Judge L. Leonard Ruben Dies After Collapsing at Courthouse
By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 22, 2007; B06
L. Leonard Ruben, one of Montgomery County's best-known judges and the
husband of former Maryland state senator Ida G. Ruben, died yesterday
after he collapsed outside the district courthouse in downtown Silver
Spring. He was 81.
His son Garry, a vascular surgeon, said his father had a history of
heart problems and probably died of a heart attack while on the way to
hear cases as a retired judge. A security guard attempted CPR after
seeing Ruben collapse while entering the courthouse at Second Avenue
and Cameron Street about 9 a.m. He was pronounced dead at Washington
Adventist Hospital, authorities said.
Word of Ruben's death spread quickly through the state's tight-knit
legal and political circles. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr.
(D-Calvert) announced his death on the Senate floor, and the House of
Delegates held a moment of silence in his memory.
Ruben had served as a judge since 1974, including 10 years on
Montgomery's District Court and 10 on the Circuit Court. He retired in
1995 at the state's mandatory retirement age of 70 but continued to
help with heavy caseloads by hearing cases several times a month,
lawyers said.
"He was so excited when he had to go to court," Ida Ruben said
tearfully yesterday. "He just loved being a judge and making decisions.
Some of them were hard, but he adored his job."
The Rubens' 58-year marriage and their public appearances at charity
events and political soirees over four decades made them one of
Montgomery's most powerful and well-known couples.
As Stan Gildenhorn, Mr. Ruben's former law partner and a Democratic
Party activist, put it: "They were kind of the Bill and Hillary of
Montgomery County."
Ida Ruben began her political career by filling the House of Delegates
seat that her husband vacated after four years when he was appointed to
the District Court in 1974. While remaining his wife's closest
political adviser, friends said, Leonard Ruben took painstaking care as
an active judge to follow judicial ethics rules and avoid partisan
politics, even skipping his wife's campaign events. She lost her
reelection bid in the Democratic primary in September.
"They just seemed like the perfect match," Rockville lawyer John Kudel
said. "Ida was the politician -- very out there, shaking hands and very
with the people. Lenny, in social situations, was always content to
just sit back and watch Ida do her thing."
On the bench, colleagues said, Ruben liked to explain the law to those
who didn't have attorneys and often used a wry sense of humor to keep
the courtroom atmosphere light. He was regarded as being so unbiased,
Kudel said, that defense lawyers didn't hesitate to have clients plead
guilty before him, knowing they'd get a fair sentence.
"He took everyone in front of him very seriously but never took himself
seriously in the slightest," said Danny Barnett, chief of the Maryland
attorney general's criminal division and one of Ruben's former clerks.
Ida Ruben said her husband was most proud of an antidrug program he
started. He took more than 15,000 high school students through his
courtroom to watch sentencing hearings in drug cases and to hear
drug-crime defendants tell their stories, she said.
It was painfully ironic, Rockville lawyer Paul Kemp said, that Ruben
died outside the relatively new Silver Spring courthouse. It was Ida
Ruben's work in the Senate, he said, that clinched the state funding to
get it built.
In addition to his wife and son Garry, Ruben is survived by sons Scott
Ruben and Stephen Ruben and six grandchildren. Another son, Michael,
died in 2005 at 48.
Ruben's funeral will be at 9:45 a.m. Sunday at Ohr Kodesh synagogue in
Chevy Chase.
Staff writers Lisa Rein and John Wagner and researcher Meg Smith
contributed to this report.
© 2007 The Washington Post Company