by Todd C. Peppers[1]

Introduction

            In May of 1962, the small chapel at the Blanchard Funeral Home in Natchitoches, Louisiana was filled for the funeral of Lyria Dickason. Assembled in the chapel were prominent members of Louisiana’s legal community, including all the justices of the Louisiana Supreme Court. Many of the mourners would gather again in October, when the high court’s traditional memorial service for deceased members of the bar featured a special celebration of Lyria’s life and professional career. She was the first female attorney in Louisiana to receive this honor.

            Who was Lyria Dickason, and why did she receive these tributes? Lyria was one of a small handful of women who graduated from a Louisiana law school in the 1930’s. Despite the employment barriers facing female attorneys, she went on to become one of the first female law clerks in both the federal and state judiciary. To date, Lyria’s story has not been told. I have recently discovered, however, that Lyria’s children and grandchildren preserved her letters to her family. They are a treasure trove of information about a woman whose career took her from rural Louisiana to Louisiana’s highest court as well as the post-war ruins of Nazi Germany. The letters provide a rare glimpse into long-past moments in history, including the career of a woman who worked to establish herself in the male-dominated legal profession.  And the correspondence introduces us to a woman whose humor, sense of adventure, and love of family are evident on every page. 

The Rise of a Legal Pioneer

            Marie Lyria Dickason (she went by “Lyria” professionally and “Lily” to her family) was born on February 28, 1900, in Natchitoches, Louisiana to Frank and Blanche Goddard Dickason. Lyria was the second daughter born to Frank and Blanche. Her older sister, Frankie Mae, died in 1898 of diphtheria at two years of age. After Frankie Mae’s death, Frank and Blanche moved from Beaumont, Texas to Shreveport, Louisiana. Lyria was named after the town “Elyira” in her father’s home state of Ohio. Lyria Brannon Bartlett, one of Lyria Dickason’s granddaughters, humorously speculated that Frank selected the name of a northern town to irritate his southern in-laws.[2]

            Frank Dickason was a one-time college music professor whose subsequent career included stints as a piano tuner and music teacher as well as the inventor of an endless stream of products, from keyless locks and home security systems to mechanical street sweepers and “invisible stairs” (the patent was purchased by Sears Roebuck).[3] The Dickason’s driveway featured a large turn table designed by Frank, which allowed him to rotate cars that lacked a reverse gear. Despite Frank’s ingenuity and multiple patents, financial gain was elusive. “This is where he says he made his greatest mistake,” observed a newspaper reporter. “He has never tried to place any of his inventions on the market.”[4]

            Lyria was raised in a household that expected much of her. She learned the violin at an early age and could both read and write in French. Throughout adulthood, Lyria’s mother would only correspond in French with her. Lyria had a natural affinity for languages and music, and in her fifties, she took Spanish classes (which she described as great fun) and guitar lessons.

            Lyria Brannon Bartlett stated that her great-grandparents were strict disciplinarians who would not let their daughter engage in typical teenager activities, like sleepovers.  This did not mean, however, that Lyria was not allowed to participate in respectable social activities. Lyria took dance lessons, and her talents earned high praise from her hometown newspaper. In one article, the Shreveport Times gushed that ten-year-old Lyria, dressed as a golden fairy at a masked ball, stole the hearts of the audience with a dance performed “with a charming grace and sweetness.”[5]  A month later, Lyria appeared as the “Dainty Little Ingenue” at another local recital.[6]  And the local newspapers dutifully reported on Lyria’s other activities, from violin solos at community concerts and social outings (Lyria was escorted to one event by “Mr. Peachy Gilmer”[7]) to out-of-state travels with her parents. 

            After high school, Lyria attended Louisiana State Normal College (now Northwestern State University) in Natchitoches before transferring in 1917 to Trinity College in Washington, D.C. to study French and Music. At the time, Trinity College was an exclusive women’s college which had strict rules about conduct in its dormitories as well as a prohibition against married students. The nuns who enforced these rules brooked no nonsense, as Lyria would soon discover.

             On Saturday, February 7, 1920, a Trinity College staff member named Sister Mary became alarmed when she discovered that Lyria had left campus without first signing out with the dean’s office. Even more distressing were reports that several phone calls had been made (“seemingly from a young man”) to the dorm, but Lyria was nowhere to be found. Trouble was in the air.  

