Bill Thurston graduated from Meridian High School in 1981, one of about 120 in the class — possibly the last large baby boomer cohort to walk that stage.

He played baseball. He went to Murray State University. And then, by his own candid admission, he lost the thread.

"I neglected my studies more than I should have," he said.

He left Murray State without a degree and went to work as a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service in Cairo, Illinois. He did that for twelve years — part time at first, then full time, hauling mail through streets and weather with plenty of time to think.

What he thought about, eventually, was his father.

"I always wanted to be an attorney like my dad," he said. His father had practiced law in Cairo, a small-town attorney in the Southern Illinois model — present, connected, useful to his community. He died at 52. The dream he had planted in his son never quite went dormant.

"I just woke up one night and said, I've got to do this."

His last day delivering mail was August 19, 1997. He still has the resignation letter — it lives in what he calls his feel-good binder, beside a Barry Sanders Nike advertisement he clipped years ago and a Clint Black lyric that has stayed with him even longer: "Don't be the cheers in someone else's game you never learned to play."

The next day, he started law school at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He was 34.

He graduated in two and a half years because he needed to make a living. He went back to Murray State on the front end to finish his undergraduate degree, commuting while carrying mail. He had rediscovered himself and gotten the job done.

The law school, he found, was full of people who'd taken unconventional routes. He went with a dentist who was getting a second degree. He went with people in their 60s who had entire careers behind them. "You're never too old to take that leap," he said. The lesson wasn't abstract — it was the room he sat in every day.

His original plan was a small-town law practice, modeled on what he'd watched his father do. He finished school and went to work as an attorney in Carbondale. Then, in 2002, the judge in Pulaski County announced his retirement after serving since 1966. Bill had just started thinking about family, about coming home.

He ran for the seat. He won. He was sworn in on December 2, 2002.

That was more than two decades ago.

Today, Judge Thurston serves not only as Pulaski County judge but as Chief Judge of Illinois' First Judicial Circuit — a nine-county region, 21 judges, a role he has held for about six years. Beyond that, he chairs the statewide Conference of Chief Judges, 25 circuits across Illinois. He didn't seek any of it, he says. "Anyone who wants to do this, please step forward — and then everyone stepped back while I was daydreaming."

He talks about the judiciary the way you'd expect from someone who delivered mail to neighbors for twelve years. "It's treating people with dignity. Giving people a chance to be heard — even if ultimately I don't rule for them, at least they were given the opportunity to be heard. Treat people like you'd want to be treated. It's the golden rule."

He also talks about where he came from with the directness of someone who wants younger people in communities like Meridian to hear this clearly.

Southern Illinois gets underestimated. He knows it. He has watched people from this region absorb that message and let it limit them. He rejects the premise.

"Don't let your environment dictate you," he said. "You turn that around, fashion that into the vehicle you use to ride to great heights in life."

These aren't abstract words. He is the chair of the statewide conference of chief judges. He came up with Larry Houston as his driver's ed teacher, and Jim Biasi — the Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame coach the Meridian gym is named after — as his coach. His mother taught sixth grade in this district for 36 years. His sister, Carol Gilliland, teaches here still. He coached a kid in tee-ball who recently stood before him in traffic court.

He is as Meridian as it gets. And look at the altitude.

There is a pattern here. Bill Thurston has watched it with Eric Largan, another Meridian product — Harvard undergrad, Columbia Law, eventually the second official in the Department of Human Services in Washington. These are stories that can't be discounted.

"You have nothing to lose and everything to gain," Thurston said.

From the mailbox to the bench. From Murray State to the conference of chief judges. The path was not straight, and it was not fast. But it went somewhere real.

"Don't sit around thinking what you could have, would have, should have done," he said. "Just go do it."