Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Dimmick: Well, as luck would have it he wanted a divorce proctor. He wanted a woman for
that job. And that’s what Betty Howard was at the time. So I became a divorce proctor.
Hughes: Tell us what a divorce proctor does.
Dimmick: Well, you interview women who want divorces, or men who want divorces, and
you make sure their residency is the state of Washington and if they’ve got children, how
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer announces that Carolyn Reaber has
joined the King County Prosecutor’s Office in 1955
much are they going to get? “Have you
worked this out?” That sort of thing.
You have to have an interview with
everybody wanting a divorce.
Hughes: You’re the go-between.
Dimmick: Well, it was default divorces,
so it’s only one side that I talk with. And
then we go to court and they have these
long calendars. Like I told you earlier,
the guys were sitting down there talking
to the judge while I’m standing up and
doing a good job.
Hughes: Was that the kind of job that
a young woman got in the Prosecutor’s
Office?
Dimmick: Yes. Then when I got married
Chuck made me take Cy’s name because
he thought it was unseemly for a single
woman to be doing that work, even though he hired me to do the work because he needed
a woman at the moment.
Hughes: How did you come to get this job with Charles O. Carroll?
Dimmick: I walked across the street and applied.
Hughes: Did you get interviewed by the prosecutor himself?
Dimmick: Sure.
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