Judge Samuel Thumma finds joy in barbershop singing
As Judge Samuel Thumma began to contemplate the end of his career and what the future might hold, he also began to better appreciate what he describes as “the joy of small things.”
For Thumma, one of those things is singing in the barbershop quartet Nostalgia, which has been around for several decades. It once had a national presence but is now more of a “community quartet,” he says, performing for veterans, memory care residents and other groups in the Phoenix area.
During one gig in December, Thumma and his fellow Nostalgia members sang at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which provides food, clothing and shelter to individuals and families in need. They performed “Give Me That Barbershop Style” and “Coney Island Baby.” They also performed holiday classics, including “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and “Silent Night.”
“It’s making people smile,” says Thumma, who has served on Division One of the Arizona Court of Appeals since 2012. “It’s having fun with it. It’s entertaining and performing, which, you know, I enjoy.”
“And it’s a challenge, right?” he adds. “There are a lot of things I do these days that are consistent with things I’ve done for many, many years, and barbershop singing is comparatively new.”
Rooted in public service
Thumma grew up singing in Laurens, Iowa, a tiny town in the northwest corner of the state.
He sang in school, in church and with the state and national choruses of the Future Farmers of America, through which he also showed cattle as a kid. His family ran a corn, soybean and cattle farm, and for a long time he thought he would become a veterinarian.
“I’m not one of these people who knew in fourth grade they were going to be a lawyer or a judge,” Thumma says. “That was not at all what I was planning to do.”
He ultimately decided veterinary medicine wasn’t for him while taking organic chemistry and zoology at Iowa State University. He had been volunteering with the school’s radio station and pivoted to agricultural journalism. He also received a Harry S. Truman Scholarship—a graduate scholarship for aspiring public service leaders—which he says allowed him to attend law school.
Thumma, a 1988 alumnus of the University of Iowa College of Law, clerked for Judge David Hansen in the Northern District of Iowa. He moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked as an associate at Arnold & Porter, and then to Arizona to be near his now-wife, Barbara Dawson.
He met Dawson, who is Snell & Wilmer’s Phoenix-based firm chair, during a double date with other people in college. They then became law school classmates.
“We were dating long-distance for four years, and we thought we ought to get on the same side of the continental divide,” says Thumma, who clerked for Chief Justice Stanley Feldman of the Arizona Supreme Court before becoming a litigator at Brown & Bain. The firm later merged with Perkins Coie.
Because of his public service mindset and a “milestone birthday,” Thumma decided to apply for an opening on the Maricopa County Superior Court in 2007, he says.
“A mentor of mine also said, ‘Hey, nobody on their deathbed wishes they billed more hours,’” Thumma says. “That stuck with me and was kind of a call to action.”
He spent nearly five years presiding over criminal and juvenile matters on the trial court before joining the Arizona Court of Appeals. His long tenure with the appellate court includes serving as chief judge, a role he filled from 2017 to 2019.
‘Delightful and challenging’
Thumma sang through college, where he serenaded sororities with his fraternity brothers. As he began building his legal career, he stopped singing and didn’t pick it up again for nearly 30 years.
He joined his church’s choir after his daughter Nicole left for college in 2016 and he realized he needed something to do, he says. He found it offered a welcome challenge.
“You’re sitting left to right with people who are singing the same voice you are, and that helped a bunch,” Thumma says. “But it wasn’t like riding a bicycle. There really was a ramp-up to get back into it.”
Through the choir, Thumma met members of Nostalgia, who asked if he’d be interested in joining the barbershop quartet. One of them was Don Richardson, a founding member who mostly sings lead and teaches English at a local community college. Another was Scott Holcomb, an attorney with Dickinson Wright who sings bass.
More recent additions to the group are Judge Kent Cattani, who also sits on the Arizona Court of Appeals and sings lead; and Danny Inglese, a counsel at Snell & Wilmer who sings high tenor.
“I think he’s the most affable of all five of us,” Richardson says of Thumma, who transitioned from singing bass to singing baritone in recent years. “He’s very mature in his approach to life.”
Holcomb also describes Thumma as a “great character” who is always smiling. “He’s one to go along with whatever makes the music better,” he adds. “He clearly enjoys the singing, and his enjoyment of it carries through.”
Nostalgia rehearses almost every week, usually sitting around someone’s dining room table with a pitch pipe, Thumma says. He explains that unlike in a church choir, where the parts can practice separately, barbershop singers need to be able to hear each other’s voices.
“There’s something both simple and complicated, both new and old, both delightful and challenging in all that,” he says.
Thumma, a longtime member of the ABA and a past chair of the Judicial Division’s Appellate Judges Conference, also encourages his colleagues to discover new (and old) passions while on and after the bench.
In a 2020 article in the Judges’ Journal titled “The Next Big Thing,” he wrote about other favorite pastimes, including gardening and walking. He also highlighted retired judges who, among countless other pursuits, write books, spend time with their grand- children, and serve as volunteers, tutors and mentors.
“I’m not saying every judge should sing in a barbershop quartet, believe me, but we should be a part of the communities in which we live,” says Thumma, who plans to retire in August.
His other work includes serving as chair of the Arizona Commission on Access to Justice, where he focuses on how to better help people most in need.
“If we keep front-of-mind that we really are public servants, and if that’s our North Star, it will help us in a whole bunch of things we do—in deciding cases, in managing cases and in looking at the court process,” he says.“It has truly been a privilege to serve.”
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