In fact, when not wearing a black robe, the 1979 Badin High School grad is most likely outside on a tractor or tinkering with something mechanical, which is where he thought life would lead him.
Spaeth played football for and graduated from Purdue University in 1983 with an agriculture and economics degree.
“Oh, I wanted to farm. All my life. That was an absolute passion,” Spaeth said.
Enter a “city girl” he met and fell in love with, and things changed.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
“She said I am okay with living on a farm as long as it is within a mile or two of a mall,” he said with a laugh. “Thought this is never going to work, so I went to law school.”
Today, Spaeth and his wife, Caroline, who works in the office of Butler County Clerk of Courts Mary Swain, have three grown children and eight grandchildren.
He chose law because he had enjoyed business law and tax classes in college and fully intend to practice estate and business planning and tax law.
“Again, I did very little of that,” Spaeth said. After receiving his law degree, Spaeth became partner in the law firm of Millikin and Fitton before taking over the bench in Fairfield Municipal Court in 1995 and becoming a common pleas bench judge in 1999.
“You really never know where life is going to take you. You start in agriculture and economics and end up a judge,” Spaeth said.
Now a resident of his hometown, Spaeth spends much of his off-time in jeans using that ag degree, tending to a family owned farm.
“I like to be outside and I like working on things. I like mechanical stuff,” he said. “My parents still have a farm over in Indiana. There are two old tractors and a bulldozer I work on. I mow pastures, repair fences, stuff like that.”
In the winter he reads after chopping wood for the fireplace — mostly historical fiction and classics. He admits he should have paid more attention to in high school and college.
“I really like to tinker. Anything mechanical, I will take a shot at,” Spaeth said. He added it is that trait that led to him to embrace technology early on in the courtroom. “I love technology, I think it’s great.”
Spaeth was one of the first to have a laptop on the bench and initiated computerized records.
When the doors of his beloved truck, now with 220,000 miles, began to rust, Spaeth bought a welder and went to work on replacements.
“I discovered YouTube TV and there are people on there who fix heavy equipment and tractors. I wind up watching all that stuff,” he said.
He’s not always successful. During the pandemic, Spaeth decided to replace a cracked cell phone screen.
“I took it apart. You would not believe how tiny some of those parts are,” Spaeth said. “It didn’t work. Died when a turned it back on. But it was a pretty old phone.”
Spaeth said he and the family enjoy attending some of the new happenings in Hamilton that are part of the city’s resurgence, but he is not much on crowds. He is also not much on reading social media and steers clear of reading about his cases — many that have gotten the spotlight.
“I look at this job, kind of like watching a football game. If you get through the game and you have no idea who the ref was when the game is over, then they did a good job,” Spaeth said. “If you get through a trial and you can’t remember the name of the judge, the judge probably did a pretty good job.”
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Previous “Behind the Gavel” subjects are Judge Jennifer McElfresh and Judge Michael Oster Jr.
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