Mom's role? Judge for yourself

I want to tell you about a guy I met this summer.

But first I have to tell you about his mother, because she planted the seeds of his success. Margaret Saint Clair was a seamstress when divorce left her with four children to raise alone.

All four have done well. Two live around here, one a Boeing engineer with several patents to his name, the other a King County judge.

Margaret Saint Clair developed leukemia and was given six months to live. She didn't tell her kids until she'd long outlived that prognosis.

She moved her family from Omaha to St. Louis, went back to school in her 40s and became a psychiatric nurse.

Superior Court Judge J. Wesley Saint Clair, 56, is her youngest.

"My mom always told us we were smart and beautiful and we believed her."

She got them into previously segregated schools in Omaha. She became president of the PTA and later president of the local League of Women Voters.

Saint Clair said his mother wanted to be involved so that she'd be in a better position to advocate for her children.

She made sure teachers paid attention to them and she made certain they applied themselves.

She would say, "You can be anything you want to be. The only limits are the ones you place on yourself."

It made me think of Bill Cosby's latest push to improve the status of black folks from the inside. In his new book, "Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors," good parenting is the central message.

When Saint Clair was considering colleges, his mother got him to add Ivy League schools to his list. "She'd say, 'Dream large. All they can say is no.' " Yale took him with a full scholarship.

After his sophomore year, he spent a year in Ghana making sure donated food got to the right people.

Then, he came back and messed up. He bought a plagiarized paper and got suspended for a year.

Saint Clair moved to Denver and worked as a skycap for a couple of years. Lived in his car for a time. His mother and his brothers and sister kept reminding him his fate was larger than that.

"My mom worked too hard for me to let that disappointment linger," he said. He went back to Yale and finished.

His older brother Jonathan had come to Seattle to earn his doctorate in physics at the University of Washington.

His mother moved here too, and the future judge followed, earning his law degree from UW in 1982.

Jonathan Saint Clair said their mother insisted that each child play an instrument, study science and participate in some physical activity.

She took them to the celebrations of other cultural groups and also had them participate in different religious activities so they'd get to know other faiths. She wanted everything to be open to them and she wanted them to have whatever skills they'd need to take advantage of opportunities they met.

And she wove them into a mutual support network that continues still.

She died in 1995, more than 30 years after that first diagnosis.

Her children have followed her example in raising their own children.

Wesley Saint Clair and his wife have been married more than three decades and have raised three children.

Caring about family may extend his life.

He weighed 350 pounds and was getting heavier every year when he made a resolution in January 2005 to change. "I want to be a grandpa," he said.

The 6-foot-2-inch judge weighs 210 now and plans to lose another 30 pounds.

Many days he rides his bike 28 miles roundtrip from his home in Edmonds to the courthouse in Seattle. He puts in 60 miles on weekends and rode in the 200-mile Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic with one of his sons this year.

Jonathan said this new behavior is typical of his brother — "Setting a goal and extending himself to meet that goal."

It's the kind of behavior their mother taught. They are passing it down to their children.

This is how you breed success.

Jerry Large's column appears

Monday and Thursday.

Reach him at 206-464-3346

or jlarge@seattletimes.com.