transcript: jim sessions · web viewthere is no word that has anywhere near a comparison to such a...

TRANSCRIPT: ROSEMARIE ANNUNZIATA

Interviewee: Hon. Rosemarie Petitti Annunziata

Interviewer: Cassandra Newby-Alexander

Interview Date: November 18, 2015

Location: Richmond, VA

Length: 02:53:57

START OF INTERVIEW

[00:00:00]

Cassandra Newby-Alexander: Okay, so if you would just state your name, when

and where you were born, and a little bit of information about your parents, when and

where they were born.

Rosemarie Annunziata: My name is Rosemarie Annunziata, and I was born in

Newark, New Jersey. I’m the firstborn American in this family. My parents were from

Italy. They’re from an area that is called the Puglia, which is on the Adriatic side of the

country, and up until maybe the last ten years or so it was an area that most non-Italians,

and even some Italians, didn’t think was all that interesting, but it turns out to have been

quite interesting.

Among other things, the language I heard spoken in my home was a dialect that

was made up in part by French words, if you can believe it, because if you know–. This is

south; this is not in the northern part of the country where French is often found in

adjoining areas. This is south and in the mountains. The vocabulary was French but it

was pronounced as though it were Italian. For example, the best one I can give you is my

maiden name is Petitti. There is no word that has anywhere near a comparison to such a

Rosemarie Annunziata

root, “petite.” That is clearly French. But the Italians would never just leave a last letter

unpronounced, so they pronounced “petit” as “petite,” which then got spelled with a

double t and an i: P-e-t-i-t-t-i.

So, Olga and Nicholas Petitti were born in an isolated town in the mountains of

this region. They didn’t really know each other there. They met when they both came to

the United States much later. My mother was eighteen and she was the last of thirteen

children, and only one of three of whom her father thought ought to come to the United

States to help the family get established. She was the caretaker for two boys, the brothers.

My grandfather went back. My father was fifteen and his family, the whole family – four

boys, the parents – immigrated, I believe to Ohio first, or perhaps maybe it was Newark

and then my grandfather did some work in Ohio, worked on the railroad like a lot of

immigrants at the time, and then eventually went back to Newark.

My mother was in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She came from a family of artisans,

tailors, and this is more than just being able to sew. My grandfather and my uncles on

that side were basically fashion designers and their most important skill was making

suits. Suits are really hard to make, especially for men. So she came from a tailoring,

artisan family in this small village. This is not in a large city; this is still a village.

My father’s family were basically shepherds – they had a lot of land so they had

goats and sheep – and they came here, and I heard–.

CNA: What prompted them to come?

RPA: I think it was economic, certainly. They had others who had been here. You

know, we’re talking probably the mid-30s. But it was mostly economic, and so their early

life had to do with economic stability, of course. My father and his next brother in age

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became interns in a factory where they learned the skills. It was a machine factory and

they made little steel parts. They worked with steel and lots of oil, machine parts, and in a

couple of years they had learned enough of how to do it that they could start a factory of

their own. This is what actually stabilized the family. There were the four brothers and

their families and the families that were engendered after.

I come from a family of four siblings. I’m one of four; I’m the oldest. All of us

[00:05:04]

were college-educated; at least three of us went beyond college. Of course I went to law

school late. My middle sister, Amy, has a PhD in economics and the third daughter has a

graduate degree, but not quite a doctorate, in education, and they worked in their fields

for quite a while. My brother is educated as an engineer but then proceeded to work on

Wall Street; indeed was one of the escapees from one of the towers at the World Trade

Center on 9-11. There’s lots of little points to talk about. But he’s now retired.

Everyone’s retired but I. I’m only semi-retired. [Laughs] So, that brings you sort of close

to where you may want to be at this point in terms of my family.

CNA: Well, actually I want to go back a little bit–

RPA: Please.

CNA: –and ask how your parents met and where they met.

RPA: They met in Bridgeport, as I recall the story, and it was just a question of

the families, not putting them together – this was not a marriage that the families oriented

or managed, if you will – but it was just a question of Italian-Americans getting together

in places where other Italian-Americans were, probably other family members. By 1939

they had known each other well enough that they married and I was born in 1940.

3


CNA: So where did they settle?

RPA: They settled in Newark, New Jersey. My father, he went to high school

there, he got the equivalent of a GED at the time. I don’t know what they called that. But

where he was working to learn his skills was in the Newark area. Newark had an

industrial side that people probably think still – that the industrial side that now people

are familiar with was in Newark of the ’30s and ’40s, and ’50s, even. It’s not so. It was a

beautiful city, absolutely gorgeous, so there are wonderful, interesting residential areas. I

grew up in a neighborhood in Newark that was not ghettoized in the real sense of the

term because it was very, very mixed. It wasn’t just a whole bunch of Italian-Americans.

But there were plenty of Italian-Americans all around the city and in the adjoining states

so that there was a lot of interchange and that’s how they met. My mother’s family was in

Bridgeport, the three–. Yeah, I think it was three brothers and – no, two brothers, and she.

Yeah, that’s where it was. I’m thinking back now: did I miss a brother in there?

So, they got back and forth and they married and stayed in Newark until I was

five, and by that time my father had found a property in an adjoining suburb in town,

which was also an interesting place to grow up at the time, and they built this factory, or

they took [it over.] I don’t know if they built it, because I don’t know about what

happened at that point. I was five. So, we went to Irvington, a town of about sixty

thousand people adjoining Newark, in the ’45-46 timeframe, and I stayed there until I

went to college. Of course my parents stayed there for a long time.

So, I grew up in Irvington, a town of sixty thousand people of great diversity. I

always said that. The only group that really wasn’t well-represented in Irvington was the

black community. We had one Chinese family and we had every one of probably every

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other let’s say religious background and ethnic background. So I grew up with a very

large, diverse group.

CNA: So tell me a little bit about growing up in Irvington. You were, you said,

about five years old–

RPA: I was five.

CNA: –when your family moved there. Do you remember going to elementary

school?

RPA: I do. I have quite [Laughs] a few of that one because it was a really

important event. Maybe I was closer to six, but the event was that–. I think my mother

took me to kindergarten when I started kindergarten in Newark, but what I remember

about being in Irvington, [she] must have shown me where the school was, but I

remember walking to school on the first day of school, by myself. Well, in those days

children were allowed [Laughs] to go places reasonably by themselves, and that

continued throughout my early childhood, middle childhood, and teenage years. I could

get on a bus and go to New York if I wanted to. My mother didn’t know, but it was safe.

[00:10:14]

So, I started walking down the street to find the grammar school, Chancellor

Avenue School, which was maybe two and a half, three blocks away, and you had to

cross a major street. In other words, there were buses running on one street but most of it

was residential. I was beginning to feel really uneasy when I got to one of the corners

because I didn’t recognize really whether this was the correct route, and I’m looking

around. I remember there was a lilac bush on my right, that wasn’t in bloom but I saw it

bloom many times after, and all of a sudden I heard somebody behind me say, “Are you

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going to school?” and I turned around and it was a child of my age, basically, walking

with another, and I said, “Yeah, I’m going.” She said, “Would you like to walk with us?”

and of course I said yes, and that was my introduction to Irvington, very welcoming and

very supportive.

CNA: When you went to elementary school, did you have a favorite subject?

RPA: I think it probably was reading. I remember the first reaction I had in the

first grade, because I don’t think I could read before the first grade. I’m not sure. I don’t

think so. But when I recognized that J-i-l-l was the word “Jill” for the first time, it was

such an enlightenment. It was so interesting. I don’t remember–. No, I’m sure I didn’t,

because I don’t think I would have had that reaction. I think those were different times.

Now also my parents were not English-speaking people. They came here rather

young with only Italian in their background. My mother didn’t go beyond the eighth

grade and my father not much more. So, I heard Italian spoken in the home but I was not

allowed to speak Italian. We were only allowed to speak English, which worked out fine,

and, I think related to the reading issue, I remember spelling as a favorite topic. My

mother would spend, I don’t know how long but it was frequent times, drilling me on

spelling. [Laughs] So, that’s what I remember. I think it was very word-oriented in terms

of my interest. As time went on I apparently also liked math a lot because when I finally

finished high school, other than my interest in languages generally, I thought I was going

to be a physics major in college. That’s a story for another time.

So, I came from a family of immigrants, a family that did not speak English but

who were making their own way through the culture. I’m particularly proud of my

mother because she was at home, she wasn’t necessarily out in the community, but she

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never shrunk from joining whatever there was to join. She rolled bandages at the hospital,

at Irvington General Hospital. She agreed to be a Brownie leader and a Girl Scout leader,

and this is with language that was limited. Of course she was a very smart woman so it

didn’t matter if she couldn’t speak the language well and, over time, of course we always

had English newspapers coming in the house, and I know we had books, but compared to

the way my children were exposed to reading and books, and my grandchildren, I feel

like it was somewhat limited. A lot of fairy tales is what I do remember, my mother

telling me them.

CNA: Did you have a favorite fairy tale?

RPA: “Cinderella,” [Laughs] of course.

CNA: Why was that your favorite?

RPA: Well, I guess it’s about moving from a status that was not terribly prized or

wonderful to something really glorious, and perhaps it paralleled where I was with my

family. I think we started rather poor. I don’t mean dirt poor by any means, and we

always had enough food, my father always worked; I mean there wasn’t that kind of

issue. But moving up from basically coming to this country with nothing and then

evolving into what happened because it was a business that put a lot of kids through

college, not just in my family, but [Laughs] probably still putting some kids through

[00:15:02]

college. You know, it was really amazing. But I also remember that, because my parents

were immigrants and not English-speaking – and I did not know the culture, I have to tell

you. Who is to translate the culture? Your parents translate the culture. So I was picking

it up somewhat piecemeal and I also was their mediator in the sense that I mediated from

7


the American culture to them, and I had to deal with the Italian culture that was coming at

me as well.

It was good: I grew up with opera in the house, and with art. My mother, having

an eighth-grade education, had some other education. I don’t know [from] where it

emanated, I don’t know how, but she had all these interests and I grew up learning the

piano from eight or nine years old on, seriously learning. I mean my mother thought if we

were going to play the piano we were supposed to have a serious teacher, and we did, so

serious that we had to practice two hours a day, my sister, Amy, and I, and we did, and

not only did we go learn to play, our teacher thought we needed to know about music

theory just in case we wanted to compose, you know, or really understand. So, Friday

nights were spent at the music school learning music theory, the days were spent

practicing piano two hours. I pretty much put in two hours. You know, you can cheat a

little bit, but I put in two hours because my teacher would not [Laughs] allow me to do

otherwise in the end.

Then we did some concerts and, you know, what kids do, they have recitals, and

in the Newark area there was a type of, I wouldn’t call it a competition, but all piano

students took part in a–. I don’t know what to call it, but you had to prepare music,

usually three pieces, and you had to play them in front of a skilled pianist, skilled

musician – there were many; you’re talking hundreds – and you were evaluated. You got

graded, and certain grades entitled you to certain plaques that everybody got at probably

the end of the school year. We all had this huge meeting, conclave, in one of the theaters

in Newark and we got called up to get our plaque for having reached a certain level, and I

did that for a long time.

8


CNA: Now, did your family own a piano?

RPA: Yes. That piano is still in the family. That piano went to my grandchild,

who lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Pianos were very important in the family,

even in my husband’s family. We have his piano in the house. It was a piano that he

bought with his money, the money that he earned, he says starting at nine years old,

which is probably true, selling ice cream in New Haven, Connecticut at the games, you

know, the college football games. So, he used it to buy a piano. He said he bought it for

his mother. [Laughs] He played the piano too. I thought that was really sweet. So we

have that piano in our home and we have an antique piano that my sister, Amy, who’s the

real pianist in the family, had used for a long time. When, as an adult, she decided – I

mean, after college, after master’s and doctorate degrees decided – to start piano again

she had this piano, and then decided she needed a really good one, and I took her antique

piano when she got the really good one. It’s in my house. We like pianos.

CNA: Now, the piano school, this was an afterschool program?

RPA: Yes.

CNA: And what was your favorite composer then?

RPA: Well, this would have to have been much later when I got to the point of

really understanding music. I think the first name that came into my head was [Debussy],

but I did a lot of work with Bach and Bach-like music, so much of the skill learning is

music that exercises the hands and teaches the correct position at the piano and all that

kind of thing. But Debussy and Chopin, I would say, were my favorites.

CNA: Why is that?

9


RPA: They’re very romantic; the musical lines, the melody lines, if you want to

call it melody, are absolutely beautiful. Bach, I think, relates to my interest in math, and

it’s structured. Still to this day I have an enormous interest in Bach. There’s a structure in

[00:20:10]

it that is not linear, of course. I don’t know who knows about Bach, but it’s complicated

and your brain–. Maybe it’s like learning a second language. Your brain has to be able to

juxtapose things that don’t necessarily mesh rhythmically or otherwise; very interesting

music, not easy.