            Sister Mary sprang into action. At 3:00 p.m. that Saturday, Sister Mary checked Lyria’s dorm room. The good sister returned to the room on Sunday at 5:00 a.m. Administrative hearing notes recorded that Sister Mary “found the room the same, unchanged in order, and giving no evidence whatsoever of her [Lyria] having been there.”[8] Moreover, Sister Mary’s informant network reported that on Saturday night Lyria had been spotted at the Willard Hotel and, worse yet, later at a tea dance. The game was afoot.

            Around 6:00 a.m., Sister Mary stealthily stationed herself near a veranda door used by students to reenter the dorms. Lyria, however, was one step ahead of Sister Mary, and used another entrance to “clandestinely” return to campus and slip into early morning mass. Unfortunately, there was a flaw in Lyria’s plan: she attended mass in the same notorious plaid dress that she was spotted wearing the previous night at the dance – a critical piece of evidence breathlessly reported to Sister Mary by an eagle-eyed student named Josephine O’Toole.

            An administrative hearing was immediately called into session. Under the heading “General Reputation of Miss Dickason,” the hearing notes reported that Lyria was “suspected of having carried on this clandestine going out and coming in since Freshman year” and had “reached the end of her tether” (one knows that trouble is brewing when the proverbial end-of-the-tether is reached). As for Miss Dickason’s testimony before the administrative officers, they unanimously concluded that her excuses “were of such little value, and were so often contradictory, that she gained little favor of the Board.” The final outrage, however, was summarized in a single, damning sentence: “There was ample proof that she [Lyria] had been married during the Christmas holidays.”  The board voted unanimously to publicly expel Lyria. Of their decision, it was recorded that “prudence was suggested, lest she escape in a manner not desired.”[9]

            Astonishingly, the Washington Herald reported on Lyria’s romantic adventures and academic travails. “Had the couple not stayed at Wardman Park Inn until after midnight Saturday she [Lyria] probably still would be a Trinity student and a ‘secret’ bride,” observed the Herald. Instead, Lyria had returned to her dorm, faced “a ‘seminary third degree,’” and “was expelled and her husband summoned to ‘take her home.’” “Miss Lyria Dickason, or rather Mrs. Edmund Welch, has settled down to the enjoyment of marital happiness instead of the nerve-wracking ‘double life’ she and her husband have been leading since Christmas.”[10]  One comes away from reading the article with three thoughts: (1) it was a slow news day, (2) either Lyria or Edmund had a friend at the Herald who helped temper the scandal; and (3) the anonymous reporter believed that a woman’s happiness flowed from a marriage certificate and not a four-year college degree. 

            Not to be outdone, Lyria’s hometown newspaper also ran an article on the nuptials. “Cupid has interrupted [Lyria’s]…course of higher education, and now Mrs. Welch will study housekeeping in an apartment in Seaton,” noted the Shreveport Journal. The newspaper added that the marriage announcement “came as a surprise to her friends at home.”[11] The impulsive marriage undoubtedly surprised Lyria’s parents as well.

            The news accounts contain few details about Lyria’s new husband. A native of Holyoke, Massachusetts, Edmund had served in the Army during World War I. While stationed in France, he suffered significant respiratory injuries after a mustard gas attack. Edmund’s studies at Georgetown Law School must have been interrupted by marriage because his obituary states that he graduated from Northwestern Law School. He spent his career working as an insurance claims adjuster.[12]

            By 1924, Edmund and Lyria had two children – William Jean (born in 1922) and Anne Lyria (born in 1924) – and were living with Lyria’s parents in Shreveport. Although the marriage was failing, Lyria was stunned when her husband lured their children away from her parents’ home, whisked them off to the train station, and took them to Boston. It is unclear whether a court subsequently awarded Edmund legal custody, but the children remained in his care. The fallout of the marital split and the loss of the children appear in a letter that Lyria’s mother, Blanche, wrote to her own mother, Victorine.

Poor Lyre, I hope that she is well attached to her determination to never try again to take up a life again with this monster. He did more to her than any human being could possibly endure, and there you have it, he breaks her heart and keeps her children far away from her. I received a picture - postcard - that she had made of her and the children together in one of these little archways - the children seem so sad, it kills me. Pray with me, Mom, that God will return her children.[13]

Lyria’s son, William, never returned to live with her, but daughter Anne Lyria moved back to New Orleans when she was sixteen years old. Oddly, although separated for years and divorced in April of 1939, the obituary of the man that Blanche Dickason called “this monster” claimed he was still married to Lyria when he died in 1941.[14]

            We do not know a lot about Lyria’s life in the years immediately following the loss of her children. By her mid-thirties, she was working as a secretary and bookkeeper. Around 1933, Lyria decided to make a dramatic career change and enroll in Loyola University’s College of Law. In Loyola University New Orleans College of Law: A History, author Marie Isabel Medina writes that the law school “offered works, including immigrants, a way into the legal profession through a part-time evening program.”[15] Classes were held every night of the work week, which meant that many students had to balance a full-time curriculum with their day jobs. In the early decades of the law school, applicants were not required to have a college degree – which meant that Lyria’s unfinished studies did not prevent her from enrolling.

