passion for hiking, and he’s hiked with his troop over the years from the Bahamas to Ireland, from New England to the North and South Rims of the Grand Canyon.

It was North Caroline High School that provided him the academic tools for success in college and the opportunity to meet his future wife.

A member of the Class of 1972, Palmer shared a music stand with Mary Ann Porter as they played clarinet in the school band. She became valedictorian of the Class of 1971. They dated on and off for nine years before they tied the knot.

“Our first date was rated G,” he said. “If someone made a movie – bring the wife, the kids, the dogs. We walked from my house on Fifth Street out to Martinak, out to the point there, talked, walked back. That was it.”

Hailing from Rehoboth, Delaware, his father and uncle owned a lime and fertilizer dealership at Oil City. “I tell people that dad and I were in similar fields. We were both shoveling fertilizer,” he said.

His mother, Genevieve Rugh, came down from Greensburg, Pennsylvania to teach music. She was the organist at St. Luke’s for years and hosted an annual Christmas party for the entire choir. Palmer cherishes a Joyce Ziegler painting in his office that his dad commissioned as a birthday gift for Genevieve, but he wasn’t able to give it to her, as he passed away seven days before her birthday.

Palmer’s penchant for walking everywhere may have health benefits.

“I hope so, because … the Palmer retirement plan is to die young. It's been heart problems. My dad was 56 My grandfather was 62,” he said. “Now on my mother's side, the Rughs live forever. I told people when I hit somewhere between 62 and 65, I'd find out if I was a Palmer or a Rugh.” Palmer’s younger brother Paul died from cancer in 2010.

Palmer credits his parents for modeling community service. “Dad was involved all over the place here, mom playing the organ at church, teaching, that kind of stuff,” he said. “No one ever had to lecture us about the need to help other people. They just helped other people, and we internalized it from being around them.”

He’ll have more time to teach Bible studies at his new church home, Christ Episcopal Church in Denton. A lifelong member of St. Luke’s, he parted ways when the congregation agreed to disaffiliate from the United Methodist denomination and become a Global Methodist local church.

Besides his family and teachers, Palmer credits his many mentors for helping him fulfill his youthful dream of practicing law.

Scout leaders like Sonny Callahan, Rodney Holsinger and Lin Morrison, and Methodist pastors Bill Dore and Otho Brewer, and lawyers Bob Jarrell and Owen Wise stand out in his memory.

Palmer credits his teachers for preparing him for the rigors of college. He graduated magna cum laude from Gettysburg College in 1976, with honors in history and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, but his first semester performance planted serious doubts that he could succeed.

A history and political science major, to this day Palmer remembers the exam question prompting him to distinguish the difference between the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic. “It was about a month into the semester, and I have flunked my first history test,” he said. “Poly Sci – I've forgotten what I misread on that, but it ended up as a D.”

His history professor encouraged him not to lose heart, “but I was losing heart anyway,” he said. At the same time, his history paper awaited a grade, and the professor returned grades as he scored them.

“So, I'm looking at people who I figure are smarter than I am, and they're coming back with C's on their papers. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, they're getting C's, what am I gonna get? I'm going to flunk out of here and all those people who sent me off with such high hopes and that kind of deal. I had no plan B. My life was mapped out. I had mapped out my life: Go to college, go to law school, come back to Denton. It was looking like I was going to come back to Denton a whole lot sooner than I figured. To me, it looked like a real serious chance that I was not going to make it. Well, he returned my paper, and it was an A. That was Parker Stone entirely,” he said.

Stone taught 12th grade English at NCHS, and Palmer said he, as well as other teachers prepared him well. He was even on the staff of his school newspaper Northern Lights, despite his aversion to writing.

“I hated writing. I was too lazy (and) didn't want to do all that work, but they made us do it, and it paid off,” he said.

During the summers of 1974 to 1976, he worked as a teacher’s aide at the Caroline County Migrant School in Federalsburg.

From Gettysburg, Palmer headed to law school at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, earning his law degree in 1979. He and his roommate took a 4-day bar review course at Notre Dame College in Baltimore, stayed at future Denton dentist Roland Holsinger’s apartment in the city, played the video game Pong, attended an Orioles double-header, and the next day, sat for the 2-day exam at the Baltimore Civic Center.

“I think we were relaxed between the Pong and the Birds,” Palmer said.

