Norfolk native Joe Massey admits having spent 18 years at Norfolk Academy.  Eighteen years?  Yes, his father was the headmaster so he grew up on the Norfolk Academy campus which was then located on Newport Avenue where the Norfolk Wellness and Fitness Center is located.

 

Joe chose to attend Duke University for his undergraduate work explaining that it was the first school whose name he could pronounce correctly. He enjoyed the cosmopolitan feel of Duke and majored in economics. While in high school and college, he played in a rock band.  

 

After graduation, he spent a year selling insurance with a life insurance company. Then it was off to law school at the University of Richmond.  After clerking for a federal judge for a year, he started his law practice at a firm in Portsmouth which was involved primarily with construction litigation.  As such, he represented the Portsmouth Housing Development and other commercial contractors. Some of his cases brought him to Norfolk’s Circuit Court.

 

When the General Assembly is out of session, a judge can be appointed by the locality and that is how Joe ended up as a Juvenile and Domestic Relations Circuit Court judge. He explains that the goings on in a juvenile court are completely controlled by statutes. There is structure to his week with Mondays being dedicated to child support cases while Tuesdays focus on domestic violence cases and protective orders. Wednesdays and Thursdays have a mixed docket of criminal and civil cases.    Fridays are a dependency docket focusing on foster care, adoption process reports and the removal of children from harmful situations.

 

Joe became a Rotarian with the Portsmouth Rotary Club in the early 1980s. After joining the bench in Norfolk, he joined our club in 1998 and is a Paul Harris Fellow. Joe enjoys the fellowship and camaraderie  with his fellow Rotarians.  With a passion for Rotary and membership, he recently joined the board of directors to focus on our club’s membership.

 

Joe met his wife, Alice, at the Algonquin House at a dinner party to celebrate his father’s retirement from Norfolk Academy.  As it so happened, the hostess’s daughter was married to Alice’s brother. Alice, who was living at the beach at the time, was also there. Alice was the first female deputy director of NASA.  They have two daughters, Ashley, who is earning her doctoral degree from Oxford University in Religious Forests, and Price who teaches at Norfolk Academy along with her husband.  Both Ashley and Price have traveled extensively.  Ashley was in the Peace Corps in The Gambia.  Price has been to 33 countries and leads high school children on overseas experiences during the summers for Norfolk Academy. 

 

Joe and Alice live on Miles End in Norfolk's Lakewood neighborhood in a house with a history. Its builder Alfred Hart Miles was a Naval Academy grad who collaborated on a fight song with band director Charles Zimmerman in 1907. During World War II, Miles was commissioned with writing the victory verse of “Anchors Away.” Following a release of a movie by the same name this became the most popular song of 1957.  Miles was stationed in Norfolk and was responsible for building Little Creek Amphibious Base during World War II.  He was also the executive officer of the Naval Submarine Base in Norfolk.