Roy Ritchie Linda Hotchkiss & Robert Young Jr.

Robert Young Jr.: A.B. 1974, J.D. 1977. Michigan Supreme Court Justice.
Linda Hotchkiss: A.B. 1974, M.D. 1978. Psychiatrist.

For a successful college essay, Barrett R.H. Young’s begins inauspiciously—by mentioning that he received his school’s Ken Starr Award in fourth grade.

“I don’t think it was regarded as a positive award,” says his father, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Robert P. Young Jr. “He carried around a copy of the Constitution with him and was reputed to whip it out on certain occasions and argue his teachers to a standstill.” On the other hand, the judge says, the younger of his two sons “has a winning way about his disputatiousness, and I suppose that’s why he hasn’t been killed yet.”

Debate is a necessary skill in the Young-Hotchkiss household, according to Barrett’s essay. “In my family,” he says, “the consequences are dire for those who cannot argue: they are ‘killed and eaten’ just as the weak are in my metropolitan city of Detroit.”

That violent imagery belies 36 years of harmony that began in storybook fashion during Freshman Week in 1970. The parents of 16-year-old Linda Hotchkiss, chaperoning her around the Yard, recognized Young and his roommate, also first-years from Detroit. Linda’s father deputized the boys, and one of them embraced his new responsibility.

“He said, ‘I really want you to take good care of her and protect her,’” recalls Hotchkiss, a psychiatrist. “And Robert took it pretty seriously.”

“I ended up walking Linda back to her hall in Radcliffe Yard, and we’ve been together ever since,” says Young. “I always claim that he had negligently entrusted her to my care.”

The pair went on to marry one year into graduate school. “We got married on a Saturday,” recalls Hotchkiss, “and we borrowed a car to drive back from Detroit to Boston, because our car had broken down and I had an anatomy exam on Monday.”

The challenge of finding enough time for each other in the face of high-powered professional lives would become a theme. Upon graduating, Young joined Dickinson Wright, a top Detroit firm, where he became a senior partner. In 1995, he was appointed to the Michigan Court of Appeals; three years later, he ascended to the state supreme court. Hotchkiss spent 22 years at the Detroit Medical Center, then became a senior vice president at Trinity Health, a seven-state health-care network. She recently left, intending to expand her private practice. The two have also juggled faculty appointments and community activities.

“More than once I’ve asked myself—‘Okay, why did I think it would be a good idea to have three full-time jobs?’” says Hotchkiss, laughing.

Even at the busiest times, each helps the other keep things in perspective. “We’ve managed to learn the tricks of a long relationship,” says Young. “When we escalate into an argument, one of us starts laughing, which usually breaks the tension and restores the equilibrium.”

Women are natural psychiatrists, he theorizes. “Every woman is continually—with training or without—psychoanalyzing her significant other,” he says. “My wife just has more tools at her disposal to rectify my shortcomings.”

He adds, “And I studiously resist all of them.”

Critical to balancing work and family was their support network in Detroit. Hotchkiss describes her mother-in-law, Robbie Young, and her longtime mother’s helper, Delia, as indispensable. Young calls his brother the family’s “principal utility infielder.”

“He’s a child psychologist,” says the judge. “These were his laboratory rats.”

Both sons went on to Harvard. Robert is a filmmaker in Cambridge; Barrett is a sophomore. Raising them involved compromise. “I did have to change my expectations about how the kids would be taken care of,” admits Hotchkiss. “Because if I was expecting my husband to be an equal partner in this—and I was—then I had to accept that he would sometimes not do things the right way. Which is my way.”

Young agrees that they have distinct styles. “Mine is, ‘You’re on lockdown for the rest of your life.’ Hers is, ‘If you go to your father, and explain you’re sorry, and that the penalty is over the top, then . . .’” He pauses. “The kids have learned some negotiating skills.”

Profile by Jesse Andrews