« Ind. Decisions - Plaintiffs in toll road suit must post $1.9 billion bond | Main | Ind. Decisions - List of Court of Appeals NFP opinions issued for week ending May 26, 2006 »

Friday, May 26, 2006

Ind. Law - Virginia Dill McCarty dies

Attorney Virginia Dill McCarty has died at age 81.

Here is the ILB entry on Ms. McCarty from Feb. 27, 2006:

The 2006 Indiana Superlawyers arrived in the mail last week, containing an article by Sally Flk Nancrede titled "The Pioneer: Virgiinia Dill McCarty has blazed trails for Indiana women all her life." Unfortunately, it is not available online; it should be.

Here are a few quotes:

When Plainfield native Virginia Dill McCarty was a freshman in high school in 1940, one of her classmates told her, "You like to argue so much, you ought to be a lawyer."

"It was like a lightbulb going off over my head," remembers McCarty, who then vowed to make it happen.

That was more than a half-century ago, and back then, women just didn't go to law school. But McCarty did. And in 1950 she graduated first in her class from Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis, cum laude, where she was elected to serve as Indianapolis editor of the Indiana Law Journal.

Women didn't work at law firms back then, either. Again, McCarty broke the mold -- eventually.

Among her many accomplishments, Ms. McCarty served as U.S. Attorney for four years, in the Carter administration. When I began working in state government in the mid-1960s, John Dillon was Attorney General and Virginia Dill McCarty was one of his deputies. Although she had been a lawyer for a number of years by then, there were still very few women attorneys in the 1960s, and she was a wonderful role model.

Today Ms. McCarty continues to practice law, at Landman & Beatty.

Here is a brief posting from the online Indianapolis Star site.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 26, 2006 03:16 PM
Posted to Indiana Law