Retired Senior Judge Hiram Carpenter (center) and his grandson, Liam Tanyatanaboon, 9, admire the work of Pittsburgh portrait artist Robert Daley (right). Carpenter’s portrait was unveiled Friday at the courthouse. Mirror photo by Kay Stephens

HOLLIDAYSBURG — A portrait of retired Senior Judge Hiram A. Carpenter was unveiled Friday at the Blair County Courthouse, the first judicial portrait hung in years.

“I think he made me look better than I look,” Carpenter said as Pittsburgh artist Robert Daley pulled away the black sheet, exposing the artwork for about 50 people, including family, friends and colleagues.

“It was a labor of love,” Daley told the judge in response.

The unveiling of the portrait, as gifted by Carpenter’s wife, Dana, marked the end of her husband’s judicial career that started in 1990 when the Hollidaysburg man took the bench in Blair County.

After retiring in 2012, Carpenter continued to work as a senior judge, initially in Blair County and later in Greene and Venango counties.

“It was a nice last chapter, and I have to admit that I enjoyed it,” Carpenter said as he spoke from the same bench in the same courtroom where he used to preside every day.

Fellow senior judges Jolene Grubb Kopriva and Timothy M. Sullivan, who shared time on the bench with Carpenter, recognized him as a valuable and knowledgeable colleague.

“His mind was built for complex cases,” Kopriva said.

That would include an 11-week civil court trial in 1994 where a former Altoona man said he was molested as a youth by the Rev. Francis Luddy and sought compensation from the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese. The jury deliberated for three days and responded with a $1.57 million verdict.

Carpenter, who mentioned the Luddy case as he spoke of his time on the bench, also praised Kopriva and former Judge Norman D. Callan for their unrecognized efforts.

“(They) cleaned up the backlog while I did the Luddy trial,” Carpenter said.

Sullivan also praised the group of 14 law clerks who once worked with Carpenter and attended Friday’s event.

“The best tribute you’ll get comes from (them),” Sullivan said.

Dana Carpenter said that after she saw other portraits Daley painted, she knew that she wanted to hire him to paint her husband’s portrait.

Daley said he started painting portraits in 1979 after studying art at the University of Pittsburgh. His portfolio includes six judicial portraits of Pennsylvania judges, with Carpenter’s being the seventh.

“His work is incredible,” Dana Carpenter said. “Portraits are something that stand the test of time. And they mean something.”

Until Carpenter’s portrait was hung, the most recent judicial portraits at the courthouse were of Judges Robert B. Campbell (1975-1987) and Judge Robert C. Haberstroh (1970-78). An enlarged photograph of Judge Thomas G. Peoples, who became a judge in 1979 and was a senior judge when he died in 2013, hangs in Courtroom 4 in the newer side of the courthouse.

Judge Jackie Bernard, who currently presides in the courtroom where Carpenter’s portrait hangs, recalled Friday that she, as an attorney, tried her first civil court case before Carpenter, and later as a prosecutor, tried many more cases in front of him.

“Now I get to sit in that chair,” Bernard said. “And I am so thrilled that you’ll be with me always.”

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.