A judge’s wife has COVID-19. He awaits his test results. ‘I’m scared to death,’ he says
On March 13, Mecklenburg Superior Court Judge Donnie Hoover gaveled a week-long jury trial to a close.
Three days later, he rushed his wife, Josephine, to an uptown emergency room.
Hoover’s high school sweetheart, with whom he is scheduled to celebrate his 50th anniversary in August, remains hospitalized Wednesday after testing positive for COVID-19, her husband says.
Hoover, a Mecklenburg district and superior court judge for more than a decade, remains alone and self-quarantined at home.
As of Wednesday morning the results of his own COVID-19 test, which he says he took within two or three days of his wife’s hospitalization, have not come back.
He says he feels OK, other than for an odd fluctuating temperature. But he acknowledges the uncertainty and fear now permeating his family.
“I’m scared to death,” he told the Observer in a phone interview on Tuesday.
News of the judge’s exposure to the potentially lethal illness set off a flurry of phone calls at the county courthouse, which has largely been idled under a statewide order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley halted most trials and hearings on March 13, Hoover’s case went forward because it already had a jury and was entering its final stages.
Now, lawyers, clerks, bailiffs, witnesses and jurors who took part have been notified of Hoover’s quarantine and his repeated exposure to someone currently battling COVID-19.
“We’re following all the protocols to keep the courthouse open and to make sure it’s safe for the people who come,” Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Bob Bell said Tuesday.
Judges control almost everything in their courtroom, and they work from a seat somewhat removed from other participants.
But the coronavirus is different, and Hoover starts ticking off all the people — lawyers, clerks, court reporters and witnesses — that may have come within 6 feet of him during the trial.
His last day at the courthouse and around other judges, he says, was March 16, the very day he drove Josephine, a former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools math teacher, to the ER at Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center. He’s not sure when she’s coming home or when he’ll be back at work.
“I just like the guy,” veteran Charlotte criminal defense attorney George Laughrun said of Hoover.
“He’s probably the most thoughtful and courteous judge I’ve ever practiced before. Even when he rules against you, he does it in a nice way, and he won’t make a decision until he’s convinced it’s the right one.”
How the coronavirus invaded the Hoovers’ home, “we have no clue,” the judge said.
“We haven’t been anywhere. My wife is retired and she doesn’t go anywhere,” he said with a small laugh. “That’s what is so strange.”
Except, there were the couple’s nagging coughs, which dragged on for two weeks before Josephine Hoover fell ill. Hoover also recalled when his wife went to volunteer at a March 8 event at their church, Steele Creek AME Zion, and “the lady in charge took one look at her ... and sent her back home.”
The Hoovers, Charlotte born and raised, met in the 1960s when they were both students at old York Road High School.
At 70, and after spending a life together, they share the infirmaries of advancing age: she, diabetes and related kidney disease; he, congestive heart failure, sleep apnea and high blood pressure.
Hoover said he understands those conditions make both of them more susceptible to the worst of the disease, which raises many of the same questions families all over the world are now having to face.
Can he take care of her? What happens if he gets sick?
“There’s a whole lot of uncertainty about all of this,” he said. “We don’t know what happened, but I’m just worried for both of us.”
On the day Mecklenburg County issued a stay-at-home order, the already home-bound Hoover offered this advice.
“People need to to take this disease seriously because it’s the only way we’re going to stop it,” he said. “You can’t look at someone and tell who’s got it. My wife had no clue.”