            Although the law school opened its doors to female applicants in 1915, it was not until 1918 that its first female student enrolled. Medina writes that the number of women remained low at the law school for decades, and that the first female faculty member was not hired until the late 1950’s. When Lyria graduated from Loyola College of Law in 1936, she was the only woman in a law school class of 18 students.[16] Later that summer she became a member of the Louisiana Bar, an accomplishment sufficiently noteworthy to merit a brief story in the Shreveport Journal accompanied by a picture of Lyria with Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles A. O’Niell.[17]    

            Lyria never discussed with granddaughters the prejudices, if any, that she faced in law school and the job market. Despite the prevailing gender discrimination of the day, Lyria was elected vice-president of her law school class, suggesting the respect afforded by her male classmates. As for why Lyria attended law school, her granddaughters believe that the “kidnapping” of her children motivated her to go to law school so she could understand and protect her legal rights.

            After graduation, Lyria worked briefly as a secretary for Louisiana Attorney General Gaston L. Porterie before she was asked by Louisiana State University Law School Dean Paul M. Hebert to help him establish the school’s law review. Hebert was dean of the Loyola Law School when Dickason attended, and they had become  good friends. Dickason was officially hired as the law review’s secretary. When Porterie was appointed to the federal district court bench in 1939, Lyria became his secretary.[18] Federal district court judges were not appropriated funds to hire law clerks until 1940, which explains why news accounts reported that Lyria was hired as a secretary. Given her law degree and native intelligence, I believe that she must have served more as a law clerk than an administrative assistant.[19] No details survive regarding Lyria’s time with Judge Porterie, but she later described the Judge as “one of my favorite people and…such good company”[20] and she became close friends with the entire Porterie family.

            In the summer of 1943, Lyria enlisted in the United States Navy. She was commissioned at the rank of lieutenant and spent the war doing legal work in the Navy’s Bureau of Supplies and Accounts in Washington, DC.  Lyria Brannon Bartlett stated that her grandmother wanted to travel the world and was deeply disappointed by her state-side assignment. However, Lyria herself admitted that the post eventually grew on her.

For so long after I was put in this job I felt I wasn’t doing much good. It’s a peculiar office in that we only get questions on unsettled legal matters, so there’s something new every day. Finally I’ve begun to feel that I know something about it; until every day I’ve been given more and more responsibility, until sometimes I’m all weighed down.[21]

            It was also from her duty station in the nation’s capital that Lyria felt the shock of a president’s death.

Things are quiet in Washington just now, and everyone has been in mourning, in a sense, since the President [FDR] died. Everything was closed here for an entire day; that was Saturday, when his body was brought to the White House for memorial services…[p]ersonally I feel anxious about Mr. Truman’s capabilities for filling the crushing job of being President just at this time, but I thought his speech yesterday was sincere and strong. Maybe everything will work out for the best.[22]

            Lyria remained in the reserves after the war, rising to rank of Lt. Commander and teaching classes to young naval recruits on military and international law as a member of the Naval Reserve Law Unit. Of her work as a law instructor, a colleague observed:

Because of her beauty, her charm, her sweetness, her gentleness, her humility, her kindness, her learning, her high intelligence, and her restraint it has been said, in that group [the Naval Reserve Law Unit], that she was the gem and in her lustre [sic], we were all merely the baguettes.[23]

            Lyria returned to Louisiana in the fall of 1946 and started her new law clerk position with Justice Amos Lee Ponder, Jr. She wrote her son Bill and daughter-in-law Irene that her first week was especially slow, with the Court not in session and Justice Ponder at home with a bout of malaria.[24]  Lyria was pleased with the new apartment that she had secured in the French Quarter (she noted that it was a mere five blocks from the Supreme Court), but she lamented the absence of family and friends. “There’s only one bad feature, and that’s eating alone and fixing food for myself,” she wrote. “I just can’t work up any interest. Am trying to have my main meal in the middle of the day, so that at night I can have something light and still be well nourished.”

