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President's Message
by Dolores Gebhardt, Esq.
I am honored and humbled to have been chosen to lead this dynamic, nurturing and innovative organization into its next thirty-five years, and to follow in the footsteps of its many accomplished, bold and charismatic leaders.
I first joined the WWBA in 1993 at the urging of my longtime friend, the Hon. Annette Guarino. I recall going to a weekend luncheon presentation on issues surrounding child care. I worked in Manhattan in those days, and felt I had little in common with Westchester attorneys. Unfortunately, I let my membership lapse.
Flash forward to 2001, when I became an associate at McCarthy Fingar. I quickly discovered that membership in the WWBA was a condition of employment…at least, of my employment. My then-boss, Kathleen Donelli, took me under her wing. At the time, she was the WWBA Recording Secretary and Programs Committee chair. Truly a force of nature, within weeks of my arrival at McCarthy Fingar, Kathleen signed me up as a WWBA member and told me she needed me to help check people in at a CLE program. In a futile attempt to save myself, I told her I didn’t know anyone in the WWBA. Kathleen looked me square in the eye and said, “You will. Let’s go!” And the rest is history. Kathleen tirelessly and selflessly nurtured, supported and propelled me forward, both in the WWBA and in my career. Never again did I try to resist the pull of the magnetic members of the WWBA; in fact, over the years, I have made enduring friendships and found professional fulfillment. I truly owe it all to Kathleen, and will be forever grateful.
I owe thanks also to the rest of my partners at McCarthy Fingar, who have and will continue to support my work for the WWBA and the other bar associations and professional associations in which I am an active member. In fact, one of my partners at McCarthy Fingar inspired my agenda as president. When I told him recently that I wanted every attorney at our firm to join the WWBA, he replied that he would consider joining when we changed our name – he didn’t want to join a women’s bar association. That got me thinking about our name and our mission… why would a male attorney want to join a bar association for women?
I found the answer in preparing for this 35th Anniversary celebration, which was spearheaded by my partner and friend, the remarkable Gail Boggio. I had the good fortune to come across a copy of the WWBA’s “Twentieth Anniversary Journal: 1975-1995.” In it, I found the following:
The objectives of our organization during its formative years were to provide an opportunity for interaction between and among women with a community of interest and shared experiences; to encourage women to run for political office, especially judicial office; to assist our members to achieve their political goals; to assemble a resource of names of women attorneys for referral to those who wanted to be represented by women; and to further affirmative action programs that were just coming into existence by assisting local corporations to fill executive positions.
Now, on our 35th Anniversary, I am proud to say that the WWBA has remained true to those goals, and in fact has far exceeded them. Our original goals of assembling a “resource of names of women attorneys for referral” and “assisting local corporations to fill executive positions” have evolved so that now, the WWBA is one of the most powerful and influential networking organizations in Westchester County, if not the entire State. If you want a job, have a position to fill, or need to refer a friend or client, ask a member of the WWBA…chances are, he or she has just the right person in mind, or knows someone who does. Or simply place an ad in our newsletter, and get results. I say now to my partner who questioned our name that the name is completely appropriate: WWBA stands for “We Will Be Able!”
We began 35 years ago as a bar association of women who were concerned about issues concerning women and children. Now, I am proud to say, we are no longer an association of women. We are proud of the 67 men who have joined our ranks -- men such as our Deputy County Executive, Kevin Plunkett; judges such as the Hon. Lester Adler, Daniel Angiolillo, Thomas Dickerson, and David Klein; business leaders such as Joseph Ruhl and Lawrence McElroen of Hudson Valley Bank, and many prominent attorneys in all practice areas. These men have helped us make the WWBA an organization for women that promotes issues of importance to women.
One of my goals as President will be to encourage and further develop the active participation of men in our bar association. I invite every male attorney in Westchester – if you have a wife, a mother, a sister or a daughter – if you love women, join us and help make a difference in their lives!
I will also renew our strong commitment to fighting breast cancer, the scourge that took the lives of two of my sisters-in-law, Susan Gebhardt and Valerie Vidile Mazzella, far, far too early.
In our educational programs, we will remain on the cutting edge. Our first general membership meeting on September 22 will present a subject ripped straight from the headlines -- bullying and cyber-bullying – and will feature the combined talents of our Criminal and Education Law Committees.
On September 13, I will make my first-ever appearance at our Annual Golf Outing, which will be held at Ridgeway Country Club. You won’t see me swinging a golf club, but I will meet all of you golfers at the nineteenth hole!
Lastly, I will call for a commitment from our members to partner with the Alzheimer’s Association in order to raise awareness, raise money for research, and hopefully find a cure for the disease that robs so many of their memories, their dignity, and ultimately their lives. This project is near and dear to my heart…as it is in memory of my father, Robert Gebhardt.
I cannot do this work alone; I will need the talent, the time and the commitment of each and every one of you to help me make our next thirty-five years as spectacularly successful as the first. Together, We Will Be Able!
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