McVeagh, Former Interim City Attorney, Appointed to Bench

Alex McVeagh

Former East Ridge Interim City Attorney Alex McVeagh has been appointed by Governor Bill Haslam to temporarily fill a vacancy on the bench in Hamilton County General Sessions Court.

McVeagh, a 31-year-old graduate of Vanderbilt School of Law, will fill in for Judge David Bales, who stepped down from the bench last October after being diagnosed with cancer.

McVeah, an associate in the law firm of Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel, was the city’s interim attorney after Hal North resigned the position effective Jan. 1, 2017. He was a stand-in attorney for the city during North’s two-year tenure in East Ridge. McVeigh was one of four attorneys to apply for the job on a permanent basis and a finalist who was interviewed by city council members.

McVeagh, 31, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that he plans to start his job as Sessions Court Judge on May 1 and clear up some of the backlog on the docket that Bales left behind while fighting cancer in 2016.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.