My first encounter with Tim Dwyer wasn’t the stuff dreams are made of.

Nightmares would be more apt.

It was in his courtroom, Division 8 of General Sessions Criminal Court, more commonly known as Drug Court.

I stood before his bench alongside my daughter. She was there on charges related to a drug problem that, over the course of the previous year, had consumed her.

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We stood quietly as Judge Dwyer scanned the documents before him and slowly looked up, passing his gaze first to her and then to me. He confirmed I was the father then explained to her the situation she was in and the chance he was going to give her to make it right.

And that, as I would come to learn in the following months, was the defining trait — at least for me — of the stern figure with whom I first crossed paths that day. Someone trying to help make things right for a group of people who had gotten things so tragically wrong.

Like all of us, Tim James Dwyer is no doubt more than the one-dimensional picture I painted mentally based on my limited dealings with him. The Daily Memphian reporter Bill Dries, in a story about Dwyer’s departure from the bench following the Aug. 4 election in which he didn’t seek another term, tells of a young boy growing up in Frayser who learned the importance of public service from a family with a long tradition in politics.

“Politicians would call Daddy up, begging him to take them to St. Peter’s so he could introduce them to everybody. … He’d be glad-handing everybody. That was a big deal,” Dwyer said, referring to the annual Fourth of July picnic at St. Peter’s Orphanage in Midtown that was long a Memphis political tradition.

His father, Parnell Dwyer, wasn’t in politics but his uncles were. John T. “Buddy” Dwyer was a city commissioner and judge and Robert K. “Bussy” Dwyer was a state criminal appeals court judge.

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From those roots, another public servant grew out of the good Catholic boy from Frayser. He ultimately spent 38 years on the bench, the last 25 overseeing the drug court he established in Division 8 to focus on drug cases, emphasizing court-monitored treatment.

All of which brings us back to that day in his courtroom.

Dwyer told my daughter he was entering her in a treatment program and that, if she completed it successfully and graduated, the charges against her would be expunged.

We left with high hopes that, unfortunately, weren’t realized in our case. She faltered, as many do, after exiting treatment and her life ended before ever making it to the graduation ceremony from Dwyer’s program.

After I wrote a column on the first anniversary of her passing, Dwyer sent me this note:

“Dear Ron, with a heavy heart I read your article about Mallory. I think of her often and have her picture in my office to remind me daily of the challenges ahead that we face with heroin.

“Yesterday in court, I had a young lady going into the program. Her father was there and I thought of the love and concern that you had for Mallory. I shared your article with them and tried to emphasize the devastating effect that the loss of a loved one has on the family.”

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He offered some words of encouragement to finish his note before moving on to the next case that might yield a more promising outcome. Or might not.

Because that’s the way it is with drug addiction. No promises of success, no guarantee that it ever really ends.

Still, Dwyer slogged through it each day for the final 25 years of his courtroom career, seeing the worst that humanity can do to itself but often can fix with a little help.

“Sometimes I do get discouraged,” Dwyer told me in 2019. “But then I see people in my courtroom who are really turning their lives around, so that kind of motivates me and my staff.”

May we all be so motivated by Dwyer’s service to the community as he leaves the bench. Life is an imperfect experiment, as has been the case with Dwyer’s drug court.

But it’s only through experimenting and failing that we can appreciate the joy when we succeed.