CNA: Now, you indicated that your parents did not want you to speak Italian in

the home.

RPA: Yes.

CNA: So I would assume then that they were speaking Italian from time to time.

Does that mean that you understood what they were saying?

RPA: Yes. I understood the dialect. That’s why I think when I finally started

learning French I was doing so well in it, because I had already learned it in a sense.

Now, the pronunciation is quite different, but I could understand a lot of what I was

learning in the classroom. My parents spoke it not necessarily with each other, except

those times when they didn’t want us to follow what they were saying, but we spent

every Friday night, until I had to go to music school, [Laughs] some time on the weekend

with my grandparents, who were living in Newark still, and they all spoke Italian. So the

four of them would be in the kitchen and they’d all be speaking this dialect and the kids

would be somewhere else.

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Interestingly, when the cousins were all there, “somewhere else” – there were

only two places. One, we were watching the boxing matches, [Laughs] which was kind of

strange for children, but mostly we were in this little office that was to the far side of this

three-story building in Newark – where we had lived once – because we wanted to look

at the medical books that my uncle, Leonard, had left behind. That’s one of the four boys.

I didn’t tell you about the other boys. So, we would read these treatises on medicine, and

we were all young. I mean, thus we thought it was so fascinating. We liked learning

about medicine in there, or we were watching boxing, or we were listening to the Italian

and having cookies and stuff like that.

But the other boys, my father helped get that factory started and worked there till

he was sixty-five when, to his regret, he retired. He never stopped telling me how much

he hated retiring. The second boy, Vito, was part of that, so those two ran the factory. My

grandfather, their father, also was in there periodically, quite a bit actually when he was

young. But the next brother was sent to medical school with the funds that this family

was earning, making, in this factory, and the fourth brother was sent to engineering

school. So he’s an engineer, went to Newark College of Engineering, and that brother,

after he came home from World War II, joined the boys in the factory [as a] salesperson.

He was their face to the rest of the community, because my father’s English was pretty

good by then, my uncle, Vito’s, was very good by then, but John had grown up in the

culture because came–. He probably was–. Let’s see. My father was fifteen [and the

others were] thirteen, eleven, [and] nine. So, you see, he had grown up in the American

[culture] so he was the salesperson. He met with the vendors of steel or the purchasers of

the little things that they were making out of steel.

11


That’s what happened to that family there. I’m not sure how I got diverted to it.

But they spoke Italian, I did not speak Italian, and neither did anybody else who was of

that generation. We all spoke English, and my parents and I, and my siblings, spoke

English to each other.

CNA: Did your parents ever say why they didn’t want you to speak Italian?

RPA: Let’s see; maybe not expressly. I inferred it. I never questioned it. I think

we all accepted the unstated view that they were there to become American citizens,

which they were, I think even probably before I was born. I should get some of these

dates straight. But they were there to establish a family in the United States and they were

bringing up children to be basically American, but not without introducing Italian values

and vision and perspectives as well. There were clashes of culture from time to time, as

you can imagine, but they mostly had to do with social things. When it came to the

[00:25:04]

American emphasis on education, bigtime emphasis was their emphasis, and the work

ethic, and how you behave in community, the rules, the law, the adoption of what I call

the American ethic on all those issues, ethics and morality as well, there was no clash,

really, that I can remember. I think, if anywhere, it came in what happens to a woman, a

girl, in that home. I wanted to date early, from their perspective. [Laughs] From my

perspective it wasn’t early at all.

CNA: How old were you?

RPA: Well, I think probably around fifteen. I’m sure we had–. Well, we had

parties and things of that sort, but not dating, and I think around fifteen the real idea of

dating in the ’50s was a young man asks you out and you go out somewhere, right, and of

12


course when they were able to drive, I mean I guess it must have been–. No, I guess we

weren’t driving till eighteen. But anyhow, my father was particularly distressed, [Laughs]

and my mother was trying to keep the peace, so it was complicated but it went to things

like, “Well, you know you can’t wear nylons with a seam up the back. No, you can’t have

makeup,” that kind of thing. So, it was complicated, and I was trying to explain this to

them, why it was important.

There are a lot of things I could probably get into but I think the most interesting

one was, because I don’t think I ever really felt comfortable in the culture, I don’t think

I–. And I think to this day I feel that there were some things that I [was maybe aware of]

but not totally into growing up. I think there were big pieces of the culture I didn’t quite

get right away. But when I was in high school I felt very much uncomfortable because I

had to explain my parents, who didn’t speak English, at one point even had to explain

how we ate because we ate a different diet – once in a while that would come up – and I

had to explain the fact that they wouldn’t let me date. Everybody else was dating. You

know what I mean? I had all these things.

So, when I got to high school–. In grammar school it wasn’t so bad. I had a lot of

friends, including the little girl that asked me if I wanted to walk. I thought it was very

sensitive of her. She came to our fiftieth wedding anniversary this year. We held it in

June. Our anniversary is in December but we went to New Jersey to have a bigger party

with folks we know. She’s still in my life, in other words. She was in life throughout all

of that period.

But in high school I perceived that there was one avenue that might be open to me

to become one of “them” – [Laughs] right, whatever that meant – for girls, because

13


women, girls, didn’t have a lot of avenues to go to–. I don’t know whether it was a

leadership issue for me or just being defined as, “Yeah, she’s okay,” you know, [but that

avenue] was becoming a cheerleader. So that was my goal, at age fifteen, and there was a

whole route to that. You couldn’t even try out till you were sixteen – no, fifteen, end of

the year, all through the year of being fifteen, and at the end of the year the decision was

made. So I practiced cheerleading in my living room when I didn’t have to practice

piano. [Laughs]

CNA: So how did your parents feel about those choices that you were making?

RPA: They were puzzled, but, you know, there were some choices that I made

that were even harder for them to accept. On the cheerleading thing, I had to quit piano

because I couldn’t eventually go to the music school, as I call it, on Friday nights because

basketball in the spring of my sixteenth year was–. Basketball practice was on Friday

night. So, that was hard on my mother, but Amy kept playing the piano, [Laughs] so she

was okay. She kept the traditional alive. But there were other issues that were very hard

on them, but I think what I have to say about all of that, mostly to their credit, they never

prevented me. They never said no. They never locked me in my room and

[00:30:02]

said, “You’re not going to try out to be a cheerleader,” because I made it. I made it and I

was captain in senior year. I think I probably fudged it in the first year I was. I think I

continued with piano. It was in my senior year when I quit.

CNA: What made you want cheerleading more than music?

RPA: Music had nothing to do with my being in high school. That was personal.

Although, actually, that’s not exactly right. But the kind of music I was learning had less

14


to do with high school than being a cheerleader. I mean, nobody was defined in terms of

playing classical music in my high school in 1954. However, I did play the piano because

I was then picked to accompany kids who were singing in high school. So, you know,

that got to be quite an interesting entrée as well because it got me into yet a different

group. You know, singers, as always, they were really popular. They were in a different

category than just about everybody, other than the cheerleaders and the flag swingers and

the majorettes. This was the group.

CNA: So you were very interested in creating a social life for yourself in high

school.

RPA: Yes.

CNA: What was the name of the high school you attended?

RPA: Irvington High School.

CNA: And did you have any favorite subjects?

RPA: Well, I was very interested in languages. I studied Latin and French, and I

took all the math courses that were offered. I think that was – and English. I was writing

poetry by that time so I clearly had an interest in English. I can only answer that question

by what I did. I don’t remember being impassioned, saying, “Oh, God, I love this class in

calculus,” or something like that, but that’s what I studied, all of that, and on top of that I

was writing quite a bit. I still have some of that poetry because it was published in the

senior class magazine.

CNA: What was the focus of your poetry?

RPA: Oh, gosh.

CNA: In general.

15


RPA: Probably teenage, you know, [Laughs] issues, like, I don’t know, losses or

joys or, you know, the usual kinds of things. I’d have to look it up. They were very

imagistic. I mean they were–. I’m not sure the content was important to me as it was

more a way of putting words together again, because as I read a few of them now, even

the ones I wrote later, I don’t think they have as much meaning in terms of content. They

were a way of putting words together in a creative way. It would be like doing a painting,

so the two colors together might not make any difference to you or me, and the words

together may not make any difference to anybody who was reading it, but they were

published. That’s what I was interested in doing, basically.

CNA: So did you have any teachers who really framed your perspective, even

about poetry or any other subject?

RPA: Yes, I did, actually, other than the teacher in my first grade who taught me

how to read, who taught me about the word. You know, reading is so interesting because

it wasn’t that I was reading; it was [the] enlightenment that these characters had meaning,

[and] I didn’t need anyone to teach me after that. That’s what was so amazing. Well, the

teacher in high school, I think without question – I’m going through all the teachers in

my mind now – was my cheerleading coach, because she was an English major and a

phys. ed. major, and she studied every summer at Bread Loaf with Robert Frost and was

writing extensively, but she was my cheerleading coach as well. So, yeah; she gave me

probably the idea that an interesting life was more than one choice that one might make,

and that maybe combining things might be a way to go, but certainly the fact that she was

a writer probably meant something to me. I find that really phenomenal. Even to this day

I think I remember feeling, “Wow! This is really interesting,” because she was teaching

16


phys. ed. and she was my cheerleading coach [Laughs] and somehow, being a phys. ed.

teacher didn’t seem to go with the poetic part, and I thought that was just fascinating.

[00:35:01]

CNA: Do you remember her name?

RPA: Absolutely: Sunny Utterback.

CNA: Did she publish anything?

RPA: She did publish. I don’t know that I–. I’m not sure that it was published

widely. I don’t remember exactly where, but yes. I think the writing took the form

ultimately with what she did in a Christmas letter that she sent out every year, which was

highly poetic – I still have many of them – that she would communicate with her friends.

That’s really what I remember afterwards, with her writing skills.

CNA: Now, when did you decide that you wanted to go to college after high

school?

RPA: Oh, that was always in the mix. It was just a given. I think it goes back to

my mother, predominantly. My father found this all very unusual but he didn’t say no.

My mother said, “I think the kids should go to college,” or whatever she said, or, “They

should be in scouting,” or whatever she was saying. He just agreed with it. That was the

role that she had and he respected it. But it was just a given and probably my mother

talked about it. For one thing she had a niece who was still in Italy, and who is still in

Italy, in her eighties at this point, but she had a niece who had been educated and who

was a teacher in this village environment, this rural environment, and she always talked

about it as though it was the highest status one could have, period. Naturally, you

probably can guess, that’s what I was supposed to do. It had to do with becoming a

17


teacher, and of course you had to go to college to become a teacher. You see the nexus

there, I’m sure.

CNA: Did she ever directly talk with you about it, or just highlight this niece?

RPA: I know we had discussions about being a teacher, no question, and because

it just followed, [Laughs] well, if you’re going to be a teacher, you have to go to college.

It just was always part of the mix. There was never any question about it.

CNA: Was that something that you really felt passionate about or you just decided

to follow that course?

RPA: College or teaching?

CNA: Teaching.

RPA: I don’t know that I ever felt passionate about it. I don’t know what I felt

passionate about, actually. I wasn’t quite sure, except in high school I clearly wanted to

study in France. That, I was passionate about.

CNA: Why is that?

RPA: I don’t know. I have no idea. I really don’t. I was just called, not only to

study in France, I felt called to study in Paris, and maybe it was the kind of literature. I

can’t put my finger on it. Of course I wanted to perfect my knowledge of French, there’s

no question, and I think it follows in a way from that, that if you’re going to perfect

something you go where you can perfect it. If you want to perfect your abilities in, say,

engineering or tech stuff, maybe go to MIT or something else, but I wanted to perfect my

knowledge of French and so the epitome to me of where you’d do that was of course you

go to the Sorbonne, and that’s why I went to the college I chose.

CNA: But you were raised in an Italian family,–

18


RPA: Right.

CNA: –so–

RPA: It was Italian–. My father’s–

CNA: –tell me–.

RPA: –family–. I didn’t mean to step on–.

CNA: No, no. So tell me–.

RPA: Yeah, my father’s family from the thirteenth century is partly French. I

didn’t tell you that. Maybe you thought as much when I gave you the maiden name,

Petitti. There’s some French somewhere in that background. Yes, the family is,

culturally, significantly Italian, but I think the French culture is pervasive. If you’re

interested in art, music, you can’t get away from it too far, and I’m not sure why else, you

know, what could have been generating this interest, but I knew I wanted to be at the

Sorbonne, period.

CNA: And how long had you been learning French as a language?

RPA: I started in high school.

CNA: In high school.

RPA: We didn’t have grammar school French then. [Laughs]

CNA: And did you have a favorite French teacher, or was it the same person?

