By KEVIN RIORDAN
Courier-Post Staff

Once larger than life, Milton Milan seemed to get smaller and smaller under the scathing rain of words in U.S. District Court Friday.

Words like "brazen" and "self-aggrandizing," words combined into phrases such as "Mr. Milan let the power go to his head" and "he never took any money from the city's coffers."

The latter statements, it should be noted, were offered in defense of Camden's former mayor.

Judge Joel Pisano was less kind.

"You are a remarkable individual. Or at least, you were," Pisano told the downcast, broke and broken man who sat before him.

Milan wore a white, prison-issue T-shirt, elastic-waisted khakis and blue canvas slip-ons. He was perhaps 50 pounds lighter than he was in December when he was convicted on corruption charges.

"You did not have an easy situation growing up," the judge said, noting how Milan had overcome poverty to become a U. S. Marine, a city council president, a mayor.

"You came with promise," Pisano continued, "and you made such great promises."

But Milan, the judge said, "violated every concept" of his oath of office. He was "greedy" and used power to help himself rather than the desperate city that elected him.

"The people of Camden do not deserve to be the laughingstock of urban America," Pisano said. "You made them that."

Sitting next to his public defender (like his sleek suits, his high-priced lawyers became history long ago), Milan kept his shoulders hunched, his hands clasped in his lap.

Only when he stood to make a statement did he become visibly emotional.

"People believed in me and trusted me," he said.

His voice thickened.

Then it broke.

"And I let them down. I'm sorry ... I'm sorry to my family."

A short sob escaped from the packed gallery.

It was Milan's wife Kathryn, the mother of his three youngest children.

Her anguish was more eloquent than any elegant legalese or abject apology.

After all, the squandered potential of the Milan administration, the harm done to an already hurting city, the loss of public confidence in government - these are abstractions.

A mother's despair, on the other hand, is as real as it gets.

No wonder there was no sign of the bravado and brashness that once defined Milton Milan after Pisano imposed the maximum sentence of seven years, three months.

Shuffling in his prison shoes, the shrunken, fallen man went off to meet his fate alone, leaving behind the sound of a single breaking heart.

Kevin Riordan's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Contact him at(856) 486-2604 or kriordan@courierpostonline.com