Go Play Pickleball!
A personal remembrance of David Hennessy
On my way home from work this evening, March 12, 2026, I received a call from a very good friend telling me that David Hennessy had died.
I want to be clear about something from the start: I am not worthy to write this post. There are people who knew David far longer than I did, who tried more cases alongside him, who traded more laughs and more arguments with him, who carry deeper and richer memories of the man. They could and probably will write better stories. But this is my story. And sometimes the people on the edges of someone’s life see things the people at the center take for granted.
“You Need to Meet My Husband. He’s Kind of a Big Deal.”
Before I ever met David Hennessy, I met his wife. She worked at the State Public Defender’s office, and when she found out who I was, she looked at me and said, “Do you know my husband?” I told her I didn’t. “Well,” she said, “you need to meet him. He’s kind of a big deal.”
I had no idea how much of a big deal. And I’d like to say, for the record, that Vickie is quite a big deal herself.
David came to my wedding in 2008. It was around that time I began to understand the weight his name carried in Indiana legal circles. A Marion County magistrate — Magistrate David Hooper — once told me that David Hennessy was one of the finest attorneys he had ever seen practice law. That stuck with me. It still does.
I watched Hennessy try cases. I studied him. I wanted to be like him. Someone once described him as a very gifted attorney but a complicated man. Both parts of that sentence were true, and neither part diminished the other.
Syracuse, Indiana — 2017
Fast forward to 2017. I was on my way to starting my own private practice. We were at an IPDC board retreat in Syracuse, Indiana — one of those settings where real conversations happen between sessions. Before the board retreat, David and I talked at his office. He told me something I never forgot.
He said he’d been hearing stories from people in the jail — clients talking about some other attorney they called “The Black David Hennessy.” He looked at me and said, “If anyone is going to be called The Black David Hennessy, it should be you.” He wanted me to leave the Marion County Public Defender Agency and take over his practice so he could retire.
I thought long and hard about it. I prayed about it. In the end, I knew it wasn’t the right fit for me. He must have known it, too. It never happened. But the honor of him even considering it — that was something I held close. He believed in me when I was still finding my footing. When I was too scared to leave the Marion County Public Defender Agency to go on my own in private practice. Well, instead of taking over his practice, he sent me cases to help me build my practice. He invested in me the way mentors do when they see something worth investing in.
(He also sent me one of the most difficult family law clients I’ve ever had, which is a large part of why I no longer do family law. So, thank you for that too, David.)
The Falling Out
Our relationship broke down over a meeting. Important people in the room, and David felt I didn’t have his back. He thought I’d sold out. That I was scared. He called me later to say so — with considerable foul language.
I told him plainly: I was not scared. I had survived twelve years in prison. I had served in combat. I hung up.
He called back. More of the same. The texts that followed were things I have long since deleted, but their essence remains. I was offended. Deeply. I blocked his number, and it has stayed blocked.
I am not going to pretend that didn’t happen. David was a complicated man. That’s part of his story. It is also part of mine.
Pickleball
Time passed. As it does. I saw him again at a training in Hamilton County. We talked briefly. It was civil. Maybe even warm — the way two people can be warm when they’ve decided, without saying so, to let something go for the moment. Besides, I’m not sure whether David held grudges.
As he was leaving, he told me he was heading out early. He had a game. “I’m going to play pickleball,” he said.
Those were the last words David Hennessy ever said to me.
I had no idea what pickleball even was at the time. Apparently, the world found out after David told me, because it took off something fierce. I like to think he was just ahead of the curve, as usual.
I never saw him again. Never spoke to him again. Never got the chance to tell him what I needed to.
What I Would Have Said
I forgive you, David. For what you said. For what you implied. For the words that made me hang up the phone twice and block a number I never unblocked. And I’m sorry for blocking your number.
I forgive you because you were a complicated man who did so many good things. You helped so many people, more than I ever have. Because you came to my wedding. Because you saw something in me worth mentoring. Because you sent me cases when I was building something from nothing. Because a magistrate told me you were one of the best he’d ever seen, and watching you work, I believed it.
I forgive you because the last image I have of you is a man leaving a meeting early to go play a sport he loved. And there is something right about that. Something human. But, most of all, I’m sorry for letting my hurt feelings prevent me from spending more time with you.
There are people who knew you far better than I did, David. They will tell your story with more laughs, more depth, more years behind the telling. They will honor you the way you deserve to be honored.
This is just my piece of it. My small corner of a large legacy. And my way of telling you I’m sorry, I miss you, and I love you.
Rest in power, David Hennessy.
Go play pickleball.