Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

I was so happy my parents
were there that day.
Hughes: Did you feel like
a trailblazer?
Dimmick: Well, I kept
being interviewed by
everybody asking me,
“What do you bring to
Dimmick poses with her family after being sworn in to the high court. From left, daugther
Dana, husband Cyrus “Cy,” Carolyn, her mother Margaret, father Maurice, and son Taylor.
the bench as a woman?”
You know, I mean there’s
really no answer to those kinds of questions.
Hughes: But women had come a long way. My late mother worked in the 1940s and 1950s
when try as she might – a woman with a college degree – she never got to be a manager in
the telephone company. She was only a “supervisor.”
Dimmick: My mother had two (college) degrees at age 19. She taught in Toppenish and
she taught in Nome, Alaska. She met my father on the Alaska steamship and married him
shortly thereafter. She could never get another teaching job until she was like 60, or 65.
Then she taught in community college. So she wrote in between. But she could not be a
married teacher.
Hughes: So there you have it – your mom, my mom, women of the same era. You had to
feel good about your accomplishments without a lot of whoop-de-do.
Dimmick: Well, I think deep in my heart that my mother probably felt she should have
been able to do more because she was 10 times smarter than I was. So I mean as proud as
she was of me, I think basically she was thinking, “I could have done so much if they hadn’t
been so against women.”
Hughes: It’s amazing stuff what’s happened in the course of a century.
Dimmick: Yes, isn’t it.
Hughes: 1981 was a landmark year in the judiciary. Carolyn Dimmick goes on the
Washington State Supreme Court and Sandra Day O’Connor goes on the U.S. Supreme Court.
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