          The slow pace of the clerkship quickly evaporated, however, and by the spring of 1947 Lyria found herself torn between work and family obligations. In response to her son’s invitation to attend his college graduation, she wrote:

I can’t tell yet what I’ll be able to do at that time. Judge is still hoping for a Federal appointment; and if he gets that, and if he takes me with him, I’ll have to see what the situation is in that new job. If he doesn’t get it, and stays here, I can’t say yet whether I could get away for a few days until I can tell what we’ll be doing at that period. If we’re writing opinions, I can’t leave; if he’s sitting on the bench during that week, it may be I could manage to be away. I’m sure I couldn’t stay for a full week.[25]

            What is clear from the letters is Justice Ponder depended on Lyria to help process the work of his chambers.  In a March 7, 1947, letter, she writes of working through illness because “it was one of those times when I just couldn’t be away from the office.” Two months later, Lyria apologizes for not writing sooner. “[W]ork here at the office has been plentiful and I couldn’t find a minute of freedom. We’re now writing opinions, and for this period the Judge is generally right here in the office with me.”[26]  Perhaps Judge Ponder recognized how hard Lyria was working. “My judge keeps reminding me of the nice, long, three-month vacation I’m to have this summer,” Dickason wrote. “I’ll hardly know how to behave.”

            In the summer of 1947, Lyria’s professional career took a dramatic turn when LSU Law School Dean Paul Hebert was tapped by President Harry Truman to serve as one of four judges at the Nuremberg Trials.  Hebert was given the responsibility of presiding over the trials of German industrialists who used slave labor in their factories,[27] and he asked Lyria to serve for six months as his legal assistant.

            In early July, Lyria started her twelve-day voyage across the Atlantic on the Army Transport Ship Edmund B. Alexander – an aging passenger liner which had once sailed the seas as the German liner Amerika. The ship now moved between America and Europe, transporting the servicemen and their families. In route to Bremerhaven, Germany, Lyria wrote her son and daughter-in-law about her new adventure. “[I]f there had been time, I’d have asked you what you thought of my undertaking such a journey in my dotage – practically!  Things simply happened too fast.”[28]  She added that Hebert was the former dean at Loyola Law School and “an old friend.”

I was very flattered when he asked me if I thought I could go with him, but at first believed it would be impossible because we still had opinions to write for the last term of court. Finally, when he found his departure had been postponed, and seemed anxious to have me, and when everyone told me it was the opportunity of a lifetime, I finally decided to make the  trip. It will be a privilege to work with him, because he’s brilliant and very capable.[29]

            Life was not pleasant aboard the forty-year-old boat, which had been converted into a troop transport and was “pretty rugged.” “There is no place to sit except hard benches on deck, and no place to write,” Lyria explained. “Alas, the ship is full of nothing but women and children, and I find the children practically crawling out of my hair,” she complained. “They scream and cry all the time.” Lyria was also surprised by the casual dress adopted by the female passengers. “Everyone wears slacks and cares not what she looks like.”

            The single female passengers were assigned to cabins fitted with enough bunk beds to accommodate ten inhabitants, Lyria was “rescued” by the Hebert family, however, and shared a stateroom with their oldest daughter.  And while much of the hardships were minor, real dangers existed – such as the fog and mine fields that the Alexander had to navigate through when crossing through the English Channel.

             Lyria sacrificed much in deciding to go to Germany, including pausing her plans to marry a widower named William Hammond Gordon. A native of Anniston, Alabama, Gordon was an attorney for the Department of the Navy.  “He’s very thoughtful, considerate, tall, slender, with hair and teeth, and is about 50 years old,” she wrote. “I’m inclined to think maybe I could be happy with him.” Her subsequent letters are filled with news of her on again/off again engagement with her “beau,” but Lyria was never “coaxed into the fatal step”[30] of matrimony.

            Lyria’s journey did not end when she walked down the Alexander’s gangplank.  After the American passengers exchanged their dollars for script (the currency accepted in the occupied zones), they boarded waiting trains for the trip from Bremerhaven to Nuremberg, Germany.

As her train moved slowly through a series of German towns, Dickason saw only destruction. “[A]ll of Germany seems to be nothing but rubble and bombed out buildings…the ruined are everywhere. No one can describe it, it must be seen. And it’s very depressing.” What fascinated Lyria, however, was that beauty could be found in the wreckage. “The most incongruous sight of all is to see people living in these bombed buildings, with some sort of make-shift roof of tin, and beautiful blooming flowers boxes in every window. They have flowers everywhere, and seem to have a knack of making them bloom.”[31]

             Once in Nuremberg, Lyria was housed in the Grand Hotel. Run by the United States Army, the furnishings of the hotel belied its name. “The rooms are furnished with army cots – or rather, hospital beds – which are quite comfortable, although high from the floor.; and some odds and ends of furniture left after the bombings.” The hotel was clean, the food was good, and the German waiters served the meals “with style.” Lyria had a practical reason for wanting to stay at the hotel throughout her duration in Germany. “It looks like a place which might have heat in the winter.”[32] Fellow guests included judicial officers involved in the trials and newspaper reporters.

