For the first time in nearly five decades, Donald Caldwell’s office is empty.
Roanoke’s chief prosecutor, who was first appointed in 1979 and who will retire Dec. 31, has occupied a room at the northeast corner of the third floor of the Oliver W. Hill Justice Center since not long after the building opened in early 1983.
His expansive wooden desk, which once belonged to Virginia Circuit Court Judge Jack Coulter? That’s been given away, hauled off by a furniture restorer, and all the stacks of folders, pads and papers its surface once supported have now been filed away or discarded…