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An institutional figure in Chambers County gave his final bow in January, retiring as district court judge after an eventful 20-year career presiding over more than 200,000 cases. Calvin Milford, the now retired judge, is looking forward to getting back to his LaFayette roots and spending his free time tending to his farm in the county.

Milford has served in the judicial field in the county during his entire career after graduating from law school.

“I always wanted to be an attorney. That was my career goal, as long as I can remember,” Milford recalled. “And I always wanted to practice in LaFayette, which I was blessed to be able to do for 14 years.”

It wasn’t until a law professor asked him to sit in on a mock trial as judge that Milford discovered his love of the position. In 2005, after the then district judge Joel Holley retired, Milford decided to throw his hat in the ring.

He ended up being re-elected for two more 6-year terms in 2012 and 2018. Despite his successful career, Milford never considered going anywhere else.

“My family came here from South Carolina in 1838,” he said. “So it’s always been home.”

During the last 20 years, Milford has been a part of implementing many programs both inside and outside of the courtroom.

One that he was particularly proud of looking back on was the drug court program.

The program is an accountability court which helps people who have been arrested on drug charges. If they meet the requirements — intensive counseling, community service and random drug screenings — they can graduate from the program sober and with their charges dropped.

“If they graduated, then hopefully they were in recovery. That was my big concern,” Milford said. “And their case was dismissed, which was their big concern. So it was kind of a trade off; I tried to enforce recovery while they tried to keep those charges off their record.”

The program had a graduation rate of about 85 percent and a recidivism rate (the rate that people that got rearrested after they got out of drug court) of around 10 percent.

“So not only were they becoming sober, they were staying sober for the most part,” Milford said.

He also helped institute a similar program for a family drug court through DHR (Department of Human Resources) to help parents with drug charges get back custody of their children.

“A lot of people got their children back, because they were able to get their lives clean. I guess helping people fight addiction turned out to be my thing,” Milford reflected.

In fact, the longtime judge spent his last day as a judge doing the drug court docket.

Over the years, Milford said some of his fondest projects have been outside of the courtroom.

In 2003, he worked with several other county officials to help get the historic courthouse in LaFayette expanded and renovated. The space that now houses the courtrooms and clerk’s office was a part of that project.

“I don’t know where we would have ended up if we hadn’t had to put all that together,” Milford said.

Later, in 2010, he was among the group to push for the commission of the Joe Louis statue in front of the courthouse, which has been a great attraction for downtown.

As the district judge for Chambers County, Terrence Brown, gets ready to step into some well-worn shoes, Milford had some advice. He reminded Brown that even though the judge may see dozens of faces each day in court, those people will only get to see one judge.

He said everybody was there for a different reason, fighting their own unique battle.

“So you just have to remember to take every person individually, try to help that person,” Milford said.

As he gets settled back into life on the farm, Milford reflected on his gratitude for the time he got to serve the community where he was raised.

“I’m just very thankful to have had the opportunity to be able to fulfill my goals of practicing law and end my career on the bench, and thankful to the people of the county for giving me that opportunity,” Milford said.