Palmer lived with his parents that November, and came home to a dark house from Gettysburg’s homecoming. With his parents away on vacation and his brother in grad school at Tulane, Palmer switched on the lights and got the mail.

“There's the envelope,” he said. “So, I open it up, and I'm just yelling, jumping up and down in the kitchen.” He had passed the Maryland bar.

Fulfilling a dream

Palmer considers himself a fortunate man. In high school he had done unpaid title work for the late Owen Wise. That title work became a valuable skill because he ended up clerking in 1977 and 1978 for George Nier, Bob Jarrell and Jim Hubbard’s law firm in Denton while still in law school.

“They all were really good to me,” he said. Eventually, Palmer became as associate for Nier, Jarrell & Hubbard from 1979 to 1982. Wise became a judge in 1982.

“Since I had done the unpaid work for him, (Judge Wise) offered his practice to me, and he said, ‘I have no idea what value to put on the practice, so I'm just going to give you the practice. We'll get the furniture appraised, and you can pay me for that,’” he said. “That was terrific, and that's what I'm doing, incidentally, when I retire. I've got somebody in mind who's going to take it over, and I'm not charging them, because it's not fair. I got it for free.”

Serving his friends and neighbors in his general law practice has changed Palmer’s views over the years. He considers those who work minimum wage jobs and raise children “amazing.”

“By the time you run the numbers, working is almost heroic,” he said. “You get a lot of respect for them.”

Although he was defeated almost before he began, he considers his work as a trustee trying to save the Upper Shore Community Mental Health Center in Chestertown one of projects he is most proud of.

Palmer considers success as “doing what I set out to do when I was eighth grade or ninth grade and decided I wanted to be a lawyer,” he said. “I used to pray about it: ‘God, let me be a lawyer.’ And then I threw in, ‘Let me do it to help people and not to become rich.’ And I'm thinking I should have cut it off before I got to that second part.”

“Part of the formula for contentment is to like what you’re doing,” he said.

“I grew up here, so that's why I came back because I had so many people when I was growing up who had done such nice things for me that I figured, obviously, I couldn't pay them back directly, but the best I could do would be to come back and try to do something, even if it was collecting trash, which luckily I didn't end up having to do,” Palmer said.

While he’s officially retiring, he’s keeping four cases to see through to completion.

Serving the community, nurturing friendships

Palmer has served in many roles and on many boards and commissions in the county. He’s won several awards for his work with families and on behalf of children and those with mental health and behavioral challenges. He has been a member – with perfect attendance – of the Denton Rotary Club since 1994. He said he’s most proud of his work with the scouts, the church and the law.

He’s made friends across the political spectrum and said Caroline County fosters the kind of camaraderie that allows friends to disagree politically and still respect each other.

“There was Jim Phelps, who was very active in the Republican Party here. Golly, I miss him,” Palmer said as his eyes began to redden with emotion. “I would go over and we would talk politics. We would pick at each other. We would joke with each other about politics, and we respected each other.”

“When you live around here, you know the people,” he said. “It's easy to have the luxury of hating somebody when you don't deal with them, but when you're dealing with them, you find out you respect them. You like them. Caroline County is just this amazing place that you can do that. I think the rest of the country could learn from Caroline County.”

Leaning into the future

Palmer acknowledges his penchant for hiking appeals to him more than to Mary Ann. A naturally shy person, he is comfortable with the silence of the “green tunnel” hike through forests. Mary Ann indulges him on shorter hikes, but there are some challenging hiking trails on his wish list he’d like to check off: Hadrian’s Wall, the Great Allegheny Passage, the Camino de Santiago.

He plans to stay active with Troop 165. In July he journeyed to the Philmont Scout Reservation and hiked with “a terrific crew of Scouts and adult advisors” to the top of Baldy Mountain, elevation 12,441 feet. “Sorry to brag, but not too shabby for 70 years old,” Palmer posted on his Facebook page.

Hiking difficult terrain contains a “good life lesson,” he said. It’s just “one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other.” He plans to build walking into his schedule to stave off the effects of his sweet tooth.

In the meantime, there are his and her parents’ inherited belongings awaiting their attention.

“We've got a lot of cleaning up around the house to do,” Palmer said. “But you know, if you're willing to put the marriage on the line, there's a very simple and effective way to clean out a house. The husband decides what things of the wife’s are expendable. The wife decides what things of the husband’s are expendable. You would have the house clean in no time. Might be divorced, but the house will be clean.”