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Walter Budney: It Takes Practice

Practice is a word that Walter Budney knows something about. He practiced law for 28 years, but he wasn’t through with the courtroom then. He became a judge and later a senior trial referee for nearly 40 years, finally retiring recently at the age of 92.

Walter is still practicing, but now it is the clarinet. He practices for a half hour every day, often playing along with a CD of his favorite Dixieland performer, clarinetist Pete Fountain. Walter says he usually needs to see the music only once or twice before he has the tune from memory.

Over the years, even as he pursued a career in the law, Walter played with different jazz groups, sometimes combining his two passions by playing at social functions for judges.

“Oh, I’ve played all around,” he says reeling off the names of bands. “The Juniper Hill Jumpers, that’s Dixieland out of Manchester; the Galvanized Jazz Band. Bands look for older guys who can play Dixieland.”

These days, he plays with the Corinthian Jazz Band. In summers the band is one of the regularly appearing groups at the Essex Corinthian Yacht Club on Wednesday nights. From Labor Day to Memorial Day, the band plays its jazz once a week at Bill’s Seafood in Westbrook.

Walter says the band’s routine is simple.

“Our leader points and we start playing,” he says. “Our leader? That’s Leslie Strauss [of Chester], the designated leader. She’s a great violinist.”

Walter is not around to play with the jazz band for much of the winter. He and his wife Betty go to Vero Beach, Florida. Still, unlike many people who winter in Florida, he has not made that state his legal residence.

“It never occurred to me. The State of Connecticut has been good to me, and besides when I was a trial referee, I had to be a Connecticut resident,” he says.

One spot in Connecticut is particularly close to Walter’s heart, Ivoryton, where his family has lived for several generations. His grandfather bought 100 acres off what is still called Budney Hill and started an apple orchard, selling not only fruit but cider.

Walter went to the Ivoryton Elementary School which once stood on the Ivoryton Green. He went on to Pratt High School, now the Essex Town Hall, where students from Essex went before the construction of Valley Regional High School. He believes he is the last of his high school class.

“I looked through the Osage [the yearbook] the other day and I think I am the only one still living,” he says.

In fact, Walter graduated from Pratt in unusual circumstances. He left a year early to join the Air Force in World War II. The school gave him an honorary diploma, but that wasn’t enough when he returned from the service and wanted to go to college. He first had to go to night school in Middletown and finish the courses he needed for a formal graduation. The he went to the University of Bridgeport for his undergraduate work and Boston University for law school.

He says his mother was pleased with his decision to go to college, but mystified as to why he went on to law school.

“She thought after college I should have gone out and gotten a job,” he says.

During his time in the Air Force, Walter was a tail gunner serving with the 714th bomber squadron, 448th bomber group. He flew 23 missions, including some in the final days of the war, dropping supplies to American troops as they advanced into Germany.

In the basement of his Ivoryton home, in what Walter calls his man cave, there is a model of the plane he served on, which the flyers referred to as the Grey Moose.

“Here, here is where I sat,” Walter says, pointing to the rear of the airplane.

And if you want to hear the music that lit up the hit parade in those days, Walter has just the thing: a vintage juke box with vintage songs like Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” and Les Paul and Mary Ford’s rendition of “Vaya Con Dios.” The basement also shows an original twist on his own musical past, two lamps he made himself, one from an alto and the other from a soprano saxophone

Walter first played the clarinet for several months in the 7th grade.

“It was the cheapest [instrument] and the teacher played clarinet,” he says.

But then he thought little about the instrument until his third year of law school, when he wanted again to take lessons. He went to the offices of the Boston Symphony and asked if there was somebody among the musicians who would give him clarinet lessons. The secretary to whom he spoke brushed his request aside when she heard of his minimal musical experience, but he persisted and in the end one of the symphony’s clarinet players gave him two auditory tests, one to see if he could distinguish between different tones and the other different rhythms. When he had finished, there was a surprise.

“He told me I had gotten them all right and said that had never happened before,” he remembers.

That clarinet teacher, with whom Walter studied for some eight months, suggested that he consider becoming a professional musician, but Walter was in his third year of law school, preparing to take the Bar Exam.

“I didn’t think I could abandon law at that point,” he says.

Still, over the years, he has sometimes wondered what would have happened if he had chosen music as his primary career.

“You can’t help but think about it,” he says.

Out of law school, Walter first set up his own practice in the center of Ivoryton in a building that now houses an antique shop. It was the Ivoryton Store then and he cleaned out a vegetable bin in the basement to serve as his office. He was then invited to join a Hartford firm, with which he practiced before setting up his own firm in Old Saybrook He was mainly a courtroom lawyer, a litigator.

“Every day I was in a courtroom, all around the state,” he says.

Governor Ella Grasso had put Walter’s name in nomination to serve on the bench as a judge, but his confirmation process was not completed before she died and William O’Neill had become governor. Still, Walter was seated and a rewarding new career began.

“I loved being a judge; I loved working with the lawyers,” he says.

Walter, who became presiding administrative judge in Middletown, was famous for trying to resolve cases expeditiously, without letting the matters drag over several days.

“Litigation is expensive,” he explains.

Walter was captain of the baseball and soccer teams in high school, but now his game is golf. He plays at least once a week, whether in Florida or Connecticut. And every evening at five o’clock, no matter where he is, he has a cocktail. His is an appletini, a mix of vodka and sour apple.

“Having that drink is very good for you,” he says.