RPA: My French teachers really didn’t stand out in high school. You know, it was

so grammar-oriented. It wasn’t a really fascinating topic except, just like everything else

– like learning the spelling words, sitting at the kitchen table – I just liked words, so that

part was interesting. But it didn’t become really fascinating until college, certainly, in the

[00:40:02]

19


literature classes, and then again in France, where it was a big immersion into what

French is really all about, particularly literature and the culture, and then at Yale, because

I went on to start a doctorate degree in French literature and ended up with a master’s,

because I decided I couldn’t use the doctorate where I was headed, which was not

teaching.

CNA: Now, when you were in high school, tell me about the thoughts that you

had about which college you wanted to go to, or was there just simply one place you

wanted to go?

RPA: Well, there was one place. I had applied to several colleges but because

[Laughs] I wanted to go to Paris and study at the Sorbonne, that really came down to

pretty much one college. I may have missed one or two – this was in 1957, when I was

looking – but I don’t think so. There were colleges that had junior year abroad programs

in France but I had only found Elmira College had a program where they would be able

to get me into the Sorbonne, because most of the colleges had an arrangement where they

would find a place somewhere in the city, and have good professors or teachers teaching,

but I needed to see the whole thing. I mean, I needed to be there, and not only was I able

to get instruction, teaching, at the Sorbonne, there were other classes available to me

through my college, through the relationships that they had built up. I’m not sure–. It had

to do with one of the professors, I’m sure. But I also was able to go to the Louvre, for

example, and learn history of art there as well, so I was combining a lot of things. I was

studying sociology at the Sorbonne. That’s what I was doing. I wasn’t just there–. Ooh, I

should take that back. I don’t mean “just,” because I was also studying literature, but my

interests were quite wide for someone who’s trying to speak a different language, and

20


therefore I had to be in an academic environment where I could learn sociology. I thought

I was going to go into social work, I guess. I don’t know where I was going. So, that’s

why I went to Elmira. Now, I applied to other schools, because I had no assurance of

getting into that college, but I did.

CNA: How many years did you spend at the Sorbonne?

RPA: One, junior year.

CNA: And that made you want to do more, obviously.

RPA: Yes. [Laughs] I know you’re thinking about doing more in French. I wanted

to stay more at the Sorbonne. [Laughs] I wanted to stay longer there but I couldn’t. I had

to come back to get my degree, which was an interesting senior year, but I did come

back.

CNA: What was the reason you wanted to also major in sociology?

RPA: Well, I thought my exposure to that area of knowledge was enlightening. I

started it in college I’m sure, no question, and I think I may have started with a course in

anthropology, social anthropology and cultural anthropology and physical. I know I

didn’t take sociology my freshman year. I think I took an anthropology course, and it was

more than enlightening. I mean, I began to see things quite differently than I had to that

point in time.

CNA: Explain that.

RPA: Well, the whole theory of how societies form, groups form, societies form;

the physical evolution of humanity, of animals and humanity; all of that was so amazing

to me, and probably had some influence on shaking up some of my religious beliefs.

That’s what happens in college. It was very revolutionary. So at some point I do

21


remember thinking, well, I don’t think I want to be an anthropologist. I maybe do want

to, but that didn’t seem like a viable [Laughs] career to me, for some reason. So I

translated that into sociology, and indeed I was combining a lot of different areas of study

because Elmira had a way of a curriculum: they were very flexible, and we could put

together things if we could justify it.

So, I was putting together, probably by my sophomore year, sociology and

psychology because it put together all the things that I had become very interested in,

which is what affects human behavior. It’s either in groups, you know, socially, it’s

[00:45:03]

societies, how do they build them, or it’s personally. So I had ended up with this

incredible mosaic, I guess, with all the right credits, all enough credits, because I’d been

studying in France and picked up a lot just on French alone, of majors in

sociology/psychology and French, and on top of that I should add that I took a summer at

the state college in New Jersey, Montclair, and got enough credits to have an education

certificate, I guess, so I could teach, because I guess I thought I was going to have to

teach at some point. [Laughs] It sounds like I didn’t want to teach. I still teach. But, so I

did all of that.

CNA: Do you think that events transpiring in America at that time influenced

perhaps your interests in sociology, psychology, and the behavior of groups?

RPA: Probably, yes. I remember–. In college, you mean?

CNA: Mm-hmm.

CNA: Oh, absolutely in college. I remember being invited, as everyone in Elmira

College was invited, to march down the main street in Elmira, New York – a small,

22


beautiful, Victorian town in upstate New York, but fairly inward, quiet – march down the

main street in sympathy with the Woolworth sit-ins. So I remember I, and of course my

friends and others in Elmira College, were put to the test, so I thought, you know, I think

this is exactly what I want to do. I remember it so well because we had some rules that

we had to follow, which went something like this: You had to all be in white. That’s what

I remember. I think we were all dressed in white. We probably had white heels on,

because that’s the way you dressed then, and there’s not going to be any noise or talking.

We’re just going to march down the street. I guess we must have been clear why we were

there, and we all were worried that we were going to get kicked out of college, [Laughs]

every one of us.

So, we didn’t, and that idea of making change carried on a bit in a couple of ways.

First of all, when I got back from France I had already learned quite a bit from the French

on how you protest. I couldn’t do the protesting because I was there on a French

government scholarship but I could watch them, and it was interesting on what students

thought they could make changes and what non-students–. I mean, France is known for

its strikes and everything else and when they want change they make it, somehow. I think

the one that I thought was the most interesting was when they changed the–. I think they

changed the price of the school lunch. It was very little money, seems like it was a

quarter, and the French students thought it was outrageous. But, when we had a problem

with our president at Elmira in senior year, we all–. What did we do? We had a sit-in in

the gym, and it was a big one. I mean, a lot of students participated. The march down the

street in Elmira was small, probably not more than twenty people.

23


So, I learned all of that, and, yeah, I learned about law and rules and what happens

if you think you want to challenge it, and why should you do it, and how you should do

it, all of that. I learned, for example, that if you’re going to lose your French government

scholarship you don’t get out and march in the street with the French kids that you like. I

mean, you had to make choices on how you’re going to protest, I think. That’s what was

going on.

CNA: So by the time you got to your senior year what decisions did you make

about after?

RPA: Well, I think in my senior year for sure I wasn’t clear about what I was

going to do after, so I took the lifeline that my mother had suggested and I decided to

teach, because I needed some time to figure it out, and that’s what I did. I started teaching

in a program that was again on the frontier. French in the elementary schools, or any

[00:50:02]

language in the elementary schools, was almost unheard of, but I found a little town in

New Jersey that had the money to start the program. So, I was hired to teach French in

the elementary schools, third grade. That’s what I did.

CNA: What town?

RPA: Ramsey, New Jersey, and I lived close by, started commuting. It was about

a half an hour but it was like commuting from here to Washington in that I didn’t like

having to commute in the morning, so I found someone who had a room in her very

large, beautiful home, because her mother was living elsewhere, and she was working in

New York, and so I moved there and taught during the week and went home on the

weekends.

24


But in the meanwhile I was [thinking], “Well, I wonder if I should go on in

sociology or I wonder if I should go on in French?” or whatever, so that year I started

doing more work in a graduate level in sociology for two reasons. I was interested and,

secondly, I was curious about a school in New York City called the New School for

Social Research, which is renowned for a lot of things, mostly on social issues; really

fascinating professors, really high-level, interesting professors, and I wanted to see what

it would be like to go to school in New York City a bit. So, I did that, and learned

sociology – no, criminology. I took a class in criminology and social research in case I

went on in sociology.

CNA: What year was this?

RPA: 1963.

CNA: Now, what really attracted you to that school, because there were many

different schools in New York City, so what specifically about that school?

RPA: Its reputation and its location in Greenwich Village, and I just thought it

would be a different kind of environment than I had been ensconced in, other than Paris, I

guess, and they had a night division. I could drive in from Ramsey easily to New York,

park my car, and go to class. I’m not sure I even examined anything else. I don’t think

anyone else had quite that kind of accessibility at night in terms of what they were

offering. But at the same time, by the way, I applied to NYU in their School of Social

Work and I was accepted, and I applied to Yale in their French department and was

accepted in the doctoral program. That very year that’s what I was doing, because I

wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do so I thought, “Well, I’ll just keep up with this.

This sounds like a good idea to me,” so I went to Yale.

25


CNA: What made you decide to go to Yale?

RPA: How can you say no to Yale? [Laughs] How can you say no to Paris, you

know? You can see the thread already.

CNA: Right.

RPA: I was interested in French literature. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to pursue it;

I just didn’t think–. I wasn’t sure I wanted to teach in the elementary school. That I knew.

The kids are fun, I had a grand time, but you can’t discuss anything of any substance with

them in third grade. The other problem was the cost of going to the School of Social

Work, and the fact that I’d have to get probably an additional graduate degree to really do

anything significant in social work, that I thought, “Oh, gosh,” you know, “I’m not sure.”

Lots of people had talked to me about the fact that the jobs are really low-paying and I

was concerned about it, and I’m not sure I got a scholarship to go to NYU. I may have, I

don’t remember, but I did have a fellowship at Yale. So, those were the factors.

CNA: So you entered Yale, and what was the first year like for you?

RPA: Hard. [Laughs] It was interesting. Well, again, there are so many

interesting, enlightening things that happened every time I made a decision that I didn’t

expect, and I’m not putting this in any particular order but, gee; that was quite a year. Let

me talk about it academically. It was really rigorous, and I had already had quite a bit of

work. I could work with the language, thankfully, but, for example, I decided to take a

course in a French philosopher – I’m not sure it was because I wanted to; maybe I had to

or maybe it was the only thing offered when I was looking at it – by the name of Diderot,

D-i-d-e-r-o-t. Interesting guy, interesting philosopher, who’s written some very

[00:55:08]

26


interesting things, but in Yale if you’re going to take a course in anybody you had to read

the whole body of work. Now, M. Diderot wrote an encyclopedia, [Laughs] and we had

to read everything, so that’s the way it was. It was a very rigorous training and I did fine.

I’ll get back to that in a minute, but on top of that I met the man who was going to

be my husband. I didn’t know it, you know. We met before we even started class because

the professor who was the head of the department, and probably was, at that time,

nationally and internationally known as a professor of French and French literature, Henri

Peyre, thought it would be kind of fun to put together the comparative literature first-year

students and the French first-year students. We were all graduate students. So he put

together a little social gathering and I met Joe, and he was in comparative literature, and

we spoke French – he’s perfectly fluent in French – and we started, you know, dating,

mostly just practicing French and studying a lot. But we ended up then becoming

engaged, I guess at the end of that year, and married.

The other thing that happened that year that was pretty shocking, to put it mildly–.

You know, all this was going on and we had an assassination in the country. No. That

wasn’t that year. Hold on. Yes, we did. It was that year.

CNA: ’63.

RPA: Of course. I don’t know why I suddenly blanked on that. I guess I was

mixing it up with some other pretty startling things, but not that year. Yes, John F.

Kennedy. You know what I was mixing it up with? I was out of the country when he was

elected. That’s what’s sticking in my mind, and I can’t remember if I got to vote. Isn’t

that interesting?

27


But anyway, when I was there in graduate school–. It was November, wasn’t it, so

it had to be ’63, right, when we just got there, and Joe and I were studying. We went to

one of the beautiful parks in the New Haven area. I remember we were studying pretty

intensely and having these pretty interesting conversations about, I don’t know, poetry.

He might have brought a poem with him. I don’t remember. It was one of those things

that literature majors do. We were out for the afternoon, pretty much, just talking, and I

got back to my dormitory and I kind of bounced into the room. I was sharing it with

someone who was in epidemiology, very interesting woman. I’m bouncing in, thinking,

“Well, did you have a good day? I had a great day,” and she looked at me as though I had

lost my mind and left. She just left. She didn’t say anything. I said, “This is kind of

strange,” because we hadn’t heard. It was pretty shocking, very shocking.

The other thing I did while I was at Yale that has–. All these have some sort of

nexus. There are threads. But I always had dinner at the law school. I had no idea that I

wanted to be a lawyer, never did want to be a lawyer. It never occurred to me that I might

be a lawyer or want to be a lawyer. I’m a literature major, really, and the law, after all,

[Laughs] pretty dry. But I [usually had] dinner, sometimes lunch, at the law school

because it had the best dinner, and I met people studying to be lawyers and it looked

pretty okay but not as interesting as French literature. I never thought [about it] again

until much later.

CNA: So, what happened after your first year? You were set to continue on with

the PhD program.

RPA: Well, then I realized that I didn’t want to teach. Even at the college level I

didn’t want to teach.

28


CNA: Why is that?

