Born in Baltimore, Maryland, July 17, 1928, Judge Hammerman attended the Baltimore City College (third oldest public high school in America, a magnet specialized school for the Classics, humanities, social studies and liberal arts - founded 1839) and went on to graduate from the Johns Hopkins University, with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)
[2] After his retirement, Hammerman continued on the bench as a senior judge, working full-time but limited by law to pay for only 120 days of service per year.
He presided over several high-profile cases, including the child sexual abuse case against John Joseph Merzbacher Jr., a lay teacher sentenced to four life sentences for repeated rape and sexual abuse of one of his students in the 1970s at Catholic Community Middle School in South Baltimore., a parochial school under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
[5] The club eventually expanded into other areas of the city, bringing in non-Jews as well, some of whom went on to careers in public service, such as Kurt Schmoke, an official in the U.S. Dept.
Hammerman also supervised during the 1980s and 1990s, the annual Hall of Fame induction ceremonies at The Baltimore City College, of which he was a member.
[6] On November 11, 2004, the body of Robert Hammerman was found outside his northwest Baltimore apartment, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.
The case was ruled a suicide because of, among other things, the letter that Hammerman had mailed the day before to more than 2000 people in and around Baltimore City.
[7] Many of those who received the letters were lawyers or his colleagues on the Bench, though most of the recipients were past and present members of his beloved Lancers club.