Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Hughes: What was he like? Tell us about Chuck Carroll.
Dimmick: He was frightening. He was very intimidating. A big football player, you know.
A big guy. And I think I had told him I wanted to go over there. I think Bernie Lonctot, the
deputy attorney general, talked with him. I’m not going to get into why I decided to go, but
I went. I think Bernie called him about me, and I went over and talked to him.
Hughes: What would Bernie have said to characterize your work as an assistant attorney
general? Were you well thought of in the office? You’d done a good job?
Dimmick: I think so.
Hughes: What was the hallmark of your work?
Dimmick: What do mean “hallmark”?
Hughes: Well, your attention to detail? Good arguer?
Dimmick: Won the case.
Hughes: And, after all, “That’s how we keep score.”
Dimmick: I went in and talked to Chuck. And he hired me. That’s all I know.
Hughes: They didn’t give you any kind of classic male advice, like “Don’t get pregnant too
soon”?
Dimmick: No.
Hughes: “You are not going to have babies and leave me in the lurch?”
Dimmick: He didn’t care. There’s another one. Somebody else can always do it.
Hughes: But the divorce proctor – was that a grease-the-skids kind of job to keep the
wheels of justice rolling? Did you draw any conclusions from being a divorce proctor in
1955?
Dimmick: … I would have an interview… We had to have grounds for divorce in those days.
If a woman came in with a black eye we had grounds. And I suppose irreconcilable conflict,
differences, or whatever – the catch-all phrase – worked fairly well. But anyhow, by the
time I talked to them it was pretty set that it was a default. The other side had already
given up. It wasn’t contested. I just had to be sure that there was inclusion, that the kids
were taken care of.
Hughes: Do we still have divorce proctors in superior court?
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