RPA: I’m not sure. I don’t know. I think it felt as though it wouldn’t–. [Pauses]

Perhaps the better way to explain it, because I think it might be more accurate, is I have a

very wide span of interests, really wide, and I think I was having a hard time confining

myself both to French literature and to teaching but, you know, the teaching of any

subject, not just French literature, to me had the sense–. I must have felt confined in some

[01:00:03]

way, and I think all that I’ve done since supports that analysis, [Laughs] if I have to

analyze myself. I don’t think I’m very happy in a circumstance where I have to limit

myself to one or two things, and I think that had a big role in why I said, “No, I don’t

want to teach.” I guess I envisioned myself in a classroom day in and day out with this

one subject.

It probably would have been much more interesting, because I have friends who

teach, some who are just superb teachers, professors, really, at very high levels. Judith

Resnik at Yale, for example; you might run across her name. I mean what a life she has,

what a wonderful life, and interesting, and the interchange with her colleagues and with

the students. I mean, that would have filled in a lot of what I thought I needed, but I never

got that far because I was on a fellowship at Yale and there were only–. This is a class of

twenty-five people, right, in the class. I’m not sure they were all on fellowship but I knew

this: somebody was going to need that fellowship who really wanted to teach, and I

thought, “I just can’t do it. I can’t keep going because I don’t want to do that,” and that’s

what they wanted. They wanted us to be professors of French ultimately, I’m sure, and

that’s what most of them did, those who stuck it out.

29


So I left. I told them I didn’t want to continue. I knew that informally if you went

to the head of your department or whomever – I know it wasn’t Henri Peyre, it was

somebody in a secondary position – and asked if they would consider giving me a

master’s since I wanted to leave, that they probably would say yes. So I did, because I

was determined at least to have something, [Laughs] you know. So I did and he said,

“Yes, if you write a thesis,” so I wrote a thesis that probably would have been good for a

doctoral thesis. I wrote it anyway.

CNA: What was the topic?

RPA: It was a literary analysis of Stendhal’s novel, The Red and the Black. I don’t

think I have a copy of it. I wish I did. I wish I remembered what I did, what I said.

CNA: I’m sure Yale has a copy of it.

RPA: I don’t know. Maybe I should go find it.

CNA: They do.

RPA: So, I did it. I think it took me until, gosh, ’66, maybe. I don’t remember

when I finally finished it, because by that time I had married and Joe and I moved to

Alabama, Montgomery, right after the Selma march, so you can see this is all beginning

to tie up. We didn’t go because we wanted to go to Montgomery. We went because Joe

decided it might be interesting to do some work in a different forum than, say, a college.

He had looked at that too and he was working on finishing his doctorate degree. He has a

doctorate in French literature from the Sorbonne, but he wanted to finish the one in

comparative literature. So, something opened up at Air University where he could teach

some French but he could also do some analysis of the Vietnam War or whatever else

policy-related issues that they had. Air University is the graduate school for the Air

30


Force, so it was in Montgomery. He said, “I think we should go try that. It’s kind of

interesting. It’s a little different. It’s not taking a college position,” so we did.

CNA: So now, what year did you and Joe get married?

RPA: It was 1964 in December, just before Christmas, December 19.

CNA: And you finished up at least the coursework–

RPA: Yes.

CNA: –of your program–

RPA: That was completed.

CNA: –that year–

RPA: Yes.

CNA: –and then you all moved to Selma, you said, or Montgomery?

RPA: Well, actually first Joe was finishing up his coursework so I taught another

year in Greenwich, Connecticut, in their elementary school program, which was really

well-developed. They were way in the forefront, Greenwich and Ramsey and a few other

school systems in that area. So I taught in the elementary school and then we moved,

yeah.

CNA: Were you teaching French in the elementary?

RPA: Yes, I was teaching–. I had third, fifth, and sixth, I think, by that time,

because they had been teaching for a while. I think it was third, fifth, and sixth. It was

more than third.

CNA: And so you and Joe moved down to Alabama.

RPA: Montgomery.

CNA: Montgomery, Alabama, and what were you doing while he was teaching?

31


RPA: Well, I started by looking for a job [Laughs] because I wanted to–. You

know, we didn’t have children, we had just married, essentially, and I couldn’t find a

teaching job, which is so interesting because I was proficient in French, but I couldn’t

[01:05:02]

find one. So that put me at sort of the mercy of what might be available, but I thought,

“Well, how shall I present myself, since I have a degree in French literature and [there are

no] French teaching jobs?” and I remembered that – not that it was hard to remember – I

had always written for my school papers, journals, books, whatever. I had done a lot of

that, and I had also been a broadcaster on the Elmira College radio station. I had a music

program, a classical music program, which entailed introducing the piece of music that

the engineer would play. So I thought, “Well, let me go look at the newspaper and let me

go look at the radio station,” and, believe it or not, they both wanted to hire me, and I

went with the newspaper. I think I had more skills in writing than I did–. I didn’t know

how they were going to use me at the radio [station]. But also I could see by just walking

in the place that this was going to be interesting – [Laughs] how else can I put it – and it

was. It was really interesting.

This is a paper that was established before the Civil War, even, and by the Civil

War it was a really important newspaper in the South, and then, I didn’t know all of this

really, but this is a newspaper of tremendously interesting tradition. Among other things,

by the 1900s they were carrying on the fight against the Ku Klux Klan right there in

Montgomery. You could see there was something about the newsroom that was

fascinating. First of all – maybe this was true for all newspapers at the time – it was

mostly male, but there were at least three women in that newsroom. Two of them did the

32


women’s pages and one had a beat, right – this was in the ’60s – and there were three

people who were African-American. The paper had what we called then, or they called

then, the “black page;” so interesting to me, because this is a paper that, when I got there

in the ’60s, was pro-integration to the point that they were under bomb threat. Okay, so at

least the editorial page writers, who were–. I thought this is kind of curious: They have an

editorial policy in favor of integration, and they have a black page, and they have their

three black newspaper people – I think there were two or three, and I have to explain why

that is – you know, sitting there, writing things that had nothing to do with the

communities at all, and it turned out–. I mean, I went to the editor and said, “Why is this?

I don’t get it?” somewhat critically, and the point was that the African-Americans who

were the writers felt that if they integrated the paper there would be no longer any news

about the black community in Montgomery, and the paper accepted their view on it. That

was fine, and I think that was the right thing to do, because their papers were all about the

black community’s social life, all the weddings, all the clubs, all the churches, and it was

all in a couple pages’ worth, I think, as I remember, probably two.

So, it was an interesting experience for me. I had never, of course, been in the

South. I had never been in the South. I came down from the North, thinking the South

was pretty monolithic, I mean, [Laughs] they were all segregationists, and we were going

to have an interesting time because I knew where I was coming from, having marched in

Elmira and, you know, fought and talked and all that about integration. It turned out not

to be the case. It was not monolithic and it wasn’t just in the newspaper; it was in the

community at large. Although I started on the women’s pages with–. My boss was

33


Katharine Tyson, who was Helen Keller’s niece; interesting. I ended up with a beat and

my beat was education, which was interesting at the time, education in Montgomery.

CNA: Was that your choice?

RPA: No. Someone just gave it to me. If I’d stayed there longer it could have

been really fascinating but we left after almost three years. But the interesting thing about

it is we all had to write a feature story every single Sunday, so I really had to search

around, and it wasn’t that hard to find people of interest. I wrote about everybody.

[01:10:05]

Montgomery had people coming in all the time. There were two Air Force bases and

there were some other cultural things that people would come in for, and the minute they

were in town I would grab them and I’d interview them. But I guess my prize

interviewees were George Wallace and Lurleen. So, that was–.

CNA: You have to tell me about that.

RPA: Well, George Wallace was a real interesting character. I think even before I

interviewed him–. When my sisters came to visit us in Montgomery we were walking

around the capitol and this and that, just the three of us, and one of the capitol police

came up to us and said, “Would you like to meet the governor,” so naturally we said yes.

[Laughs] Why wouldn’t we? So he brings us in to meet George Wallace, and we sit

down, and we then listen, it must have been over an hour, just listening to what the

governor had to say about all kinds of things, about his governorship. I don’t think we

talked about the integration issue. I don’t think we challenged him. I think we were just

three nice, young ladies, properly brought up, just listening because he wanted to talk to

34


us, telling all about what his views were. I don’t think we talked about integration. It was

such a shock, to have had that happen, you know. I didn’t expect to be–.

CNA: So there were just three of you in the room with the governor?

RPA: Yeah. Well, [Laughs] there probably was a capitol policeman in there in

case we were going to do something awful.

CNA: And you never understood or knew why he chose the three of you?

RPA: No. I have no idea. It was totally arbitrary, I’m sure. Well, maybe not so

arbitrary. There must have been something behind that choice.

Well, then Lurleen was running for governor when I finally got to deal with these

kinds of issues and I wanted to interview her for my feature page. So I called up and I

did, and he was right there on her shoulder, you know, and she really was a lot more able

than people gave her credit for, but he was there to make sure that nothing unusual would

happen. I have the piece somewhere. I have a whole scrapbook of the feature stories that I

wrote.

CNA: How do you think this experience changed the way you thought about

things?

RPA: Well, you can’t make assumptions and draw conclusions about anything.

You’d better test it out. It was a surprise to me to meet people from the Deep South, to

learn some of their thinking was not as I had expected. Now, I didn’t think they were

monsters or evil people or anything like that, but I just expected that, by and large, we

were not going to agree, at least on the issue of integration. There were other problems.

There were problems having to do with religious biases, I, as a Catholic, and they rarely

saw Italian-Americans, really, and even the gender issue was bubbling itself up there

35


quite a bit. So I knew there were social issues that we probably would disagree on. What

I didn’t expect entirely, I didn’t expect the depth of bias that went beyond the African-

American community. I was completely unaware, I guess, for some reason, that the Klan

– because we did see some of this, of course – would run around with signs that said

probably something like–. Well, I don’t know if they said “kill,” but they said something

that–. You know, they’d have the n-word, then the next one was Jews, and then the next

one was Catholics. Now, I can tell you I knew the n-word was going to be there. I guess I

wasn’t too surprised about the Jews being there – I was a little surprised – but I didn’t

know how they felt about Catholics. That’s where I was in shock.

The other part was how strong people in the South felt about the issue. I mean,

they were pro-integration, and these were people who had to live there. I knew Joe and I

were going to leave at some point, our families were in the North, and I’m not sure we

would ever really fit in to the culture exactly, no matter how liberal some Southerners

were, and they were very strong and courageous people. They walked down the street

too. They walked over the bridge. It was all of that. Of course I understood that but I

didn’t see the depth of it in terms of people who weren’t necessarily walking across

bridges but who were just living there, you know; fascinating, fascinating, fascinating.

These curious, hard-to-understand–. These are people who really wanted to keep

[01:15:05]

African-Americans from drinking from their fountains, I could not get it, and yet they

would eat the food that African-Americans cooked. It was so unusual and curious to me. I

had grown up with African-Americans in my home even though Irvington didn’t have

them. My mother had help in the house, and they were from Newark and they were black,

36


I mean up until, I don’t know, forever. We’ve always had–. We’ve never had any

problem–. We had a lot of interchange in that capacity, and of course my biggest

exposure and the most treasured is the relationship that I’ve developed with people in the

African-American community, mostly through my work as a lawyer and a judge, and my

three-year, four-year, five-year stint as a gospel singer [Laughs] with a gospel group in

Northern Virginia. We’re so blessed to have the opportunity to really have a large group

of diverse people to relate with.

But anyway, I was not uncomfortable with eating food–. I couldn’t get where the

Southerners were coming from, but that’s just a cultural thing. I got that. But the fact that

they were willing to fight it out on their own ground and stay there, [take] the blows,

because it was a sacrifice, that was interesting to me and, as I said, it was not necessarily

folks like John Lewis who are going to walk across–. These were just regular old people

who were just there doing the right thing.

One last story and I’ll let this part go, because it can go on and on. Because the

New York performing arts people refused to come and give their concerts in

Montgomery to a segregated audience, there were no major New York concerts,

originating in New York, you know, whether it was a symphony or anything else, in

Montgomery for quite a while. So, someone had the idea – now this is all taking place in

two and a half years, right? That’s all. I’m there just two months after the Selma march.

Okay. Close to the time we were about ready to leave, so maybe two years into it,

someone in Montgomery thought: we need to get our concert series back. So, they put

together a committee of Montgomerians and me – by that time I guess I could be called

one [Laughs] – and they wanted [us] to get the concert series back, and we knew what we

37


had to do, and, believe it or not, I don’t remember exactly how we did this, but we did.

By the time we left in, it had to be 1967, by the time we came to Virginia in ’67 – I think

it was the summer because Joe had taken the job in the Pentagon and I remember where

we lived so it had to be ’67 – I, and African-Americans, and non-African-Americans,

went to the first integrated concert series in Montgomery, maybe ever. I didn’t stop to

look at the history but probably ever. Now, can you believe that? So–

CNA: And where was–?

