This post was written by my friend Penny Proctor. She is an initiate of the Pi Beta Phi chapter at Hillsdale College. Thank you, Penny, for sharing this story.
When is a badge more than a badge? When it is a tribute.
First, let me provide a bit of context. When I began law school in 1977, women had been practicing law for decades, yet were only just beginning to be truly accepted in the profession. While the number of women in my class – 23% – was the largest to date at my law school and attitudes were changing, there were still those who resented our presence. At a party my third year, I was told by a male classmate that I was a terrible person because I had taken away a seat from a potential male student just so I could meet and marry a future lawyer. Still, I was conscious that I was not really a pioneer; many women before me had blazed the trail I was then following.
This is the story of a badge that belonged to one of the true pioneers.
The November 1933 edition of The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi features an article entitled “The Ladies of the Bar,” written by practicing attorney Mary Elizabeth Hanger Ramier, an alumna of the University of Illinois Pi Beta Phi chapter. She intended to highlight Pi Phis who were actually engaged in the practice of law, and opened with these words:
At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, women lawyers and particularly Pi Phi lawyers were rare indeed. The majority of Pi Phis who received LL.B. degrees or were admitted to the bar at that time usually became occupied with civic work and household duties, and did not actively engage in the legal profession.(1)
One of the seven practicing attorneys she featured was Mildred Thrasher, a 1920 initiate of my own chapter, Michigan Alpha. Mildred earned her bachelor’s degree from Hillsdale College in three years and then entered the Columbian College of George Washington University, one of the law schools most receptive to women students. While working for her L.L.B., she also worked as a secretary in the Anti-Trust Division of the Department of Justice, as well as the Department Agriculture and the Civil Service.
After graduation in 1926, she returned to her hometown of Chardon, Ohio, passed the bar and joined a law firm. She was then the only woman attorney in the county; later in life, she reflected on that by saying only, “I was something of an oddity.”(2) Her practice was devoted primarily to trusts, estates and divorces. In 1928, she ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for the position of Prosecuting Attorney (somewhat ironically, losing to the son of another Michigan Alpha Pi Phi).
The Great Depression hit all lawyers hard, and women lawyers that much harder. To make a living, Mildred had to give up private practice in 1932 and was forced to work as a court reporter, which is what she was doing at the time of the article in The Arrow. Shortly after that, however, she took a job with the local branch of the Works Progress Administration (“WPA”) as a supervisor of “women’s projects.” After a series of rapid promotions, she was named the State Director in 1935. Eventually she was transferred to WPA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she was named Administrative Officer.
When the WPA folded in 1942, she joined another federal agency and it was there she met and married Paul Griffin, another federal employee, in 1944. In 1951 they both joined the staff of the Pacific Trust.
Territories, administered by the Department of the Interior. Paul was the Comptroller, Mildred was named Assistant Attorney General.(3) They were based in Guam until Paul’s health began to decline rapidly, and they resigned in 1954 to return to the mainland. Paul died in his hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina in 1955. That same year, Mildred was admitted to the bar of South Carolina and began practicing in Beaufort; she also became CEO of a start-up mortgage company. She retired in 1964 and passed away in 1981.
Last November, a friend who knows of my obsession with Pi Phi history in general and my chapter in particular alerted me to a Pi Phi badge that was for sale on eBay. It was engraved with the words “MichAlph” on the back. Clearly a reference to my chapter (Michigan Alpha), I checked it out. The back of the arrow was engraved with more than the chapter – it bore the name Mildred Thrasher.
The 1933 article in The Arrow closes with these words:
I believe very firmly that every woman who practices law intelligently and conscientiously helps to raise the standard and makes it that much easier for her successors. For there is no other profession or occupation which has been considered so securely a ‘man’s stronghold’ in the past. I hope that in some not far distant future, the practice of law by women may become so general that men will no longer regard us as curiosities.
Mildred was the first Michigan Alpha Pi Phi to practice law intelligently and conscientiously. Because of that, my path was a little easier. Of course I bought her badge. Of course I wear it. It is no longer just a symbol of membership in our beloved sisterhood; it is my tribute to the courage, leadership and nobility of a sister who dared to follow her dreams.