             Former Nuremberg prosecutor Alvin Landis also stayed at the Grand Hotel. He recalled that the United States Army has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild the hotel so that Americans involved in the war trials could have lodging.  He had arrived at a Nuremberg in absolute ruins – “just piles and piles of bricks and burned out walls. Hundreds of Germans were still buried in those ruins, and dozens of remains were being hauled out of the debris each week.”[33] Undoubtedly Lyria faced the same shortages as those described by Landis:

We were short of office supplies—couldn’t find paper clips and staples, for example. During the entire year I was there I had milk once—it was rationed for German women with babies and small kids or Americans who’d brought their families over. But the ration for whiskey was a case a month, and you could get all the wine and beer you wanted … which led to some interesting pretrial conferences. [34]

             Landis added that there was one way that the Americans could get hard-to-find items – by trading cigarettes. “Cigarettes were the real currency at that time. With American cigarettes, you could get anything that you wanted, from food to anything else. One carton, for example, might get you merchandise priced at say, 500 or 600 marks.”

            Lyria’s letters do not contain much information on the trials themselves – perhaps she was instructed not to discuss the proceedings. She worked five days a week but was left to her own devices on the weekend. “People seem to use that time [the weekend] for tours, or trips to nearby places,” explained Lyria. “There certainly isn’t anything to do here -not a store to go into, and maybe one movie house showing either a German film or a very old American film.”  Lyria confessed that she wanted to travel “everywhere,” and she ended up cruising down the Rhine, taking a tour of Adolf Hitler’s chalet outside of Berchtesgaden, and visiting Paris and Prague.[35]

             Lyria remained in Germany for approximately ten months, returning to the United States in March 1948. Shortly after she arrived back in Louisiana, she gave an interview in which she discussed her observations of international affairs and post-war Germany. “The Germans dread the possibility of the Americans leaving because they feel the Russians would move right in,” she stated. What the ordinary German wanted was a war in which the Germans would join American forces and defeat Russia. She added, however, that the hopes and fears of a coming war were undercutting efforts to repair the shattered German cities. The sheer scope of the destruction, combined with the specter of a future war, left the German people with “not much incentive” to focus on the long-term needs of general society.[36]

           Lyria arrived back in Louisiana without a job but hoped that she might work as a law clerk for her former employer, federal district court judge Poterie. Unfortunately, Judge Poterie, convinced that Lyria was getting married and not returning, had hired a permanent law clerk (Lyria wryly observed that the Judge had “reproached me…for letting him become convinced of my intention to be married”[37]). Lyria secured employment as a short-term law clerk for Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Howard McCaleb. “I’m starting to work on the 1st of April, doing what I like to do, which is legal research and writing opinions.”[38] Lyria would subsequently take a second short-term clerkship with Justice Harold A. Moise before joining Chief Justice Fournet’s chambers in the fall of 1949.  Lyria would remain the Chief Justice’s law clerk until her death in 1962.

             Only a few months into her clerkship, Lyria wrote to her son and daughter-in-law and explained the challenges working for Chief Justice Fournet. “Was called back here [New Orleans] before the end of my vacation by Judge Fournet…to work on his applications for re-hearing – and since that hour, my little ones, I’ve hardly had time to take a bath. This man is really a slave driver of the highest order.”  She explained that the extra work was due to the unique duties of the chief justice (handling a variety of administrative matters) as well as her new employer’s work ethic. “[H]e is very particular, even meticulous, about having everything correct in his opinions.”[39]  She added that the only reason why she was able to write was due to the fact that the Judge was out of chambers. “I’ve escaped for a while from his eagle eye.” A month later, the heavy demands continued and Lyria almost worked on Christmas day.

            Lyria also used the Chief Justice’s work demands to continue to evade matrimony. After William Gordon’s visit during the 1950 Christmas holidays, Lyria wrote that he “was really in a marrying mood, and almost coaxed me into the fatal step!” Her escape hatch?  “I told him I just couldn’t leave Judge Fournet so soon after starting to work for him, but actually I guess I was thinking about how cold it is in Washington at this time of the year!”[40] Gordon must have finally realized that Lyria was unobtainable, and he married another woman on September 8, 1950.   