RPA: –that’s what I learned. It was in their [concert hall], you know, wherever

they had them before. So I’m coming up to Virginia saying, well, it just is not so uniform,

and frankly, considering what happened after 1967 everywhere else in the country, I

thought that was pretty remarkable. Maybe not everybody liked that, the fact that they

had an integrated audience, but there were plenty of people who did, in Montgomery,

Alabama. So, I thought that was interesting, and I think about it a lot, and I know things–.

Well, I guess what it teaches you is: you can work for change and people of goodwill will

change, and it just takes a little time and a little effort and it can be done, and it will be

done. I still believe that. That’s probably why I went into the law, by the way.

CNA: And let’s kind of move in that direction. So, you and your husband moved

up to Northern Virginia.

RPA: Yes.

CNA: He’s working at the Pentagon, doing what?

RPA: Well, he’s still with the Air Force at that point. He was a civilian with the

Air Force, so he took a position as a civilian with the Air Force there as well, in the

Department of Defense, for the Secretary of the Air Force. Eventually he was more

38


associated with the Department of Defense than just the Air Force. You know, I wish I

had his bio to tell you because we were just looking at things like that. He did some

[01:20:00]

fascinating things in that position, including–. At that time, and maybe still, the

Department of Defense had desks that related to foreign countries. I remember when he

had the Italian desk and we got invited to the White House, when Jimmy Carter was the

president, because it was the Italian ambassador or president coming. It was so

fascinating because we got to meet President Carter and Rosalynn, his wife. There’s a

little story there. Shall I tell it?

CNA: Yes.

RPA: Well, I’m jumping over what I really wanted to talk about, but we get in the

receiving line, and it was black tie so I had a gown on that I had–. I’m not sure, maybe I

had purchased it for it, but it was sort of a plain gown. It had sort of tiers. It was beige. So

I thought, gee, this is the perfect gown for a gardenia, so I went out and bought a fresh

gardenia [Laughs] and I wore it, sort of, you know, here. It wasn’t low-cut but there, not

on my shoulder, in other words, because it didn’t take it on the shoulder. So, I come up to

meet President Carter, and I could tell immediately he could smell the gardenia but he

didn’t know what it was, [Laughs] because I could see by the fact that he had to look

down at the gardenia, you know. So, he looked down, and he looked up, and he looked

down. [Laughs] It was so amusing and fun, and he was smiling and I greeted him as one

should, after I had met Rosalynn, and we had a lovely night there. It was just remarkable

and, you know, it’s another one of those things that who would have ever foretold. Would

I have ever been able to say, “Well, maybe someday we’re going to be in the White

39


House meeting the president to honor the president of Italy,” I think it was the president,

“And I’m going to have a white gardenia on.” You know, those things don’t really

happen. They only happen in storybooks.

CNA: [Laughs] What made you choose a gardenia?

RPA: I think I like gardenias, I like the way they smell, and it seemed Southern to

me. I don’t know if it’s truly Southern; it just seemed Southern to me. I think magnolias

would have been [Laughs] a better choice, but I probably couldn’t get one. I do have a

magnolia in my yard though, so.

So, that was it. There was a Swedish desk that he also was posted to for a while.

He did a lot of writing for a newspaper that comes out, probably to this very day, on

issues, from the president down to whomever, you know, that the secretary had to know

about. So, he did the Swedish desk. He’s been everywhere in the world that was

interesting. He’s actually taken off from a – what do they call them? – a ship–. You

know, the planes go off from the–. [Laughs] It’s that kind of interesting thing.

So when he did that I did work in the community. That’s your question, I think,

what was I doing. I had three children, the first one born in ’68, the next one eighteen

months later, and then the next one four years later, because in the intervening time I had

come to some conclusions about what I should be doing eventually. But I worked in the

community. The first thing I did was join the League of Women–. Well, the kids were

small, so other than go to the library when Joe came home to work, I mean to work with

the kids, I thought I didn’t know very much about government, and I didn’t. You know

my background, I’ve just given it to you; I don’t think I had a single political course,

ever. I probably knew more about French government than American government,

40


because that’s what you learn. So, I joined the League of Women Voters to learn about

how things worked in government and in the community, and on top of that I did things

like head up committees for the bond issues. I think the first one was the schools, and I

think I had one for the court; just community stuff.

Before I even went to law school I was asked to sit on the Tenant-Landlord

Commission – this was the kind of thing I would do – and I ended up chairing the

Tenant-Landlord Commission. We put together their arbitration procedure for tenant-

landlord disputes. I was starting to work on some things that looked like the law. We put

an interjurisdictional committee together on legislation affecting tenant rights; that kind

of thing.

CNA: Your involvement in these kinds of groups, was this because of your

concern about social justice or was it simply being in the right place at the right time?

RPA: Both. For someone who really likes to plan a lot, [and doesn’t] like to leave

[01:25:03]

anything to the last minute – I like to know where I’m going, how I’m going – I have the

kind of history that is just peppered with things that I agreed to do that I never

envisioned, never planned. It goes back to the fact that I didn’t feel I had to limit myself

to anything, because I had this wide interest, so I was interested in anything that involved

human rights or civic rights or whatever, so when someone asked me to go on the

Tenant-Landlord Commission, I thought, “Well, why not? I don’t know a whole lot about

it but I’m sure there are things of interest there,” or the bond issue for the schools, or

learning about government. I had an opportunity that presented itself and I took it, and I

did that a lot.

41


CNA: And for how many years or months were you involved in this?

RPA: A long time on the Tenant-Landlord Commission. I’m not sure I quit when

I started law school or not. I started law school in 1975, so I probably stayed on till just

about that time. I stayed on as long as I could on a lot of things, but it turned out I

couldn’t do everything. I went to night division at Washington College of Law at

American.

CNA: What made you make that decision? What prompted that decision?

RPA: I wanted to retool, is the way I put it. I wanted to be able to go back to work

when my children were reasonably grown, and I didn’t know what I could be hired for, to

do, that I would want to do. I could continue–. Well, there were things I knew I had to get

advanced degrees in, one of which was I could have gone on in sociology or psychology

or both, or something like that, or I could put that into the–. I could do local government,

probably would have been hired somewhere even without getting an advanced degree. I

knew I wasn’t going to teach French. I was sure I wasn’t going to be a newspaperwoman

because I thought the job would be very hard to do with a family. I think that’s correct.

Besides, I would have wanted to have been on the Washington Post or, [Laughs] you

know. They weren’t going to hire me then, probably, so I thought that’s probably not

going to work out. So, I began thinking about–. I just did an analysis, that’s how I did it,

and I put down the things I was doing. I literally did. I said: “What are you doing? What

have you been doing? What do you think that means, that you like to write and you’re

working on change in [one way] or another?”

CNA: Was this something that you normally did?

RPA: No, never.

42


CNA: What prompted you to do it now?

RPA: I was–. What’s the word? I was sort of–. I had no choice. If I was going to

do something I had to make a decision that was practical but that had potential meaning. I

mean, it had to be practical. I had practical things to do. I didn’t want to do them,

apparently. So, the next step had to be practical. We had two children and we were going

to have a third, I think – I mean, I thought we would have a third – so I just couldn’t go

off, [Laughs] you know, on a lark somewhere. It was going to take money if I were going

to retool. So it had to have some practical aspect to it but it had to have meaning, and the

meaning part had to do with: Well, look at what you’ve been doing. What is it that might

– and I mean might – put it together? I never really was sure. The practical was, with

three kids, I need to have enough money [Laughs] to pay for someone to take care of

them, probably. And it was transferable. If we left Virginia I probably could–. I would

want to have something I could do somewhere else. That was the practical part, and that

came out to be the law.

CNA: Now, you said you went to the night school program, which usually takes a

little bit longer.

RPA: Right.

CNA: So did you stay in the night school program?

RPA: Yes. Well, yes, predominantly. I think the last year–. I went three years and

two summers, by the way, so it was a little shorter, but I believe I did start doing some

day division when my youngest, Christine, was in a days out program. Mother’s Day

Out: that’s what it was called then. Boy, that seems like eons away, Mother’s Day Out. I

43


could sneak away to Washington College of Law, which was well-located for what I had

to do with the kids and everything else.

[01:30:02]

The two summers, the first summer I took courses, I’m quite sure. I don’t

remember which ones, maybe constitutional law even. I don’t remember, but the second

summer I know where I was. I was at Lorton Reformatory for Men.

The Lorton Reformatory for Men was Washington, D.C.’s prison, and I started in

[year three]. That second semester of year three I was already in Lorton. It was my clinic

program, and the interesting thing about the program, among many other interesting

things, is that it had enough credits that I could graduate in three years and two summers,

if I took that second semester in Lorton. So I spent two semesters at Lorton, and talk

about being enlightened. I was again enlightened. I had a lot of sympathy for–. This is not

going to come out quite the way I mean it, but I was not afraid of criminals and, being a

sociologist and psychologist at heart, I had a certain amount of compassion, not

necessarily forgiveness but I could understand the mind. I was very interested in

rehabilitation of the criminal mind so I had all these ideas when I went to Lorton

Reformatory.

I was in with the inmates – [I don’t know what they called them then] – in

everything but–. It’s the first level of incarceration. I was in medium and maximum;

never got to the first one. The problem I had the most was with the medium, believe it or

not, because they were well-behaved enough that I think there was a lot of looking the

other way by prison personnel, and it was challenging at points. I’m not going to

necessarily go into all of that, but very challenging. I began formulating a view that there

44


was a lot of collaboration between prison[ers] and prison guards, not all of them, but that

there was some stuff going on that wasn’t healthy, I’ll put it that way.

But I defended my clients. I was there to help them avoid getting their good time

revoked. Good time meant you were really good in prison but you did something bad,

like, I don’t know, you had a drug or whatever, and before they could take away the good

time the prisoners were entitled to a due process hearing. By that time I had been

interested in a lot of due process stuff, you know, and–. [Pauses] I’m thinking–. Yeah,

no, that came later, but I was thinking that there was something I was doing even before I

became a lawyer in due process issues. So I represented them before usually a panel of

guards, and sometimes successfully and sometimes not, but I met with them in interesting

environments, some of which, as I said, were challenging. I learned to take it easy if I

was going to be searched. I was never strip-searched, however, but we were searched.

CNA: If you had–.

RPA: Not by the prisoners, [Laughs] by the guards. Sorry.

CNA: [Laughs]

RPA: I’d better make that clear for posterity. Who knows what they know about

any of this.

CNA: If you could perhaps describe in a phrase or a sentence what your primary

takeaway was in this kind of contact with prisoners, what would it be?

RPA: My primary sense of–. Well, I guess my first sense of it, the change that

was evoked in it, was I no longer thought, I no longer believed, that if I were to encounter

someone with a criminal mind, particularly someone who was intent on carrying out a

criminal act, I was not going to be able to reason them into behaving properly. That’s

45


what I came out with. The social worker in me changed. Now, it didn’t last forever, but I

thought it was a dosage of reality that was probably important, not because I was going to

go taking myself out into the depths of the criminal world, but something you need to

know about, particularly as a lawyer, and a judge, as it turned out.

[01:35:10]

The fact was that, when I graduated from law school, my first year as a lawyer I

decided to be a defense lawyer for criminals in Fairfax, although I had some even in the

federal court. I wasn’t afraid to do it but I did understand something about my personal

relationship with people who I might encounter who might wish to do me harm, or my

kids harm, or something. I really thought that was important. I’m not the kind of person

to hide from reality either, I mean, I’m not afraid of it, but I just had this sense that people

were able to be changed and rehabilitated, but not everybody. There is a small group. I

learned that some criminals don’t have a conscience. That’s where the rubber hit the road,

if I can use the vernacular. I think that group is a tough group. I still think to this day,

though, that I would work with them. I may or may not do this but there’s a program in

Fairfax; they need people, not usually judges. They love to have judges and not too many

go. In fact I think I only know one who did, maybe more than one. But they want people

to meet with juveniles, informally, just to talk to them. See, this kind of attracts me

because I think people can be rehabilitated and I think that’s where you start. I think you

start with the kids. So, it didn’t change me forever exactly in terms of how I conducted

myself, even in my law practice. It just gave me a new insight.

CNA: What year did you finish law school?

RPA: ’78.

46


CNA: And did you take your bar exam before you finished?

RPA: No. I spent that summer studying, without break, almost, and practically

memorized the whole–. We had these books you could study from that were examples of

prior exams, and I just memorized everything I could.

CNA: Was this the D.C. bar or the–

RPA: It was the Virginia bar.

CNA: –Virginia bar?

RPA: Mm-hmm.

CNA: So you envisioned your career as focused on Virginia.

RPA: I did.

CNA: Were you thinking Northern Virginia or just anywhere in Virginia?

RPA: Probably Northern Virginia, but I think if someone had asked me if I might

be interested in practicing somewhere else I might have said maybe, but we were, by

then, rooted in Northern Virginia. Joe was still working at the Pentagon. No, he was then

maybe with the Office of Management and Budget, I think, the executive branch by then.

