Women move to forefront of Cambria County’s legal system

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November 23, 2009

By SANDRA K. REABUCK The Tribune-Democrat Mon Nov 23, 2009, 08:32 AM EST

EBENSBURG — It has taken nearly 90 years since the first female lawyer practiced law in Cambria County for a woman to become a judge in the Court of Common Pleas here.

But for Linda Rovder Fleming, who will be sworn in as a county judge on Jan. 4, that timing is not surprising. She said, it has only been in more recent decades that women have become practicing lawyers and now have the experience to make a bid for the office.

It was in 1922 that Helena A. Ivory became the first woman to enter the legal profession here, Louis Ripley, the bar association’s historian said.

“She moved away, and there’s little known about her. The second woman admitted to practice came just three years later in 1925 – M. Bashti Burr, part of the Burr family of Ebensburg” he said.

Then came a long spell – 30 years

– before JoAnn Ellis Fay was admitted in 1955, Ripley said. Fay was the lone woman lawyer at the bar until Gloria Hershberger joined the ranks 1975, he said. It was after Hershberger that more women became lawyers here, Ripley said.

Fleming, who has been a lawyer for about 20 years, will be joined by Kelly Callihan – soon to be Cambria’s first district attorney – in making history when the two are sworn into office in January. Callihan, first assistant district attorney, will become the county’s top prosecutor when District Attorney Patrick Kiniry – who won a second judgeship up for election this year

– takes a new oath of office as a judge.

Fleming and Callihan will be joining Lisa Lazzari, Cambria’s full-time chief public defender, in holding three top positions in the county’s justice system.

Lazzari, who joined the defender’s staff in 1993 as a part-time assistant, was appointed the chief defender in November 2001, becoming the first woman to hold that position here.

Now, the fact that she’s a woman heading the defender’s staff, draws little notice after her eight years at the helm, Lazzari said.

But it does get some attention at meetings of the statewide chief defenders association, and more men are the “chiefs,” she said.

Fleming did not base her campaign on being elected as the county’s first woman judge. But she knows that she will be closely watched as she makes decisions from the bench because she’s in that unique position in the county’s 205-year history.

“I’m not naive enough to think I’ll just blend in,” she said.

But she has said that she wants to be judged the same as any other person serving as a jurist, not as a woman judge.

While on the campaign trail this summer, Fleming recalled, “People would ask me if I’d be like ‘Judge Judy.’ I tell them I hope I have the same level of common sense but not nearly as abrasive.”

And, she’s been getting questions of whether she’ll have a black robe with a lace collar on it. Answer: Not the first one, at least. She has ordered a black robe with no special trimmings on it.

Callihan, who has been a county prosecutor for 13 years, said that she is excited and proud about becoming the district attorney. She will serve the remaining two years of Kiniry’s term and would have to run in 2012 for election.

She hopes to be an example to others that “hard work, dedication and passion for my job over the years was recognized regardless of my gender.”

Kiniry said that he chose her to be his first assistant and successor based on her legal qualifications.

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