By Tom Recchio
Dermot Meagher, the first openly gay judge in Massachusetts, who was also a writer and artist, died on Dec. 28, 2023 at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 83.
A memorial service will take place on June 19 in Provincetown, where he had a home since 1985.
The second son of six children of Elizabeth McDermott and John H. Meagher, Dermot was born on Oct. 19, 1940 in Worcester. His father was a judge on the Mass. Superior Court; his mother was an artist.
After graduating from St. John’s High School in 1958 and from Harvard in 1962, he spent a year in Mexico learning Spanish and helping build a medical facility as part of a Catholic relief effort.
He received his law degree from Boston College Law School in 1965, after which he served as an assistant district attorney in Worcester and was a fellow at the Center for Criminal Justice at Harvard Law School. He co-authored with Robert Coles and Joseph Brenner the book Drugs and Youth, published by W.W. Norton in 1970.
In the early ’70s, he directed the Percentage Deposit Bail Project that resulted in the virtual abolition of bail bondsmen and reform of the pretrial release system in Massachusetts.
But all was not well during that decade. “He was going through a rough patch,” his husband, Renato Cellucci, wrote in his eulogy for Dermot. “He was drinking too much” while also working as a model for clothing catalogs, wrote Renato. “He even posed as the happy dad of the family on The Game of Life board game,” he wrote.
By 1975 Dermot had begun to work seriously on recovery, and with the help of friends and Alcoholics Anonymous he remained sober for the rest of his life and helped others to do so as well.
In 1976, he became an assistant bar counsel for the Mass. Board of Bar Overseers, investigating and prosecuting lawyers for ethics violations. His work contributed to the court reforms of 1978.
In 1980 he completed a master’s in public administration at Harvard.
Dermot was a founder of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers in Massachusetts and the Mass. Lesbian and Gay Bar Association. He was appointed to the Boston Human Rights Commission by Mayor Raymond Flynn.
He also was a member of the Boston Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance, the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Political Caucus, Massachusetts Gay Democrats, and the Legal Services Committee of the AIDS Action Committee. After retirement, he became a board member of the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod.
He first applied for a judgeship in 1985, but because of his sexual orientation there was resistance to his appointment. It wasn’t until his second application in 1989 that Gov. Michael Dukakis appointed him to the Boston Municipal Court, the oldest trial court in Massachusetts. He heard criminal and civil cases for 17 years and retired in 2006.
Dermot related his experiences as a municipal court judge in the 2010 book Judge Sentences, Tales From the Bench, in which the drama of the courtroom, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, was described in eight stories. Reviewer Sam Allis of the Boston Globe wrote, “The Daumier like scenes he paints in his courtroom are fabulous, rendered with wit and compassion…. The man writes like a dream.”
Retirement allowed Dermot to do what he wanted: write, paint, sculpt, and draw. In addition to writing his memoir, he took classes at the Fine Arts Work Center, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and Castle Hill in Truro.
He was invited to be in an emerging artists show at PAAM at 60, and his work was exhibited at galleries and museums across Massachusetts, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and most recently at a 2023 retrospective at the Provincetown Commons. Two books of his drawings were published: Provincetown Drawings and Naked.
He also published three mysteries, Lyons, Tigers and Bears, Lyons at the Gate, and Lyons, Foxes and Bears, as well as two books of poems, A Moth to the Flame and Lovers, Boyfriends, Tricks and Crushes.
“It made him so happy to make art,” Renato wrote. “Dermot had to be creative. If he wasn’t painting, he was writing. If he wasn’t writing, he was reading.”
Dermot is survived by his husband, Renato Cellucci of Fort Lauderdale; his sister Mary of Jamestown, R.I.; three brothers, Andrew of Harwich, Padric of Truro, and Timothy of Washington, D.C.; three nephews, Drew, Luke, and Sean Meagher; and a niece, Regina Meagher.
Dermot was predeceased by his brother Sean.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Dermot’s name can be made to the Soup Kitchen in Provincetown at skipfood.org.
A celebration of Dermot’s Life will take place at 11:30 a.m. at St. Peter the Apostle Church, 11 Prince St., Provincetown on Wednesday June 19. A reception will follow at 1 p.m.at the Commons Community Room at 46 Bradford St.