We had the house; we had the three kids in school, certainly, now much older. What were

they then? Christine was one when I started law school, so she was then four and the

others were eight and nine.

CNA: Were you interested in joining a large law firm, a corporate law firm? What

were your interests by the time you got to your last year of law school?

RPA: It never occurred to me to join a corporate law firm. I didn’t think I was in a

position to do that, but I did think, while still in law school, that I would love to do

something for the Justice Department, mostly in tax. Who would have believed? I

47


thought, “Well, this could be fun. I could work at the IRS.” I liked the tax class I had, but

I had a lot of interests of that sort, like, I liked civil procedure. I liked the UCC. I mean, I

don’t know why, but I thought maybe I’d do something, but I couldn’t. My kids were

very young and we didn’t have the support that young families have now, when they’re

both working. So I thought, well, let me just write to the law firms here. They then were

small. I think the largest was maybe, I don’t know, fourteen, maybe twenty. But I just

wrote to everybody I knew. By then I had a lot of connections in the community, some of

whom were lawyers, but of course, in the tradition of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth

Bader Ginsburg, nobody would hire me. [Laughs] So, I was in good company.

CNA: Is that because you were a woman?

RPA: I don’t know. They should’ve hired me, I think, [Laughs] but they didn’t. I

have some of the letters of rejection. I’ve just been cleaning out a lot of stuff because I’m

changing from a fulltime, really fulltime, senior judge, over to something else. I started

[01:40:04]

looking, and there are some letters that I got from people that later became colleagues.

[Laughs]

But anyway, so I did what I thought was the most reasonable thing anyway. I

think I may have been happy I was not hired because I wasn’t sure how I was going to

handle the kids. So, I hung out my shingle. It got to be–. There were people who gave me

sort of ad hoc contract jobs in the meanwhile, people that I did know. I had some

interesting jobs involving one of those Mercedes cars that was a lemon, and I had another

one involving defamation, but just working on contract for people that I knew, lawyers

that I knew. But the more interesting thing that happened is, looking around Fairfax city,

48


either going to the library or just looking for people to perhaps give me some leads, I did

run into someone who helped me out, and that was the woman, attorney then, who had

been my adjunct professor in legal research and writing. I did very well in her class, and

she was looking for someone to help her with that lemon law vehicle thing. She said, “I

need someone to do some of the research and writing. Why don’t you come and help me

with that?” so I did. She’s fascinating. She’s mostly family law, great lawyer, absolutely

superb lawyer, and, research and writing, really knew how to do it.

So, we did. We were in the federal court. The attorney who represented the car

ended up being a colleague of mine later on the Fairfax bench, because he was with a big

firm, right. It was interesting. We lost. [Laughs] We did; we lost. But, I didn’t lose,

because she said, “You know, I have this office. I have a conference room that if you

want to meet clients in you’re welcome to do that, even use my secretary. You can have

the word processor, the telephone, the whatever, and periodically I can give you a client

that I feel like I’d rather have you do, or you can do whatever you want, and you don’t

have to pay me any rent, unless you earn some money. If you earn a fee you have to pay

me half,” and I said, “I think this is a great opportunity.” [Laughs] I said yes. See, this is

part of my saying yes. I said, “Sure, I think this is a great way to get started,” so I did, and

I had flexibility, I had support.

It was in a great office, all women – Carole Gailor, the secretary, and I, Marianne

Rose, I remember – and I would take a lot of court-appointed cases. I did a lot of pro

bono. The biggest case I had I earned not a fee, because it was a Title VII case, I had no

business taking it, but I told her I wouldn’t even charge her unless we won, which you

never do in a Title VII case.

49


CNA: Why is that?

RPA: [Laughs] Well, because it’s so much work, and it’s not like you’re getting a

contingency fee, really. But, I was new, and I wanted to help her out, and I thought I

would learn something, and I did, but it didn’t get too far. I did some interesting work,

though, a lot of pro bono, a lot of juvenile court work. In about two and a half years of

that kind of effort – and I was in court a fair amount – someone from a very-well-

recognized, not huge firm, because there was nothing huge in Northern Virginia then,

really, compared to today, called me up and said, “Would you be interested in talking to

us about joining the firm?” By then my kids were three years older and I had been

working for about three years, still not making enough money to support myself,

probably, so I did.

I met with them and they hired me and, there, being a woman probably helped.

Everyone at that time – and there were almost no women in the law firms. Certainly I

don’t know that there were any women who went to court. I think that’s what made

Barbara Keenan so interesting, because she, as a prosecutor, was in court a lot. I know

our paths crossed at some point. But most firms didn’t have a woman and this was a firm

that wanted to have a woman, and I had already quite a history behind me.

CNA: What firm was this?

RPA: Hall, Surovell, Jackson, and Colten.

CNA: And how many partners were in that firm?

RPA: Well those four, certainly, probably five, another one. I think he was one

that was not in the names. Probably six, I’m thinking six, and everybody else was then an

[01:45:03]

50


associate. I was their first woman associate, and then my career changed again, because

they hired me to do lots of things but I made it clear I didn’t want to do either criminal or

family law. I had already been doing quite a bit of that and I didn’t want to continue. I

didn’t want to grow a career in either of those fields, especially – well, both of them. I

didn’t want to be a criminal defense attorney, or a family lawyer, either, so much.

CNA: Why is that?

RPA: Too confining, probably. I’ll go back to my first theory. I thought the

family law issue was a way of defining me in a biased way, and I think a lot of women

would agree with that. I mean, if you’re going to–. In other words, that’s the career you

have as a woman. It’s turned out not to be so, by the way, certainly in the latter years. I

mean some of the best family – I’ll call it domestic relations – lawyers are male, and they

are absolutely phenomenal, and they’re making a lot more money than I ever would have

made doing anything else, if that’s a consideration. It probably sounds like I’m thinking

about money, which I’m not. I wouldn’t have been doing some of the things I did if that

were the consideration. But if that had been a consideration I probably should have done

it. I could have [had] a nice income.

But I thought it was too confining, too defining, and I have–. I didn’t tell you

about my marching for the ERA and some of the women’s rights issues I had been

involved in before all of that. I was well into that mindset. And it’s a hard practice, by the

way. Representing families in a divorce context is probably the hardest work that any

lawyer would have to do, and that’s why they deserve every penny that they earn. It is

extremely hard and the effects can be very healing but they can be also pretty bad, and it

can be a risky environment to work in as well. Same thing with criminals, but I never had

51


a problem with criminals. I only had a problem with–. I never had a problem with

anyone, really, but I never felt sort of uneasy with a criminal in the room, as long as

there’s a guard there, but even without. I never met a psychopath. I never had to work

with a psychopath but, again, that’s getting to a different group.

So, I decided I would go there, and when they gave me law that involved family

law I kept reminding them, “You said you wouldn’t do this to me.” I did take a couple of

criminal cases, one of which I couldn’t resist, couldn’t say no to, because it just was too

interesting. Again, I hadn’t had experiences with these kinds of people. Briefly, because

there’s too much to the story, way too much, but I was sitting in my office and someone

called me up and said they wanted to meet with me to help her boyfriend who was in jail

on a rape charge. I said, “Well, I’m not doing much criminal law.” In fact I think it might

have been the–. I actually think it wasn’t–. It was the alleged criminal, perpetrator; he

called me. I thought, “Well, gee; this is kind of curious.” He says this: “Well, I’m already

represented by an attorney, and actually we were in court and we saw you in court and we

think you should join the team.” Of course, I was already getting a little suspicious and of

course I knew I couldn’t do anything anyway [if he was] represented by an attorney, and

I said, “Well, you know, I don’t think this is something I should be getting involved with.

You have an attorney and I cannot represent you.” He said, “Oh, no. The attorney wants

you in.”

It just goes on and on; you just can’t imagine. It was a rape case and they

probably wanted me in for all the wrong reasons, even though they might have thought I

handled myself well in court. But the next thing that happened, after I talked to the

attorney who represented him, is I had to collect the fee. I set a fee that was probably the

52


highest fee I ever set, because I figured they would get the point not to come, but the next

day someone came to my office with the fee, and it was all cash.

CNA: Wow.

RPA: It was kind of scary.

CNA: So did you win the case?

[01:50:00]

RPA: Too long a story. I don’t know if winning is–. The cash was not–. Well, I

can’t get into that either, because it came out of his girlfriend’s cash, who probably had

earned it illegally, probably in prostitution. I mean, I’ve been exposed to all kinds of

strange folks for someone who comes from a background that I grew up in, totally

protected, so shy in high school she thought she had to become a cheerleader to be able to

speak to anybody, you know what I mean? It’s crazy.

The case went out on a technicality, on a speedy trial motion that the real lawyer

in the case, the guy who represented this man all along, figured out that I never would

have figured out. It had to do with the complaining witness, who was also into

prostitution, and we went to trial and that day she didn’t show up. She had a doctor’s note

saying she couldn’t come to the trial. So, of course I’m thinking I’ve got to finish this. I

have to move on to the rest of my life. I don’t want to do this work, but we have to get

this trial done. So, we were walking out of the courtroom and I say to the male attorney–.

Really, he had been dealing with these kinds of issues–. He was much older than I, even

though I was not young at the time either. I said, “Really, this is–. When are we going to

get this over with? This is terrible, really.” He goes–. I said something about, “I wonder

53


how sick she is and what this really means.” He goes, “You know, I’m putting our

detective on her.” I said, “What are you talking about?” Exactly.

So, he did, and it turned out she had lied, and so, because procedurally he had

figured out – I would never have figured this out. I’m just an observer by this point. He

had figured that if he put on a speedy trial motion, because, by that time, time had passed,

it would come to a fore, and that’s exactly what happened. So he put on the speedy trial

motion, and they had to put on the complaining witness, and they put on the detective,

and the prosecutor said, “Nolle pros.” Interesting. I have a lot of stories like that but

we’re not going to go there anymore, [Laughs] unless you ask me the right question.

CNA: [Laughs]

RPA: Fascinating. I got to be that firm’s primary legal researcher and writer for

the tort group, which included Bob Hall and an attorney named William Snead, called

“Sandy” Snead, who was probably–. They’re both two of the finest civil litigators in the

state, and they wanted me to do their research and writing for–, I had motions practice.

By that time I was already on the Planning Commission for Fairfax County. I remember

this so well because the Planning Commission met Tuesday and Wednesday nights every

month but August, and Friday was the motions practice. So, if you’re lucky to get out of

Planning Commission by midnight Thursday, that’s the way it went.

I was doing a lot of stuff. It was hard, but I did it because I–. This is going

backwards. I did it because I learned in my first case that there was something I would

like to do that I was really interested in, and it was to go on the bench, my first case in

juvenile court, and I didn’t think I had any hope. If you haven’t put it together yet, I was

thirty-eight when I graduated from law school. No firm would hire me, so I had no firm

54


behind me and you need some larger group of lawyers somewhere along the line. I didn’t

think, as a woman with limited trial experience, or any other experience, I would get

there, and everything that came my way all fit into creating enough of a background that

people would say, my goodness. You know, I was counsel to the Civil Service

Commission, I ran their due process hearings, I did land use, I met all kinds of lawyers

who then knew me, and I was in the court every Friday [Laughs] doing motions practice,

and doing legal research and writing for the firm. That’s what I did.

CNA: What made you want to be on the bench? You said that this happened–?

RPA: Interesting. I think I just was pulled to–. I liked solving problems more than

[01:55:05]

presenting them. I don’t mind creating problems, by the way, but I don’t like presenting

them, apparently, as a lawyer. If I really – and now you, since you’re asking me. It is not

my personality to be adversarial in that way. I can be. I’m not afraid to challenge people

on things that I feel need to be challenged. I had a whole history of causes and stuff. But I

just thought it is better to be part of the solution, and I felt it was more in keeping with

my personality, which was more problem-solving, contemplative, perhaps. I didn’t think

about the appellate court, necessarily. I thought a lot about the trial court, really, and

that’s where I started.

But I worked eleven–. Let’s see; how long was it that I worked? I think eleven

and a half years, doing very interesting things. I thought, myself personally, I thought the

more background I had the better I would be if I ever got to the bench, so I garnered as

much experience. I could have gone earlier than I did but I thought, “Mm, no; let’s try a

little bit more of this, because it’s interesting, I’m learning.” So, that’s what I did. I ended

55


up with a major firm in the District, by the way, to finish that a little bit. I became a

lawyer with Dickstein, Shapiro, and Morin, of counsel. I was mostly their regulatory and

land use person, but if we had litigation I did that. I was only there two years and I was

elected to the circuit court of Fairfax.

CNA: Was this something that you lobbied for?

RPA: Which?

CNA: The circuit court position.

RPA: Well, lobbying–.

CNA: When I say “lobbying” I mean you let people know you were interested.

