Judge Fran Jamieson: Toughness and tenderness personified

BY MARK MIJUSKOVIC

Editor's note: The information that paved the way for the Judge Fran Jamieson story ( March 2023) has also provided an opportunity to correct inaccuracy. The article’s request for personal anecdotal information regarding the judge yielded responses.

Fran Jamieson’s University of Tennessee graduation date was 1945 (not 1958). Following a divorce and remarriage in 1954, she enrolled at Cumberland University Law School, graduating summa cum laude in 1958. A subsequent second divorce found the family — Jamieson, her son and a younger stepsister — moving to South Melbourne Beach, where she first found employment as a contract administrator for a San Diego-based company procured to build gantries at Cape Canaveral.

Upon passing the Florida Bar Exam in 1960, Jamieson moved the family to Cocoa Beach after being hired as a clerk for Attorney Thurmond Justice.

In 1961, she married Raymond A. Jamieson, the first mayor of Cape Canaveral. There, she wrote the Cape Canaveral Articles of Incorporation and the City Charter. The bumpy road of her married life found her divorcing in 1965 and remarrying in 1971 to Joe Rose whom she predeceased in 1995.

Jamieson was not the stay-at-home June Cleaver mother figure. She was never a widow. Rather, she was an occasional single mom who did her best to make sure her kids had a roof over their heads, food on the table, clothes on their backs, and educational opportunities while steadily building an exceptional professional reputation. She had to be both a mom and dad.

Life-long educator Bill Pearlman recounted seeing Jamieson in action in juvenile court. In the mid-to-late 1980s, he taught at-risk fourth and fifth graders at Meadowlane Elementary School, students who this early on in life had exhibited enough characteristics to be considered at risk of not graduating.

Some already had been suspended and had interactions with law enforcement. In the mold of scaredstraight efforts, Judge Jamieson did not disappoint.

“Children in shackles were openly crying in court,” he recalled. “She was harsh, especially with children she had seen in her courtroom before.”

Pearlman recalled her advising some of the wayward children to bring their toothbrushes with them should they ever appear in her court again, letting on that they would not be going home. He also saw a kinder, gentler Jamieson with those children who might have been appearing before her for the first time.

“Judge Jamieson impressed me as a stern, tough-talking yet very compassionate person who wanted very much to help children make better choices,” Pearlman recalled. “We can’t know, but we can wonder if it would have been more impactful if she saved her harshest words for the parents of those children.”

There appears to have been no shortage of toughness and no shortage of compassion in Jamieson.

When speaking before a group of mostly male attorneys, Jamieson would often open up by declaring, “I stand before you proudly today, because I chose to be a member of the world’s second oldest profession.’’

In the wake of her legacy, Judge Fran Jamieson Way remains a straight and narrow path. SL