Our People of the Century Judge Frank J. Testa: Loquacious Youth Leveraged Gifts into Courtroom Career

When Frank Testa was a boy in Vineland, he spent hours in his father’s shoemaking shop. He listened to men who gathered there, and more often than not, joined in the conversation.

In fact, he was quite talkative.

His father, Joseph Testa, told him he should become a lawyer because he talked so much.

That comment would include not only Joseph’s son Frank, but two more generations of Testas.

Born in Vineland in 1914, Frank Testa graduated as the valedictorian of the Vineland High School class of 1934. He worked his way through college at Temple University, and earned a law degree from South Jersey Law School, now Rutgers.

“I was an entrepreneur,” said Testa, only he was half joking. “I sold newspapers and peanuts for five cents a bag at the horse auction.”

Testa had his own station – a three-seater – where he shined shoes at his father’s shop.

Once in high school, he sold shoes at the Boston Shoe Store next to Kotok’s market at Sixth and Landis. Testa and Stanley Brotman, now a U.S. District Court judge, overlapped for some of those years working at the shoe store, owned by Brotman’s maternal grandfather, Barnett Melletz and two uncles, David and Morris.

When Testa left the store after he passed the bar, Melletz told him that he would always be welcome to work at the store if he didn’t make it as a lawyer.

It wasn’t necessary. His law practice was successful, and Testa went on to become the last municipal judge of the borough of Vineland, and the first municipal judge of the city of Vineland.

Four years after the consolidation, he was elected mayor of Vineland.

“I thought it would be a good thing to be mayor of the city I was born in, and I wanted to have the opportunity to do things for the people of Vineland,” he said.

Testa was appointed to the State Superior Court bench in the 1970s and retired in 1983. Since then, he’s been a counsel with the law firm of Basile and Testa. His son, Michael, is a partner in the firm and on the team of lawyers handling the New Jersey tobacco settlement. Another son, Joseph, was with the firm before following in his father’s footsteps to the state Superior Court bench.

The octogenarian goes into the office almost every day. Testa and son often eat lunch together.

“There are very few situations he has not encountered either as a practicing attorney or a sitting judge,” Michael Testa said. “The law is based on precedent. And his insight is extremely helpful.”