On June 4, 2025, the Westchester Women’s Bar Association celebrated its Annual Dinner, Installation of Officers and Directors, and Golden Jubilee, taking stock of how far we’ve come in the past 50 years!  We were deeply honored that the Honorable Rowan D. Wilson, Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, joined in the celebration and provided an inspiring keynote address.  A full recap of the night will be published in our upcoming newsletter.

For my part, I’m incredibly thankful for the opportunity to steer the ship of the WWBA for the year ahead.  It’s the greatest honor I’ve known professionally, knowing the brilliance and esteem of the women who have held this role before me, and an expanded purpose, one I’ve been preparing for this year under the exceptional leadership of Immediate Past President Sherry A. Bishko. 

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has said: “History is everything.  It’s therapy.  It’s perspective.  It’s hope.”  The WWBA has a history that has enriched all our lives.  For the first reason why: our mission has always been to promote the fair and equal administration of justice, to advance the status of women in society, and to raise the level of competence and integrity in the legal profession.

I’ve otherwise had to do some legwork to glean our history, because I’ve been here only 6 of our 50 years.  I found the WWBA online in July 2019, soon after moving to Westchester from Brooklyn, made the great discovery that they had a Book Club meeting the next week, and joined.  My first event was on a warm summer night, sitting in the round in a full living room in Jane Gould’s home, discussing the marsh lands and murder mystery of Where the Crawdads Sing.  That night the discussion usually led by Book Club founder Lisa Denig was led by Magistrate Judge Lisa Margaret Smith.  Also there were Justice Sondra Miller and Judge Sandra Forster, who became a good friend.  There’s a hole in our membership since the passing of Judge Forster, Justice Miller, then Judge Smith.  The impacts those women had on us were tremendous, and their legacies live on.

Book Club, now named in honor of Judge Smith, was my way in, and is still meaningful to me.  It’s from those gatherings that I’ve gotten to know many members, and it’s there that I’ve experienced what I think is the spirit of the WWBA: the camaraderie, the intellect, and the engagement.  

Onto to the legwork of learning our history.  With the hope of finding some treasures, I drove to Bedford for a deep dive into the storage unit, where 60 boxes of archival materials are kept.  Helped by Tanya Briendel, we found a collage from a predecessor organization, which also called itself the Westchester Women’s Bar Association.  It seems that organization, like the New York Women’s Bar Association founded in 1934, was started by female attorneys who were denied membership in bar associations because they were women.  The collage includes the minutes of a meeting held in 1938 with eight attendees, where, “upon motion duly made, seconded and carried, the constitution and by-laws of the Westchester Women’s Bar Association were adopted as amended.”  An informal discussion ensued regarding an outing at Alice Oettinger’s place at Lake Waccabuc.  A tentative date, June 25th, 1938, was set.  There being no further business before the meeting the same was duly adjourned.

There was also a resolution that objected to the portrayal of members of the judiciary and the legal profession in moving pictures, which the organization found erroneous.  It showed them in “such manner as to cause ridicule, disrespect and loss of prestige and confidence in the American way of the administration of justice.”

So far the facts seem murky about what happened with the predecessor organization.  A loss to us of this history but possibly not unexpected.  Isn’t it often the way that women’s stories have gotten lost to time.

Fast forward to the WWBA in its current iteration, formalized by 27 women attorneys who signed the original charter for the Westchester Regional Unit of the New York Women’s Bar Association on June 4, 1975.  Unearthed in those storage boxes in Bedford were Polaroid photos marked as “Cheryl Bradley’s house where WWBA started.”  The Honorable Cheryl Bradley became the first President in 1975, a year after she had joined the Westchester County DA’s Office as its first female attorney.     

There’s no doubt that the founders and early members faced a much different legal landscape than we know today.  They were the “firsts” in significant spaces—in bar associations, in government, and on the bench.  They had to contend for their access to those spaces in the first place, and once there, contended to be regarded with equality and respect, and, eventually, to seek further positions of prominence. Their critical work paved the way for women attorneys who followed.  They are also to be credited for standing up against stereotypes, and wearing the first pants suits to court.

Mary Kelly, Past President of both us and WBASNY, gave beautiful remarks at an Afternoon Tea in April, and since then has shared personal records that she’s preserved.  It was a privilege to read them—her advocacy on legal issues and for the equal status of all people is extraordinary.  Mary had served as co-counsel in the early Title VII cases, she co-authored a report in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, and, as a law student at New York University, she participated in writing the American Civil Liberties Union brief in Reed v. Reed, in which the United States Supreme Court reversed a 100-year-old precedent, allowing women equal opportunity to be appointed as estate administrators.  That case marked the first time the Court struck down a state law on the basis of gender discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause.

