George Hutchinson’s words were far from the most important spoken during Brown v. Board of Education. But they were the first.
With a cry of “Oyez, oyez, oyez,” Mr. Hutchinson announced the arrival of the justices and gaveled the court to order, as he did for virtually every Supreme Court case from 1952 to 1962.
Mr. Hutchinson, who died June 14 at 102, was the last crier of the U.S. Supreme Court, tasked with carrying out ceremonial duties that were later turned over to the court marshal.
His tenure as crier coincided with one of the most momentous periods in the court’s history, a time when the justices extended constitutional protections to Mexican Americans, refused to review the espionage convictions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and, in Brown v. Board, held that segregated schools were “inherently unequal” and unconstitutional.
As court crier, Mr. Hutchinson opened many of those consequential moments and, as if in a high school cafeteria, shepherded discreet notes to the justices, including messages sent from one end of the bench to the other.
Decades later, he provided a window into the day-to-day activities of one of the government’s most secretive bodies, said Clare Cushman, a historian for the Supreme Court Historical Society. Mr. Hutchinson could speak about the court’s Christmas parties or the carpenter shop in its basement, or recall the way soldiers were deployed to the court building following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“The big pieces are always recorded,” Cushman said, “but the little pieces, no.”
Mr. Hutchinson was 15 when he joined the court in 1938 as a page, one of the knicker-clad young people who would assist the justices. There were two requirements: You had to be short, according to Mr. Hutchinson, who grew to 5-foot-8, and you had to have a financial need.
Mr. Hutchinson’s father had died when he was an infant, and his meager page’s salary helped support his mother and sister. He spent his afternoons in the Supreme Court, running books and water to the justices, before being drafted into the Army at age 19, dispatched to Europe in the final months of World War II.
When he came home, he rejoined the court, working out of the marshal’s office and eventually taking the job of crier, which dates to the Supreme Court’s first meeting in 1790. He was given a handwritten script — the words of the opening proclamation, which concludes, “God save the United States and this honorable court” — as well as a distinctive gavel.
“There was no handle. All it was was the clonk,” he recalled in a 2019 interview. “I said, ‘Where’s the handle?’ They said, ‘This is tradition. You’ve got to use this.’ So for 10 years I was banging like this.”
As crier, Mr. Hutchinson oversaw the pages, a group that grew to include Charles V. Bush, the first Black Supreme Court page, who was hired in the aftermath of Brown v. Board at the urging of Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Mr. Hutchinson worked alongside the pages while assuming a sneakier job within the court each October. Many of the justices were baseball fans and wanted updates on the World Series, said Vance Morrison, a former page who as a teenager worked under Mr. Hutchinson. They would pass a paper to Mr. Hutchinson or a page, who would run to the offices, listen to the radio and quietly report the score.
“We just worked with discretion,” Morrison said.
In October 1960, as the Supreme Court considered the conviction of a man who had failed to comply with the House’s anti-communist investigations, Mr. Hutchinson helped Justice Potter Stewart follow along to Game 7 of the World Series, providing score updates every inning and, as the game neared its end, every half-inning. He delivered his final update to Stewart after Bill Mazeroski hit a walk-off home run, giving the Pirates the win over the Yankees.
“His eyes lit up and he sent the note down to the court,” Mr. Hutchinson recalled.
Mr. Hutchinson also shared a bond with Justice Felix Frankfurter, according to his daughter, Sara Hutchinson. One day, he was unexpectedly called into the justice’s office to serve as a witness as Frankfurter finalized his will.
“He said, ‘Have you ever faced death?’ I said, ‘What?’ I had to think about it,” Mr. Hutchinson recounted. “‘I was in the service in World War II.’ He laughed, he said, ‘Here,’ and he threw me his will.”
George Edward Hutchinson, a fourth-generation Washingtonian — according to his family, two of his relatives were at Ford’s Theatre the night of Lincoln’s assassination — was born Aug. 31, 1923. His father was a lawyer, and his mother was a schoolteacher.
While working at the Supreme Court, Mr. Hutchinson went to school part time, earning a law degree at George Washington University, and ultimately becoming a member of the Supreme Court Bar.
After leaving the court in 1962, he became the marshal and then the clerk of the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, where he was charged with saying “Hear ye” instead of “Oyez.” Two decades later, when the court merged with the Court of Claims to become the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, he was named its first clerk.
Mr. Hutchinson retired from federal service in 1985 to join the law firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, where he remained on staff until 2023, the year he turned 100.
Few people could recount the customs and procedures of the American court system like Mr. Hutchinson, said James Barney, managing partner at the firm.
“I always viewed George as a living history,” Barney said.
His death, at home in Arlington, Va., was confirmed by his daughter, his only immediate survivor. Mr. Hutchinson was predeceased by his wife of 63 years, Dorothy U. Hutchinson, and by another daughter, Carol Hutchinson.
In 2018, 80 years after he joined the Supreme Court as a page, Mr. Hutchinson returned to the courtroom as a visitor. “He remains a member in good standing of our bar,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said from the bench. “Mr. Hutchinson, welcome back!”
