When Mississippi lawyer Evelyn Gandy ran for lieutenant governor in 1975, not everyone was ready for a woman in the job. She says some people wondered: What if the governor dies?
"I'll be qualified to be governor," Gandy would reply. She indeed was elected - the highlight of a 50-year career in law and public service for which Gandy was honored Sunday by an American Bar Association group.The Commission on Women in the Profession gave awards to Gandy and five other women for paving the way to success for other female lawyers. The Margaret Brent award is named for America's first female lawyer, who practiced during the 1630s and unsuccessfully demanded the right to vote.
On Saturday night, the ABA also gave its highest award, the Medal of Honor, to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Gandy, in addition to her lieutenant governorship, was the first woman to serve in four other state government positions.
She said at the awards luncheon that her parents "challenged me to create my own role model, although they knew the road would be difficult."
"Our civilization will truly never be refined until men and women work together in every phase of our society . . . in full equality, equal partnership and mutual respect," Gandy said.
These days, "young women should be told the doors are all open," she said in an interview several days before the award ceremony. "When I look around the attorney general's office and see all those women lawyers it makes me very proud."
Gandy, who didn't want to reveal her age, was the only woman in her 1943 class at the University of Mississippi School of Law, and she said there probably were fewer than 100 female lawyers in the state at the time.
But she was committed to a career in public service, inspired partly by her mother's joy when women finally got the vote in 1920.
"She well remembered her first vote. She was very excited about it," Gandy recalls.
After serving a term in the state Legislature, Gandy began racking up a long list of "firsts." She was the first woman appointed as assistant Mississippi attorney general and as commissioner of public welfare.