Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

through. I never met a legal job I didn’t love. Whether I was prepared in advance or onthe-job
training … you just did what you had to do and you learned how to do it and did it.
Hughes: What was that eureka moment for you? You didn’t go into law school really
thinking you’d be an attorney, so what was it that really clicked?
Dimmick: Well, I’ll tell you what happened: The assistant dean, Don Wollett, called me
in to see if I was going to leave at the end of the year. And I said yes, I planned to get my
(B.A.) degree. And he said, “I want you to go down and meet my wife, she works in the
Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.” Her name was Mary Ellen Morton. So I go down and have
lunch with her. She brings along Betty Howard, who was with the King County Prosecutor‘s
Office at the time.
Hughes: How old was Betty – maybe in her forties?
Dimmick: I think she was older than that. In any case, Mary Ellen brought Betty with
her. So Betty said, “Come on to court with me.” It was a default divorce calendar and I
saw those lawyers sitting there and talking to the judge, not even standing up, just real
informal, casual, on this default divorce calendar. You’ve got to have a divorce proctor who
interviewed the woman, or whoever is getting the divorce, to decide whether they’ve got
the residency and whether the children are provided for. That’s all the prosecutor did. So,
when I got through with that I was dumbfounded. I had never been in court before, ever.
Had no lawyers in my background except anciently. So afterwards Betty said, “Well, you
could do that.”
I said, “Well, I could certainly do it better than they’re doing it.”
So she says, “You might as well keep going to law school. What are you going to do?”
I said, “Well, keep working at the P-I.”
She said, “Nah, keep going to law school.”
So I did. And she was then my mentor forever. She went to my house for Christmas Eve for
the last 50 years until she died.
Hughes: What kind of person was she?
Dimmick: She was wonderful. She was a big, rough woman. We used to call her “The
Barracuda.” Her husband got that name for her.
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