Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

of personalities. Did you know all those fellows pretty well from law school?
Dimmick: I knew all of them, except for Rosellini. Everybody else I was acquainted with.
Hughes: Of all those guys you served with who was your favorite?
Dimmick: Well, I think Dolliver maybe. Well, Floyd Hicks was and then he left, of course – in
1982, a year after I came on the court – (and went back to the Superior Court bench).
Hughes: I wish I had known him. I don’t know very much about him, except that he had served
in Congress.
Dimmick: He was a crusty appearing guy.
Hughes: He looked sort of unapproachable.
Dimmick: But he was.
Hughes: You seem to me to be both a woman’s woman and a man’s woman, which is no small
trick.
Dimmick: It depends on what you’re surrounded with. You know, if you’re raised with a bunch
of boys, that’s one thing. I’d been raised with boys since law school. That’s it, you know.
Hughes: You’re certainly a feminine woman.
Dimmick: I try to be. That’s what you’re born into. … But I was fine (with the way things went)
on the bench. Everybody was very cordial and nice to me. I wasn’t causing them any trouble.
They just wanted somebody else to do a share of the work. I was that somebody, and it was
fine with me.
Hughes: I want to ask you about this
picture of you with Justice Bob Utter. He’s
so handsome and dignified looking. If
you called Central Casting and asked for a
Supreme Court judge you’d get Bob Utter.
Dimmick: Wouldn’t you! Or Dolliver.
That (picture was taken) when I was
sworn in (to the Supreme Court in 1981).
I was sworn in by Bob Utter before the
formal swearing in to get on the payroll.
Dimmick signs her oath of office before being sworn in by
Chief Justice Bob Utter in 1981.
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