In an invaluable video of Past President interviews, created to celebrate the 25th Anniversary, Mary said that the most important thing the women’s bar association had done was give women lawyers a base from which they could launch significant careers in law: “We put women on the map in important places.”

And we treasure all the women who blazed those trails.  I can’t personally speak to the fullness of their brilliance, spark, and success, but love hearing stories about their experiences, and urge you to seek them out too.  Pivotal among them, of course, was Justice Sondra Miller, who graduated from Harvard Law School’s first class to admit women, and who was the first woman from the Ninth JD to be appointed as an Associate Justice to the Appellate Division, Second Department.  She signed the original charter of the WWBA and was a founding mother of WBASNY, which formed during her presidency, enabling the WWBA to join forces with other women’s bar associations around the state.

I shared my origin story with the WWBA, and someone else recently shared hers with me, when as a Pace law student in 1977 she saw a tsunami coming down the hallway—it was Justice Miller, in white Gogo boots, with Cheryl Bradley and Barbara Keiser.  They invited her to a meeting of the women’s bar.  She didn’t know what they meant.  But, she soon found herself in a beautiful home in Larchmont, taken in, same as I was, by the warmth of the first meeting.  She pointed out that there was no email back then, or CLE programs, so the work got done in people’s homes, although, in this person’s case, it was not uncommon to also be in Governor Mario Cuomo’s Office advocating for positions on legislation.

 

On the 25th Anniversary video I mentioned, Justice Miller spoke eloquently about the community of interest, and community of understanding, within the WWBA.  If you have not seen that, let me recommend it to you.  It is heartening.  She said very succinctly what we all feel is of value in this community: the opportunity to develop leadership, the ability to speak out on things women cared about, and the opportunity to grow.

Past President Jane Gould described on the video what struck her as a “harbinger” moment, when she realized the future of the influence of the women’s bar association, having received a phone call from Governor Cuomo’s Office during her presidency asking what our members thought about a candidate that he was considering appointing to the Westchester Family Court.  In due time our reputable Judicial Screening Committee was formed, but then it was not yet common to receive those calls.

Other Past Presidents reflected on what physical records cannot show.  Some expressed that the WWBA had come to define who they were, many referred to members as sisters, and all agreed that members supported each other as attorneys.  We were a vehicle to enable other women to grow and work toward their full potential, gaining recognition and respect along the way.  There’s a response I admire that I think says it all, given by Past President Marianne Sussman, who thought the WWBA “provided the base, the support, and the example for perhaps more achievement than [she] would have undertaken had [she] not had the experience of being involved.” 

My vision for the year ahead is for us to recommit to carrying forward this strong legacy.  To develop leadership—within our committee work, mentoring program, and community action—to stay vigilant about issues affecting women, and to promote integrity in the practice of law.  There is still a need for this organization. 

In addition to our Past Presidents who I’ve been highlighting, we have many dedicated longtime members who I hope will continue to be inspired by our work, and hope will continue to participate and share your knowledge.

My hope is that newer members too, will also be inspired to share your ideas, knowing that everyone has a valuable contribution to make.  Because as we celebrate pioneers who began our proud legacy and continue to affect it, we should also reflect on the impact that we want to continue to make as a bar association.  We treasure our potential.

And I hope that as newer members become more involved, the community will grow more meaningful for you, as it did for me.  In that way the work that’s needed feels less like work, and we truly start to feel the sense of belonging and empowerment that we should feel by being in the WWBA.  In my presidency I’ll be exactly with you in that regard—I find the meaning in being able to belong to something larger than ourselves, with a collective mission.

Staying the course of our mission will also require our active participation at the state level and attunement to legislative initiatives.  We don’t currently know the direction the laws of the state and country will take, but we treasure the ability to use our voice in affecting legislation.  Other goals will be to continue to spotlight the range and expertise of our members in the CLE programs we present, and to continue partnering with non-profit and other agencies that advance our mission.

I’m truly looking forward to working with all the newly installed Officers and Directors as we chart ahead, and learning from your insights and vast experience.  Congratulations to you all, and thank you. 

Finally, I invite you to join me as we continue to reflect on our history in the jubilee year, both because it’s fascinating, and because shining this light on the past will help provide direction for our future.  I haven’t nearly finished the exploration of our history, but I can tell you there’s so much in our records that time does not yet permit me to share, so please stay tuned.  Thank you, and I wish a heartfelt happy anniversary to the WWBA, and its extraordinary members.