Login | July 16, 2025
Barrows uses his seat on the bench to continue life of public service
JESSICA SHAMBAUGH
Special to the Legal News
Published: May 28, 2013
Going through law school during the time of peace, love and harmony left Judge Ted Barrows with the drive to spend his life helping those around him.
“It was the 1970s, we were all about helping the downtrodden poor and I ran around with a bunch of radical people and it was like, if you were going to be a lawyer, you owed it to your community to provide that service to people who needed help,” said Barrows, now a judge with the Franklin County Municipal Court’s General Division.
Barrows has been on the municipal court bench for more than nine years and plans to run for re-election in 2015.
He’s proud to say that he’s stayed true to the dreams of his college days by remaining in public service and by always holding out for the right job.
After graduating from The Ohio State University’s law school in 1976, Barrows had dreams of working for the Franklin County public defender.
He was so focused on that goal that he refused to interview for any other jobs.
“I didn’t interview with any law firms at all,” he said. “That was my job, that’s the one I wanted, and if I couldn’t do that, I was just going to wait for it to come around.”
His resolve was tested when he found out the public defender wasn’t hiring, but he took his law degree and went to work, though far from any courtroom, packing orders and loading trucks for a local wine company.
After 11 months of manual labor, Barrows went to work with the Ohio Public Defender Association, an organization that worked parallel to public defenders from around the state.
Through that work he became acquainted with the Franklin County public defender and when they called him about a job opening, Barrows said he was “almost across the street before he hung up the phone.”
After working with the public defender, dabbling in private practice, a long stint in the Ohio Attorney General’s office, and a spell in the prosecutor’s office, Barrows made it to the municipal court bench in 2004 and said it’s the perfect court for him.
As an open opponent to the death penalty, Barrows said he wouldn’t be comfortable with the common pleas court and said he enjoys the steady rhythm of muni court too much to consider an appeals court.
He also explained that the muni court gives him the perfect opportunity to continue his mission to help the people he interacts with daily.
“I think it’s this court’s job to protect society from really wicked people, but we don’t have many folks that are really wicked people — they’re mostly folks who do the best they can, got up one day and tripped over their shoelaces and have to come to court. So if I can figure out ways to encourage them to change their habits or patterns, to make the right choice instead of the wrong choice when they’re presented and they’re successful with that, that’s a success,” he said.
He said the worst part of his job is when his encouragement doesn’t work and he has to send someone to jail, which he considers a personal failure.
Even on the worst days, however, Barrows can find peace of mind looking out his window onto the sprawling city below.
The judge said watching Columbus come to life over the course of his career has been great.
Hailing from the East Coast, Barrows spent his youth moving from Maine to numerous other states, including Connecticut, North Carolina, Virginia and New York.
After serving with the U.S. Army, Barrows returned to Maine for college, saying the only reason he left was for law school and that he had strong intentions of returning to do civil legal representation.
“By the time I’d been here for three years, all of my friends from there had gone and I had new friends here, so I just stayed,” he said.
He said when he first came to Columbus, the heart of downtown didn’t provide much in the way of weekend entertainment.
“On Friday at 5 o’clock they rolled up the sidewalks and there was nothing going on down here until Monday morning,” he said, describing a Short North full of “seedy bars” with broken windows and a university district full of “hippie head shops.”
“Now, this is so incredible to go up to the Short North and see the art galleries and restaurants and all of that stuff. With the Brewery District and the Arena District, this city is just an amazing transformation.”
Though he may have once planned to leave, Barrows said he’s now proud to belong to a city that plays host to so many major events.
“I like the festivals, and now that the Scioto Mile is finished I’m sure they’re going to bring something, the Columbus Arts Festival is always a hoot and using the riverfront in that way to bring in lots of people is just dynamite,” Barrows said, getting excited about the summer’s upcoming festival season.
Barrows said he doesn’t travel much, his wife, Diane, doesn’t fly and the couple stays busy with Kiwanis, grandchildren, and volunteering projects on weekends.
Though Barrows has no children of his own, Diane has a son and after 26 years of marriage, Barrows considers her grandchildren his own.
In fact, when he traveled to Hawaii for a Kiwanis convention 10 years ago, it was his oldest granddaughter he took with him and the trip changed his life.
He said it was his granddaughter who called him one night and told him about a guidebook full of things to do in Hawaii, including scuba diving.
“Ever since I was a kid and watched those shows on television, I always thought that would be really cool, but here I lived in t he middle of the country and I didn’t know about the expense,” he explained.
But with an upcoming trip to warm, clear water, Barrows took his granddaughter and the two got certified to scuba dive.
“The first real dive we did was down in Hawaii and I was hooked,” he recalls.
He said he now goes once a year on a week-long scuba diving trip to the Caribbean and he loves getting the chance to see the “coral critters.”
“It’s amazing if you focus how much there is that you can see that you wouldn’t have noticed if you weren’t attuned to it. It’s just endlessly fascinating,” he said, smiling.
When he’s not on the bench or swimming with eight-foot terrapins, Barrows enjoys staying heavily involved with the Kiwanis Club of Columbus.
He said at 65, he’s starting to slow down a bit, but for Barrows that means dedicating a large amount of time to Kiwanis volunteer projects, staying active in his home owners association and regularly attending and speaking at fund raisers.
“There’s always something going on,” he grinned.
Although he claims to be slowing down, it’s clear Barrows isn’t changing as he continues to spread the good vibes and help the “downtrodden.”
Copyright © 2013 The Daily Reporter - All Rights Reserved