            However high the standards of Chief Justice Fournet, Lyria must have exceeded them because the Chief Justice referred to her as the “master perfectionist.”[41] In short remarks given a year after Lyria’s death, Fournet observed:  

In the few minutes allotted to me it is impossible to attempt to touch even lightly on Lyria’s many accomplishments and talents. In fact, it would be difficult to even tell you of her work in our court as a legal research assistant or portray her application there of her scholarly attainments, as well as of her excellence with which she carried out the duties assigned to her…every task was undertaken with diligence, and a never-ending desire for perfection. All of these admirable qualities, plus her unswerving loyalty, integrity, and devotion to duty made the thirteen years she worked with me most peasant and memorable.

            Fournet assured his audience that Lyria was more than a mere legal researcher and scrivener; she was a trusted colleague who drafted opinions and did not hesitate to make her opinion known. “I like to remember her seated at my desk, and defending in her exact and precise manner a position on a point of law with which I could not agree, her stand, although frequently pursued to the point of persistence, always buttressed by logic, sound reasoning, and pertinent authority.”

             Besides her formidable legal skills, Chief Justice Fournet explained that her fluency in French and Spanish was highly prized in his chambers.…Lyria had mastered both the French and Spanish languages. For this reason her services were particularly invaluable as a law clerk since most of our civil law is derived directly from the laws of those countries when they held domain over the territory of which our present state formed a part, and a great deal of research is often required in their legal works.[42]

             Lyria herself was proud of how her linguistic skills enhanced her work at the Court. In one letter, she spoke of two weeks spent on translating French legal code into English and another two weeks preparing the court opinion which rested on the translation.  “I’ve been working like a dog, and I’m beginning to feel like one – an old one, at that,” she wrote. “But I felt rewarded…because it [her translation] was used entirely as the law of the case.”[43]

             Whether it was language, music, or the law, it is evidence that Lyria remained a life-long learner.  In 1951 alone, Lyria enrolled herself in Spanish courses at a local educational institution (she found the night classes “loads of fun”[44]) as well as classes on International Law at the Naval War College and personal injury law at Tulane. The latter course involved lectures by medical authorities on the range of physical and mental injuries which occurred in such cases, lectures which left Lyria’s “head in a whirl.”[45]

             Throughout Lyria’s clerkship with Chief Justice Fournet, she worked with another legendary figure at the Court – Lillian Selcer.   A graduate of Loyola Law School, Selcer had worked at the Court since 1938. While she was officially Chief Justice Fournet’s secretary, Selcer helped with administrative functions at the Court and was an intimidating figure to some. “Lillian and I work together, and things are so much more pleasant than they were last year with that hell-cat…I actually enjoy the work – even though both Lillian and I feel we are fast slipping into our graves!!” It is unclear which secretary Lyria is referring to as “that hell-cat.”[46]

             While a female law clerk in a state supreme court was a rarity in other states, Louisiana’s justices were startlingly progressive in her hiring practices. Through Lyria’s tenure at the high court, most of the law clerks were women. They were a remarkable group of women who had attended Loyola and Tulane Law School in the late 1930’s and 1940’s before securing employment as law clerks. Some of these women – including Miriam Cooney Abbot, Courtney Schiro Faust, Marjorie Lynch Jackson, and Ruth Ballard Seemann – worked for decades at the Louisiana Supreme Court. Family members of these women describe them as a tight-knit group who got along at work and frequently socialized together.

             Despite the considerable hours spent at the Supreme Court, Lyria found the time to completely restore two historic homes in the French Quarter. Her granddaughter Lyria Brannon Bartlett recalled that Lyria dove into these projects and did much of the work herself. She added that Lyria adored being in the French Quarter and embraced all of New Orleans’ unique culture – from local opera productions to being a regular at a drag bar called “My-O-My.” 

            In April and May of 1962, Lyria was spending every weekend travelling by train between New Orleans and Shreveport to visit her ailing mother.  While Lyria typically attended the annual Louisiana Bar Association Conference in Biloxi, Mississippi, she was conflicted about leaving her mother and missing Mother’s Day. Friends convinced Lyria to come, and she ended up riding down to Biloxi with Lillian Selcer on May 9, 1962. After attending an opening cocktail party, Lyria decided to return to her hotel at approximately 9:15 p.m. – which required her to cross a busy highway. As she entered the crosswalk, she was struck by a car driven by a seventeen-year-old Biloxi High School student. The driver told the police that he had tried to avoid Lyria after she “darted” out in front of his car.  What the Dickason family remembers is that the young man was headed to a formal function, and, after he got out of the car, the distraught youth draped his white dinner jacket over Lyria’s prone body. 