RPA: Yes, I did, but it was different then. It was a lot simpler. You had to write

a–. You had to fill out an application, and letting the local delegation [know] was what

had to be done, and so I did. A lot of them knew me already, for one reason or another,

and knew me enough that I was concerned that they wouldn’t be evaluating me on merit.

I remember this very clearly, because I ended up, in each of the conversations I had with

them – which was primarily by phone; I think almost all by phone. I said, “I want you to

know something. If I don’t get the bar’s recommendation,” – I don’t know if I said “high

recommendation.” I may have even said that, but I said probably “recommendation” –

“I’m going withdraw my name, because I just don’t want to do it any other way.” So,

that’s what I did and I got the recommendation, or at least a good one, and I went on the

bench in Fairfax County.

CNA: So what year was that?

RPA: 19–. Interesting. That was ’89, 1989.

56


CNA: Now, you’ve been extremely busy. What was happening on the family

side? You’re balancing the law practice, all of your external extracurricular activities,

with raising three children, and of course having a husband, so what was that like for

you?

RPA: It was really hard. The children–. I had expressed what this was all about

fairly early on because I knew I was going to be very busy, and even if I had had help it

still would have come out to the same thing. I don’t think–. I think as a parent you still

have to be very engaged. But I harkened to my family of origin, so to speak, my nuclear

family in New Jersey, and the fact that they had come across the sea to set up this family

that was supposed to achieve, succeed, progress – I’ve forgotten what words; they were

along those lines – and I told my three daughters that I expected them to carry on the

tradition, that I thought–. And my sisters had been doing that, and my brother as well, of

[02:00:02

course, and that the family as a whole, cousins and everybody, we had all kind of bought

into it, some with more success than others but generally with that thrust, and that I

expected them to play that role, that they were responsible for doing it and they would

have to conduct themselves in that way. [Laughs]

Well, it sort of worked. It worked generally. There were times or days when I

thought, “Oh gosh; this is not going to go.” But they all succeeded. They had to take a

fair amount of responsibility, not that they didn’t have a childhood, and not that they

didn’t have fun, and not that I didn’t have a couple of them that kind of did things that I

didn’t think they should be doing. I don’t think they were illegal, however. But they knew

one thing: if they were supposed to be at home and they weren’t, Mom would find them,

57


no matter where in Fairfax County they were, and I did. [Laughs] So I had that kind of

time. My husband was a lot more relaxed. He thought they were going to be fine.

They did well. They all have graduate degrees. It wasn’t always linear but pretty

much so, actually. I’m very proud of how they figured out how to put their lives together,

and I didn’t press any of them for following any particular route. I did talk to them a little

bit about medicine but never said, “I think you should go into medicine,” because I

wanted to be a doctor. I’m glad I’m a lawyer, actually. [Laughs] Too confining. Medicine

is always the same thing every day. So, one is an environmentalist with a master’s degree

from GW, three years in the Peace Corps, Senegal, West Africa – I think I mentioned that

– and now works in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for the city of Portsmouth, doing block

grants and urban development.

The second girl is a veterinarian, had graduated with a degree in psychology and

then two weeks later said she wanted to go to vet school. I pointed out she didn’t have

any science courses [Laughs] and she said, “I’ve got it all figured out. I’m going to work

for a vet here and I’m going to take all my science degrees at Northern Virginia

Community College or George Mason,” and she did. She’s a vet and married to a vet.

My third daughter, who was the youngest, four years – she was one when I went

to law school – is an ocular and facial reconstructive plastic surgeon. It’s such a long

[title]. She does plastic surgery to reconstruct faces that have been damaged either

through accident or disease. Long training, of course; they all have, as I said graduate

degrees, and not a single one is a lawyer, and even though I had a malpractice practice,

medical, they weren’t afraid to go into medicine, which I thought was really good. It says

a lot about me more than about them. They knew that, you know, mistakes could be made

58


but that in the practice I was in we tried to be very fair about it and reasonable and make

good judgements. So, that’s what they do.

CNA: So, switching back to your role on the bench: in terms of your circuit court

experience, what was your most challenging experience on the bench?

RPA: In the circuit court?

CNA: Yes.

RPA: What’s the most challenging? Gosh.

CNA: And it doesn’t have to be a case.

RPA: No, I understand. I’ll mention a couple things. Well, I’ll mention this first, I

think. There’s a long learning curve to be a judge, I don’t care when you get to it and

what your background has been, because in Fairfax we didn’t sit in divisions so every day

was a different substantive area of the law. So, not only was there a long learning curve,

for me that was wonderful because I’m a generalist to begin with, but it was challenging.

But because of that in part I kind of changed the culture there because I took things under

advisement which really raised eyebrows and made some people kind of upset, I think,

because trial judges don’t take things under advisement usually. They just make a

decision and go on. But I had issues that–. I didn’t take evidentiary issues under

[02:05:00]

advisement typically, the stuff that would keep the trial going on, though I may have

done even that. I don’t think so. I took issues that had not been fleshed out at an appellate

level sufficient for me. Some of it was there in writing already, some of it wasn’t clear

enough, and the lawyers, I thought – the parties, really – I thought the parties were

59


entitled to know the reasons. I could have decided many a case right there on the bench,

or even decided it on the bench without writing even later. People have done that.

But I was very–. And there was someone else before me who had done something

like that and we had talked about it and I felt very strongly about it, very committed to

giving reasons, even orally, but I thought it was better in writing. I think you could do it

better and I think people need to have it, and I thought the lawyers needed to have it for

their records and their thinking, and I thought the appellate courts needed to have it. I

mean, I figured if they were going to reverse me they should at least have something to

look at, because you don’t get those reasons. I know on the appellate bench we don’t

always get the reasoning, but I think it’s your shot on the trial bench to say, “Look, this is

my reason. Yeah, you might have a case, but this is my reason as to why I’m not going to

be bound by that.” It was interesting.

So, I wrote. That was challenging. Now, when did I write? Well, I couldn’t write

while I was on the bench, [Laughs] right, and I didn’t leave the bench early to write, so I

wrote in my leisure time. We did have some law clerk help, not a lot, but we did, and, I

tell you, the most interesting thing was that at the same time Hamilton Bryson, whom you

probably know is a law professor, was interested in publishing circuit cases. There were

very few, and I remember looking at the Fairfax County library. Maybe he directed me

there. I mean, I would look for some of those cases, obviously. I didn’t want to do all this

writing if there were any cases anywhere. These law library shelves, in the beginning – I

don’t remember – there couldn’t have been more than maybe twenty. He would say

fewer, I think. He thought there was nothing published, hardly, but by the time I left the

60


circuit court there were rows because other judges began to write too. I think there may

be less of that now. Some of that gap may have been filled in. So, I wrote a lot.

CNA: Why do you think you and perhaps other judges were starting to do that, to

write?

RPA: Well I think for the same reasoning. I will mention the judge who also had

the same philosophy, and I know we talked about it once. Maybe it was after I began

writing, maybe it was before; I’d like to ask her some time. It was Judge Barbara Keenan.

When she got on the circuit court I know she was doing some writing–. Excuse me. No, I

don’t think it was writing. She would give the reasoning orally. I’m pretty sure that’s

what it was. I’m trying to remember. But that was the thrust of why people were doing

anything that was more than, “I find you guilty,” or, “A hundred thousand dollars for

your contract breach,” or whatever. She was reasoning on the bench. I think I may have

had a case in front of her, so it may have been before I was on the bench myself. But it

was unusual and distinctive. So, when I got on the bench myself I knew I could write.

Nobody said I couldn’t write, although some people thought it was kind of strange, I

must tell you, [Laughs] but it didn’t stop me, apparently. It’s what I did.

CNA: Well you perhaps had more experience writing–

RPA: I did.

CNA: –than some of the others.

RPA: Oh, no question. Yeah, I think so. It took a lot of work and I was willing to

spend the time doing it. I don’t how I squeezed everything in but I never–. I had many

years even before the bench when I was quite happy to–. I never got more than six hours

of sleep. I didn’t need a lot of sleep. It turns out now there are some people who

61


genetically don’t sleep much, and I mean the kids were functioning pretty well. I did have

one daughter who did the cooking, not because I asked her to. She liked it. Everybody did

laundry, my husband did–. My husband spent a lot of time making sure–. He had a busy

job too, though, but the kids, you know, obviously were important to him as well. We

actually went to soccer games. We had one member of our family, one daughter, who

was on a visiting team so we were beyond Virginia. You know, we did all of that

anyway.

[02:10:07]

CNA: What was perhaps your most challenging case?

RPA: Well, I’ll give you one, maybe two, one because it was a writing challenge

and it was because I had a case that I wanted to treat a little bit tongue-in-cheek. It

involved a violation of criminal law. It was the local law, having pigs. Did I tell you

about this case? No? [Laughs] Maybe I shouldn’t tell you then. [Laughs]

CNA: Please. [Laughs]

RPA: This man had a Vietnamese potbellied pig, and it couldn’t have been more

than ten, twelve inches wide, you know, a little chubby, and he kept it in his parlor, and

there was a Fairfax County ordinance that said you couldn’t keep a pig in a hog pen that

was closer than, I think, ten yards from a residence, or abode. I think the word was

“abode,” or “dwelling.” So of course he was charged with a criminal violation of the

municipal law and he was found guilty in the general district court, but he didn’t like that

decision [Laughs] so he appealed and I get the case, right. I don’t know; there was

something about it that just tickled me, and–.

CNA: Now, this pig was his pet.

62


RPA: It was his pet. He kept it in the parlor though. You know, it was small. It

was like a little dog. So I had the case and listened to all the arguments, looked at the law.

He brought he pig in; we kept it outside on the grass. He had him in a big red, white, and

blue bow. His argument was this thing is not bigger than a small dog. What is the

problem, right? [Laughs]

Well, I guess I should confess to having found him–. I did find him not guilty, but

it took an interesting bit of writing. I looked at it again two days ago and I wondered if I

made some horrible mistake. If there’s ever a result-oriented decision, this is the only

one, ever, ever. I mean, I’ve looked at a lot of my stuff; this is the only time that,

arguably, it was result-oriented, but I don’t really think so. What I did is I wrote a two-

page opinion and I used all the literature on pigs that I thought I could fit in, pigs in the

home, like, “This little piggy went to market, this little–.”

CNA: [Laughs]

RPA: No, I know. [Laughs] I’m sorry. “This little piggy went home.” [Laughter] I

know. You’d better not put this part in. [Laughs] And I quoted–. [Laughs] We probably

need a break.

CNA: It had to be [02:13:32]. [Laughs]

RPA: I probably need a break. But, honestly, I quoted Charles Lamb. You know

the story about roast pig?

CNA: No. [Laughs]

RPA: It was about this Chinese family that kept pigs in their home but one day the

house caught on fire. This a really well-known, for people like me in literature, essay on

roast pig by Charles Lamb. I think I’ve got the right guy. The house caught on fire, and I

63


guess the kids got something–. They were touching, you know, to see if every–. The pig

burned up in the home, but after they touched the pig that was burnt up they put it in their

mouth, and, boy, did it taste good. [Laughter] So thereafter in this little village, according

to this essay on roast pig, there were regular house fires that nobody could explain

[Laughs] all because they had kept this pig in the house. And finally there was a Supreme

Court case, I think the justice is Sutherland, and he was working on some sort of a land

use case, right up by alley by that time. I had been in land use and I had run across this.

[It went] something like this: “A pig in the parlor,” – which is what we had – “A pig in

the parlor instead of the barnyard may be the right thing at the wrong time,” something

along those lines.

[02:15:06]

CNA: [Laughs]

RPA: So I put all three of those into the decision and I reasoned that this was not a

hog pen that was ten yards away from the abode; it was in the abode, and being a

criminal case it has to be construed, really, against the Commonwealth, and you have to

have real articulable, reasonable notice. So I said, the way the law was written, it didn’t

say anything about keeping a pig [Laughs] in the parlor. It says something about keeping

it in a hog pen ten yards away, and I reversed it. It went all over the country, it got picked

up by AP, and even the prosecutor thought it was fine. What can I say? It was a very

challenging case, in terms of writing it, that made sense but had a little tongue-in-cheek.

You only have an opportunity for that once in your whole life as a judge. You write too

many of those and people think you should be off the bench. [Laughs] I never wrote

another one.

64


CNA: It sounds like the beginnings of a good children’s story.

RPA: True enough. Maybe I should. I don’t know if there’s–. They’re all

challenging in many ways. This other one had to do with family life education that was

being challenged in the court because there was a certain group in the community that

was absolutely dead set against family life education being taught to their children. These

issues still are with us. There are people who feel it’s a matter of personal choices and

that kind of thing. But the county had done everything they could to do this properly.

This very group had opportunities to comment on why they didn’t–. There was every

opportunity to opt out. Nobody was being forced. The biggest issue was having to do

with premarital relations, of course, and the big argument was they wanted all the moral

teachings to be there and, believe it or not, in Fairfax County that was part of the

curriculum, absolutely clear about how–. I don’t think they used the word “immoral” but

premarital sex was considered to be really inappropriate. I can’t think of the right words

but they had touched on all the bases.

