By Paul Janczewski
Legal News
An unscrupulous attorney unwittingly pushed over the first domino in Mark W. Latchana’s law career.
Those rectangular pieces cascaded and led Latchana on a singular path through Michigan State University and Wayne State University Law School.
Clicking faster now as the chain-reaction continued, those falling dominos saw Latchana land success as a county prosecutor, civil litigator, and defense attorney.
For now, the falling pieces have quieted as Latchana prepares to take the bench in January as a newly-elected judge on the 67th District Court.
“Anything in life is about timing,” said Latchana, 38, of Davison Township. “And the reality of being elected in November is still settling in. But District Court is where I want to be,” he said. “And this is the job I want to do.”
To fully understand Latchana’s drive and focus requires a careful look at the parents who raised him. Marvin Latchana, a native of Guyana, South America, was one of five siblings raised in a family with little money, except a small sum earned by his father, a hardware store operator.
Marvin Latchana incorporated hard work and smarts to earn scholarships to a college in Montreal, and later a medical school in Ireland. While in Dublin, he met Dorothy O’Gorman, and they married.
The couple then moved to Trinidad, where Mark was born, “a third-world country,” Latchana joked. His father had family there, and started a medical practice, but the Latchana’s later moved back to Guyana where his father worked as a doctor.
“But the political situation there was very unstable,” he said. Latchana has seen pictures of the place they lived and described it as “a pretty rustic existence.”
Latchana’s father sent out resumes to 50 hospitals in the United States, and heard from only two. One was Hurley Medical Center in Flint.
He flew there, unannounced, in the early 1970s and told officials he was ready to work.
“He basically guilted them into giving him a job,” Latchana said.
The family lived in downtown Flint. Latchana was 5 years old when they arrived.
A few years later, his father opened his own practice in Flint Township specializing in internal medicine. His mother earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan-Flint and a master’s from U-M, and is currently a clinical social worker at the Oakland Psychological Clinic. The couple has two other children.
Latchana graduated from Carmen-Ainsworth High School in 1990.
“After high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do,” said Latchana, who chose MSU for the many programs and opportunities it offered.
In his second year, he and three friends moved into a rental house, but the original landlord sold it to another person, a Lansing-area attorney.
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