            Lyria was taken to a local hospital. Her injuries were extensive, and Lyria died four hours after the accident, before her family could get to her side. The high school student was charged with manslaughter, but the charges were subsequently dismissed.[47] It was simply a terrible accident.

            Lyria’s funeral was held on May 12, 1962, in her mother’s hometown of Natchitoches.  Her granddaughter Lyria Brannon Bartlett remembers standing outside the church and thinking that she had never seen so many black Cadillacs in her life. The entire Louisiana Supreme Court attended the service and served as honorary pallbearers. 

            As the family planned the funeral, they were stunned when Lyria’s home church balked at performing a funeral mass because Lyria had not recently taken communion. Influential family friends quickly made some phone calls, and her funeral mass was concelebrated by a bishop and multiple priests. Of the funeral itself, Lyria Brannon Bartlett remembers that she was afraid that Chief Justice Fournet would break down during the service.  

            The men carrying the casket out of the funeral home on that warm Saturday afternoon included former Louisiana Attorney General Lessley Gardiner, Louisiana Supreme Court clerk of court V.J. Courville, and LSU Law School Dean Paul Hebert.[48] The Louisiana Supreme Court justices, as well as a number of lower state court judges, acted as honorary pallbearers. Lyria was laid to rest in the same small Catholic cemetery where her father and sister were interred.

Lyria’s family had little time to process the tragedy before facing another funeral. One week after Lyria’s death, her mother Blanche died in a Shreveport Hospital at age 92.[49] The family was relieved that Blanche had slipped into unconsciousness days earlier and did not know of her daughter’s death. The exhausted family again gathered in Natchitoches to say goodbye to the family matriarch.

Conclusion

            Lyria Dickason is but one example of a woman born in an era where professional and personal opportunities were limited. This is especially true of the legal profession, where women struggled to enroll in law schools and find employment in private firms.  Like Lyria, these women did not give up and proved themselves in clerkship positions across the country. It is their refusal to accept the status quo which resulted in doors being opened for subsequent generations of women.

            As for Lyria herself, the “master perfectionist,” we will give Chief Justice John Fournet the final word. As he observed at a 1963 meeting, “[h]er loss has created a void in our court that will never be filled.”[50]  And it likely has not.

Footnotes:

[1] Todd C. Peppers holds the Fowler Chair in Public Affairs at Roanoke College and is also a visiting professor of law at the Washington and Lee School of Law. He thanks  Lyria Dickason’s granddaughters Linden Welch Beck and Lyria Brannon Bartlett for sharing stories, letters, and photographs of their grandmother, Dr. Susan Stein for reading early drafts of this essay, and Georgia Chadwick for her invaluable research assistance.

[2] See generally Interview with Lyria Brannon Bartlett (Aug. 25, 2002) (Four female descendants of Lyria Dickason have the name Lyria, which can lead to confusion when mapping out the Dickason family tree).

[3] See Juanita Green, He Invents Many Things, But Never Markets Them, The Shreveport Times, Mar. 12, 1939 (listing inventions created by Frank Dickason, Lyria’s father).

[4] See Id.

[5] See Fancy Dress Masked Dance Given by the Athletic Association, The Shreveport Times, Feb. 13, 1910 (describing Lyria).

[6] See Grand Kerness, The Caucasian, Mar. 29, 1910 (detailing Lyria’s performance).

[7] See The Shreveport Times, Dec. 13, 1914.

[8] See Trinity Coll. Admin. Bd. Minutes, Vol. 2 (Dec. 8, 1915—Oct. 5, 1960). (Copy of these minutes courtesy of Professor Mary Hayes, archivist at Trinity Washington University).

[9]See Id.

[10] See College Wife Settles Down: Young Student Couple Take Apartment in Seaton Place, The Washington Herald, Feb. 17, 1920.

[11] See The Shreveport Journal, Feb. 17, 1920.

[12]  See Deaths: Edmund L. Welch, Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, Feb. 27, 1941 (describing Lyria’s husband, Edmund).

[13] Letter from Blanche Dickason to Victorine Julia Ducasse (June 29, 1928) (Victorine herself played a very small role in the history of the Louisiana Supreme Court as a defendant in a case challenging the authenticity of her late husband’s will); Ducasse’s Heirs v. Ducasse, 45 So. 565 (1908) (One of the countless challenges to the will revolved around Victorine’s status as a concubine or wife).

