Community In Shock Over News Of Racine Judge's Suicide

Dennis Barry was a friend, a father, a husband, a Racine County Judge, and a Marquette basketball fan.

He sought the truth. He believed in justice. He weighed his decisions carefully.

And he married a lot of people.

With few details coming out about his death, many struggle to understand why he would decide to take his own life. in Racine's Lincoln Park Tuesday morning from an apparent suicide, according to county officials.

Former state Rep. Bonnie Ladwig, and her husband, Jim Ladwig (also a former state representative) were shocked to hear the news of Barry’s death.

The Ladwigs got to know Barry when he ran for the district attorney’s office and then for judge. Barry and his wife, Joan, went to college basketball games together with Bonnie and Jim Ladwig.

“He was always there if you needed him… He was one of the best judges Racine County had,” Bonnie Ladwig said. “He was a caring person. He looked at all sides of story. He was thoughtful and thorough, and he wanted to do what was right.”

In the mid-1990s Bonnie Ladwig worked with Barry on a committee to revise the juvenile justice code after an 11-year-old Racine boy stood on the roof of a community center and shot a man dead as he left the building. The investigation found he had been put up to the murder by older teenagers who said the boy wouldn't go to jail. At the time—the murder happened in April 1992—no one under the age of 12 could be charged with a crime, even in juvenile courts. 

“He wanted to hold people responsible and he didn’t think it was fair for those people to use that younger boy like that,” Bonnie Ladwig said.

Handing down sentences often weighed heavy on Barry.

“And if he had a case, he was thorough. When he sentenced someone it was not necessarily just a punishment—he looked at the whole situation.”

Barry listened. He would weigh his options and do what he felt was right.

“It’s not easy,” Bonnie Ladwig said. “When you sentence people, you wonder… did you do the right thing?”

Barry not only strove to “do the right thing,” he also knew the power of words and he knew the right words to say when uniting people in marriage.

Barry officiated at Barb and Larry Erickson’s wedding on June 25. She requested that Barry perform the ceremony because he had married her son earlier in the year. And at her own wedding, she remembers how Barry made her cry because the ceremony had a religious aspect to it.

“He made us feel very special,” Barb Erickson said. “I wanted to have a picture with him afterward and I said, ‘Here, stand between us.’ And he said, ‘Oh no, after I do a ceremony, I never stand between a couple that I have just united.’”

When Barb Erickson learned about the details surrounding Barry’s death, she was shocked.

“He was the most personable person,” she said. “He was respectful, he never seemed the type to… he just always seemed happy.”