Bernie Hampsey of Jaffrey said his best friend Robert Taft could be described in one word – “beloved.”

“I was very proud to be his friend,” said Hampsey, who served with Taft as both a lawyer and a judge. “His whole thing in life was friends and friendship. I don’t know anybody who had more friends, and they stayed with him. To know him is to love him. I love him and always will.”

Taft died Dec. 26 at age 92 at RiverMead in Peterborough, where he had lived since 2013. He had moved to Peterborough in 2006 after living in the family home in Greenville for 76 years.

Taft’s daughter, Martha Plante of Waterville Valley, said the main lessons she learned from her father were to treat everyone equally and that everyone deserves respect.

“He knew a lot of people, high and low, and that’s pretty much how he taught our family,” she said. “We try to live up to his expectations, and that’s how I was raised.”

Hampsey first met Taft in 1961, when he was a first-year attorney and Taft helped him with some real estate work at the Registry of Deeds in Nashua. Taft then invited him to his home in Greenville.

“I knew I met somebody very special,” he said.

Hampsey said that Taft was so interested in people, several times clients came to his law office and the conversation would last so long that they never got to the reason for the appointment.

“He’d have to reschedule them for another time,” he said.

Attorney Mark Fernald, who worked with Taft at Fernald, Taft, Falby & Little in Peterborough for 26 years, said everyone liked him.

“He was just a nice guy and an honest guy,” he said. “He really cared about people. He loved being with people. He was a great storyteller, and sometimes he would break into song when he was with people.”

Fernald said Taft also loved talking baseball with his father, Richard Fernald.

“We spent time together almost every day,” he said. “It was always good conversation.”

Taft also served as the judge in Greenville Municipal Court, starting in the 1950s when he was the appointed by then-Gov. Lane Dwinnell.

L. Phillips Runyon of Peterborough, an attorney and former presiding judge of 8th Circuit Court, said he appeared before Taft many times.

“He was always very fair and reasonable; the way he dealt with the defendants in court, many of them more reasonably and generously than they deserved,” he said. “He had probably known those people since they were children. He was dealing with friends and neighbors to a large extent. He wanted to treat them with the fairness and respect he’d hope to get from them, as well.”

In those days, Runyon said the court was more like an office, with seats no more than 15 feet away from Taft.

“It was a tiny courtroom,” he said. “He didn’t ever wear a robe when he sat behind a desk.”

Over time, Runyon said the state phased out municipal courts as judges died or retired, and when Taft retired in 2000 at the age of 70, his was the last such court in the state. Its cases were merged into the Jaffrey-Peterborough District Court, which is where Runyon presided and is now the 8th Circuit Court.

When Taft retired, Runyon said virtually any lawyer of any significance in the state showed up to congratulate him at the surprise party thrown in his honor.

“He was a wonderful guy, and we’re all going to miss him,” Runyon said. “He’s one of the last of the old guard of New Hampshire lawyers who are disappearing now. I’m sure there wasn’t a lawyer in New Hampshire who didn’t have a good experience with Bob. He was always civil, always friendly, and I never heard him raise his voice.”

Now, Runyon said lawyers aren’t nearly as friendly, as it’s all business.

“He practiced law the way you would expect your grandfather to practice,” he said.

Runyon said Taft also used to do a lot of real estate work, and when he went to a closing, he would do all the calculations of taxes and recording fees with a pencil on a yellow pad, unlike now where it is all computerized.

“I never heard anyone complain about the fact that any of his figures were wrong,” he said.

Last summer, when Greenville Community Christian Church pastor William Broughton visited Taft at RiverMead, Taft was sitting outside.

“He insisted on giving me his hat because the sun was shining,” Broughton said, and a staff member at RiverMead got Taft a hat so he wouldn’t have to sit out in the sun.

Broughton has been pastor at the church for 14 years, but said Taft’s involvement went further back than that, including serving as moderator for church meetings for many years.

“I believe the church was one of the ways he stayed connected to with Greenville,” he said.

Broughton said he was first introduced to Taft as “Judge Taft.”

“I think it was years before I called him Bob,” he said.

Even after Taft could no longer get out as much, Broughton said church members kept in touch with him.

“Occasionally, some of his friends would give him a ride so he could come visit us,” he said.

After learning that one of Taft’s favorite hymns was “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” – the Navy hymn, even though Taft’s military service was in the Army – Broughton said he would try to include it in the worship service if he knew Taft was going to be there.

Broughton would also visit Taft’s law office and they would go out for lunch.

“It was always very difficult to get the tab before he did,” he said. “It was one of those pastoral visits that was easy to make.”

Taft joined the Army in 1952, serving for three years, and Broughton said Taft was always proud that he could wear his uniform to veterans’ parades.

Taft served on numerous civic organizations, including Grand Monadnock Rotary Club, Bethel-Souhegan Masonic Lodge, Amoskeag Veterans and the American Legion.

He was also on the Monadnock Community Hospital board for nine years, and Laura Gingras, the hospital’s vice president of philanthropy and community relations, said he was co-chair of the hospital’s largest capital campaign, helping raise just over $10 million to build a new surgery department and emergency department.

“He was an amazing, happy, giving spirit,” said Gingras. “I’m very sad. Bob had an incredible, wonderful, filled life. He will definitely leave a big hole in our community.”

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