[14] Supra note 12 (noting that Edmund’s obituary listed Lyria as his wife, despite them being separated for years). 

[15] See Maria Isabel Medina, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law: A History 22 (Louisiana State University Press, 2016).

[16] See Loyola University Bulletin, July, 1936 (Vol. XVIII, No. 4) at 29 (It appears that Lyria switched to the day school program during her last year of studies).

[17] See The Shreveport Journal, July 24, 1936 (mentioning the local newspaper’s article about Lyria’s passage of the Louisiana Bar Exam).

[18] See Miss Lyria Dickason, Former Shreveporter, Gets Position, The Shreveport Journal, Mar. 6, 1939 (providing details about Lyria’s job as a secretary for Judge Poterie).

[19] See generally This is what J. Burton Willis is All About, Teche News, Aug. 3, 1972 (supporting the argument that Lyria’s title of “secretary” did not mean she wasn’t also a law clerk, as J. Burton Willis, a subsequent law clerk for Judge Poterie, listed his position as “law clerk and secretary”. Like Lyria, Willis was a Loyola College of Law graduate who clerked for Judge Poterie).

[20] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill Welch (Apr. 18, 1953).

[21] Letter from Lyria Dickason to daughter-in-law, Irene Welch (Apr. 17, 1945).

[22] Id.  

[23] Klein Eulogy.

[24] See Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (Oct. 2, 1946) (detailing her work as a law clerk to Justice Ponder).

[25] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (Mar. 7, 1947).

[26]Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (May 15, 1947).

[27] See Alberto L. Zuppi, Slave Labor in Nuremberg’s I.G. Farben Case: The Lonely Voice of Paul M. Herbert, 66 La. L. Rev. 495, 495—526 (2006) (explaining the role of Paul Herbert during the Nuremberg Trials); Paul M. Herbert: An Outstanding Louisianan, The Shreveport Journal, Feb. 17, 1977 (explaining the role of Paul Herbert during the Nuremberg Trials).

[28] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (July 14, 1947).

[29] Id.

[30] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (January 6, 1950).

[31] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Dick and Lyria Brannon (July 23, 1947).

[32] See Id. (having been opened in 1896, the Grand Hotel still exists today and is owned by the Marriott Corporation).

[33] Alan Waite, Alvin Landis: Prosecutor at Nuremberg, WWII History (June 2015), https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/alvin-landis-prosecutor-at-nuremberg/.

[34] Id.

[35] See Judges at Nuremberg are `VIPs’ – It’s Distinction: Lyria Dickason of Shreveport, Serving as Law Clerk to Justice Hebert, Describes Life in Germany, The Shreveport Times, Sept. 28, 1947 (quoting a Louisiana newspaper article about Lyria’s time in Germany during the Nuremberg Trials).

[36] These quotes come from a newspaper interview that Lyria gave to an unknown newspaper; her family saved a clipping of the article but there is no identifying information as to the newspaper. The story was published in March, 1948.

[37] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (Mar. 29, 1948).

[38] Id.

[39] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (Nov. 11, 1949).

[40] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (Jan. 6, 1950).

[41] John B. Fournet, Lyria Dickason – Master Perfectionist, Remarks at the Louisiana Landmarks Society (Nov. 6, 1963), in Personal Papers of John B. Fournet [hereinafter Fournet Remarks].

[42] Id.   

[43] See Letter from Lyria Dickson to Bill and Irene Welch (May 26, 1950) (discussing, in the letter, Fried v. Bradley (52 So.2d 247 (1950)).

[44] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (Apr. 18, 1951).

[45] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (Feb. 28, 1951).

[46] Letter from Lyria Dickason to Bill and Irene Welch (Nov. 11, 1949).

[47] See Dismisses Charge of Manslaughter Against Biloxian, The Sun Herald, May 17, 1962; See Auto Accident Fatal to Chief Justice’s Clerk, The Sun Herald, May 10, 1962 (providing details of the car accident that killed Lyria Dickason).

[48] See Mrs. Dickason Rites Today, New Orleans Item, May 12, 1962 (detailing notable legal professionals who attended Lyria’s funeral); See Mrs. Lyria Dickason, The Shreveport Journal, May 11, 1962 (giving details of Lyria’s funeral).

[49]See Mrs. Dickason Succumbs at 92, The Times-Picayune, May 19, 1962 (announcing the death of Lyria Dickason’s mother).

[50] See Fournet Remarks.