Jefferson County Div. 11 Associate Circuit Judge Ed Page has received a promotion of sorts.
On March 4, Gov. Mike Parson appointed Page, 56, of Festus to succeed Darrell Missey as Div. 2 circuit judges.
Missey left the county’s 23rd Circuit after Parson appointed him as director of the state’s Children’s Division.
Page is in the last year of his first four-year term as Div. 11 associate circuit judges. He had filed for re-election, but instead will serve the final four years of Missey’s six-year term.
Page said he was chosen from a field of seven applicants.
“Of the people I know who applied, I believe the Governor’s Office must have had a tough time because they all were highly qualified,” he said.
Before Page was elected as associate circuit judge in 2018, he had served for 13 years as municipal judge of Crystal City.
“I don’t think my judicial career would have been possible without (Crystal City Mayor) Tom Schilly, who chose me back in 2005 to be municipal judge,” Page said. “He saw something in me. He was a pretty good judge picker, really. He chose Pat Riehl (a former associate and circuit court judge who is now a senior arbitrator and mediator with US Arbitration and Mediation in St. Louis), my wife Lisa (a former associate and circuit court judge who is now a judge with the Eastern District Missouri Court of Appeals) and me, who’s been an associate and now am a circuit judge.”
Page credited Schilly with imparting words of wisdom in 2005 when he chose him as municipal judge.
“You know, everybody wants to give you advice on how to be a judge,” Page said. “But the best advice I ever got came from Tom Schilly. When he chose me, he said, ‘This is what you need to do: Be fair. Be firm. And be consistent.’ That’s the best advice you could ever get as a judge, and I’ve tried to do that every day.”
As associate circuit judge, Page has been handling juvenile cases.
“I just love it,” he said. “You really feel on a day-to-day basis that you’re doing some good. You can see good taking place in front of you, progress being made with families and it’s a great feeling that you were a small part of it.”
Page said in the interim, he’ll likely continue to handle that docket from his Div. 2 courtroom until a new Div. 11 associate circuit judge is appointed.
A spokeswoman for Parson’s office said the Div. 11 vacancy will be posted at boards.mo.gov through March 21, after which Parson’s legal team will conduct interviews and choose a successor to serve the rest of the year.
In addition to Page, four others had filed for the Div. 11 spot as of March 11: Jacob T. Costello of Imperial, Lucas Null of Arnold, County Counselor Carl W. “Wes” Yates III of Hillsboro and the county’s Municipal Judge, Julianne “July” Platz Hand of Hillsboro.
“I imagine there will be a lot more people filing now,” Page said. “I hope when the governor does make that decision (to appoint a successor), it will be someone with some experience and is ready to start the ground running the first day. During my campaign in 2018, my slogan was ‘Experience Matters,’ and it really does matter for a judge.”
Filing for the primary election runs through March 29.
Page, a 1983 graduate of Festus High School, earned a law degree in 1990 from St. Louis University and was in private practice before he was an elected associate circuit judge. He and his wife have three children and two grandchildren.
Associate circuit court judges are paid $146,812 a year; circuit court judges earn $159,578.
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