So, I had a case that was pretty highly publicized on a very important issue

involving personal choice and privacy, in a county that I thought had done the right thing,

and, you know, it took a while to write it out, to go through all the steps that had been

taken, and I did that. That was challenging for a lot of reasons. It’s my county and I had

three children in the same classrooms as everybody else. I understood the issue. I had

some sympathy for it. I didn’t think they were crazy or off-the-wall. But, they were not

happy.

CNA: So how many years were you on the bench? Well, excuse me, on the circuit

court.

65


RPA: I hope I have my dates right. I think I had gone on the bench in ’95, the

appellate bench. Is that six years? Yes. I left before the second term. I don’t remember

going back to the General Assembly for reappointment to the circuit court. I’m pretty

sure I didn’t, actually.

CNA: So talk about this transition.

RPA: The transition. Let’s see. That was similarly done except for one other

aspect. Same thing: you apply, but the local delegation had a different role to play. In the

Fairfax court the local delegation basically, that was it. If they said yea the Courts of

Justice Committee went with the recommendation. But at the appellate level it was a

statewide seat and there were other considerations, including which geographical area

everybody was on, and so forth and so on, so I had to really reach out to a larger group. I

did go down to the General Assembly. I never did that in Fairfax. I never did anything

like that. I never went down to talk to people. I was available locally, and they of course

interviewed me, and the bars weighed in, and I knew a lot of–. I knew people on both

[02:20:04]

sides of the aisle, by the way, it wasn’t just on one, although maybe some on one side

knew me better, but I had worked with a lot of people in the community.

So, I went down to the General Assembly and tried to talk to all these folks

[Laughs] that I didn’t know, but I did run into one from Fairfax that I did know, and he

said–. In fact I was just leaving and I thought, oh, this is going to be useless. I was

leaving, I was in the elevator, and I got down to the ground floor and he walked into the

elevator.

CNA: Who was this?

66


RPA: It was Dick Saslaw, and I said, “Hi, Dick. Nice to see you.” He said, “What

are you doing here?” I said, “Well, I’m going to put my name in for the Court of Appeals

slot,” and he said, “Oh! Don’t leave now. Let me take you to meet Tommy Norment,”

whom I didn’t know. I said, “Okay,” [Laughs] you know, so I forget about leaving now,

didn’t go home, and I did.

So, he started introducing me to people I didn’t know, wherever they were, and I

thought that was interesting, and useful, frankly. I’m quite sure I had to put in some

written material. I don’t remember which ones but I know I must have, and the usual

application of what I had been doing. But the big–. [Laughs] I don’t know if this is really

true but I think it’s true, but they kept reminding me that a lot of this is tradeoff, and it

just turned out that the year I wanted to go on the Court of Appeals, Lawrence Koontz

[wanted] to go on the Supreme Court, so the two legislatures got together and that’s what

happened.

CNA: Now what made you want to go on the Court of Appeals? What was it that

was, no pun intended, appealing to you? [Laughs]

RPA: [Laughs] Probably–. [Pauses] Well, I think it probably was the research and

writing, and I guess perhaps I was at a point where I again wanted to learn new things. I

can’t say I was really bored in the circuit court. I still sit in the circuit court even now. I

did, even when I was fulltime with the Court of Appeals. Once in a great while I’d go in

the Circuit Court because they needed help and we could. Since I’ve become a senior

judge, and now not a senior judge at all, I have called and said, “Do you need help? I’ll

come down.” It’s an interesting court. Not only is it interesting, I still think, other than the

67


juvenile court, it is the most difficult job of all the jobs I have ever had, appellate or

otherwise, and even the non-court-related jobs.

CNA: Why is that?

RPA: Well, I think it has to do with the nature of the problems that you encounter

there, the fact that the litigants are right there and the issues are so close to what life is all

about, I mean, and just so much of it in family law, criminal law, even the commercial

cases, all the cases, the homeowners’ cases where somebody really wants to put up a

fence and they’re making–. The issues are so emotional and it’s at a time in the evolution

of the problem that the emotions are pretty raw, and it’s difficult for them. Testifying in a

trial court is among the most difficult things anybody would ever have to do, and you

have to manage a lot of people. I managed a lot of people on the Planning Commission,

you know, the lawyers, the developers, all the citizens who said yea and all that said no,

but then you have a jury that also has to be involved in the decision making and it just

goes on and on, and the rules are complicated. The evidentiary rules are complicated.

And like the three jobs that I’ve had now where I am the final decision maker for all

intents and purposes, the circuit court is pretty much the decision maker. It is the final

resolution because people can’t afford, and, even if they can, winning on appeal is not

easy and often is not the result. I don’t have the statistics but I know what I see in my

court. The Court of Appeals is itself the final decision maker in most cases, and as an

arbitrator it is the really most, underscored, final decision-making in people’s lives in

resolving their problems, and it’s a heavy load.

[02:25:14]

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But taking the evidence and having to decide credibility is mindboggling. Well,

maybe that’s not the right description, but it really requires a lot of energy and a lot of

attention and filtering through. Some of it surely must involve what every judge knows,

which is making sure you’re not reacting out of biases. Every judge knows that’s

something they have to monitor. It takes a tremendous amount of energy. At the appellate

level there isn’t a whole lot of bias in the briefs I’m reading, unless they’re poorly

written, but even then I can get around it. I know how to read what I need to read. You

know, you’re not dealing with the people.

I like all the lawyers I usually work with. Even if you think they haven’t done a

good job it’s never in the mix for me. I’ve done too much research and writing to have

that in the mix. I’m so focused on words. If you ask me cases or lawyers who argued

them I probably couldn’t tell you because my focus is always on the argument. The style

doesn’t stay with me, who argued it doesn’t stay [with me]. I probably would remember

the result if you tell me the issue but, even in the course of deciding, my focus is quite

narrow. In the trial court it’s all open to the people. It’s more like mediation only in the

sense that it’s very people-oriented and you are really in relationship, in a way, even as a

judge. You may be just listening but it’s a different relationship.

CNA: How long of a learning curve did you have?

RPA: In the trial court?

CNA: Well, when you went from trial court to–. Well, let’s deal with all of it,

when you went from being a practicing attorney to circuit court judge and then from there

to appellate judge.

69


RPA: I think the learning curve was the longest going from lawyer–. Well, the

longest was becoming a practicing attorney because everything was really new and I was

jumping into things that took a lot of work, but I laid the groundwork that I still probably

use. I call it learning the geography or the topography of the law, and I’d come to the law

library in Fairfax and I would read everything on the point of law that I could find, even

if it didn’t necessarily relate to the resolution, because I was still learning everything that

I needed to learn for that particular issue.

CNA: Was that part of your Yale training?

RPA: I don’t know. I think it’s part of my personality. I’m either obsessive-

compulsive or, putting it in a better way – sort of – I’m a perfectionist, so I want to know

it all, and also I’m interested. I mean, I really want to know. You can’t keep doing that

forever but I still like to research everything I can get my hands on.

So, that was a long curve but I only had to do it–. Well, I had to do it one case at a

time, which was much slower then. I didn’t really have a big full-blown practice. I could

spend the time learning. The circuit court was different. Every day I had to learn

something new. I think as a lawyer I always said it took me three to five years to feel

reasonably comfortable, and then I went on the bench, [Laughs] you know, in the sixth

year. So I was back to having to learn substantive areas that I had never practiced in, and

you learn them. You have to learn them really fast. You spend time learning. The lawyers

help you, of course. My problem there was I always wanted more than what the lawyers

were teaching me, [Laughs] unnecessarily in many cases, but it was just my personality.

It’s not that they weren’t–. You know, they’d want to focus on this issue, and I’d say,

“Well, what’s on either side of this issue?” Maybe you’re not the kind of person who

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goes to the library for a book and looks at every book on either side. That’s the kind of

person I am. I’ll go to the library and, before you know it, I’m looking at stuff on the side

as well.

So, I’m interested and I spent the time learning. The learning curve maybe was

longer for me in that sense, but my practice at that point was predominantly – if I don’t

count land use, which I did have in the circuit court. I had some labor and employment

[02:30:03]

law from the Civil Service Commission, that I’m still on as their chair. Still love

employment law. But it was mostly torts, products liability, very interesting, big cases,

and medical malpractice, and now I’m with a lot of other stuff that I didn’t necessarily

see in practice.

CNA: Now this brings me to the question of the law clerks that you hired. So

what were some of the characteristics that you were looking for in your law clerks and

what was the average length of time that you would employ a law clerk?

RPA: Well, I’ll start with that second question first because it never was more

than a year by design, by my decision-making design, if you will. I felt that it was a good

training ground for a new lawyer and that it should be made available to as many lawyers

as I could in the time frame that I was going to be on the bench, and so every year I

would change law clerks. Now, the problem with it–. I think there’s only one year I

didn’t do that. Let me think about that. I think it was just one year, maybe two at the

most, but I think it was just one. The problem with doing that is you then don’t have the

benefit of an experienced law clerk, which certainly makes the job a lot easier. It does.

It’s a learning curve for a new lawyer to come in to the law clerk position in which they

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are responsible for carrying on a fair amount of the research, maybe most of the research.

It depends on how you do your law clerk training, if you will, and if my law clerks were

good enough – and sometimes you couldn’t even perceive this until several months down

the pike – I’d have them do a first draft of an opinion because it was training.

So, that was my practice, and I liked people who had a background in research

and writing. The first clerk I had, which ended up being the best clerk I had, was the best

writer I have ever seen anywhere, and he came out of George Mason and it was so clear I

couldn’t believe he had written it, but he did, because he kept writing like that the whole

time he was with me. [Laughs]

Interesting people, men and women, and usually good work habits. They had to

stay late if I had to go early, and they might have to put up with revisions and rewriting.

You’re talking to someone who finds fifteen reiterations of an opinion par for the course.

Now, they all may not be the same [revision.] You know, it might be three words here or

whatever. But anyone who does any real writing knows it’s all in the revising, so my law

clerks would have to do that, partly for training and partly for me. They have to read the

record. They really have to help out in making sure I haven’t missed something as well.

There’s so much to read.

So, it was a combination of things depending on their skills and their skill level,

their talent, if you will. We’d talk about the cases, where I wanted to go with it. When I

got to be a senior judge I worked with the staff attorney’s office and I varied that

approach. In the beginning [I didn’t want to do what I call] “poisoning the well.” I

wouldn’t want to say, “Well, look: this case is going to be reversed. Just draw it up and

I’ll look at it.” I thought it was more interesting for them if I didn’t tell them, and I did

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that when I had my own clerks as well. It’s harder for them and it doesn’t always work.

The task when I was a senior judge and was …with a staff attorney I just wanted to do

more of the writing, not because they didn’t have the skills but because their load on

different kinds of cases was really significant, but they always did the factual part of the

writing and then I would add to it, but I never told them the result in the beginning. Then

later I thought, well, maybe it’s easier for them if I say, “I think this should be reversed.”

Sometimes I would say, “I want you to write it both ways,” because that’s also a

decision-making exercise, and I still write some things both ways; I just don’t charge for

it [Laughs] as an arbitrator. I can’t do that. But if I’m on a learning curve

[02:35:05]

I don’t charge for that. You never think about that as a judge because you just do your

job, you get your salary, and whatever it takes, ten hours, twenty hours, whatever it is you

just do it.

CNA: When you’re writing your decisions, how do you write them?

RPA: Oh, it depends. How do I write them? In what way? You mean do I decide

them first and then write them?

CNA: Well, some people want to type everything up. Some people want to feel

the words by actually using a pen, or even certain types of pens.

RPA: Oh, I see.

CNA: Some people approach it very different ways. Some people even use index

cards. How do you write your decisions?

RPA: It changed. I always handwrote most of my decisions, or even my

arguments when I was arguing as a lawyer. I handwrote it. But on, say, the circuit court,

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where it eventually would be in print, if you will, I start with handwritten material, but

over the course of time, on the Court of Appeals in particular – I think this is where it

changed. I now work on the computer. But, on the Court of Appeals the difference is,

unlike the circuit court, which was really a challenging writing exercise, someone’s been

doing some heavy work on briefs. They’re the lawyers, and you can start with some of

their–. There are a couple of sources that are different. There are the briefs. I now have

transcripts, particularly in arbitration, because this has really changed how I write, and I

can grab whole portions of things that I want to put in an opinion, testimony, for

example, and it goes in electronically. I do a certain amount of cut and paste on law that I

know is correct, because I’ve checked it, or I take it right out of the case, I mean, if it’s

somebody’s brief.

Once I’ve gotten to the point of having checked it that’s a big part of writing. The

big part of writing is making sure all the materials you have are correctly stated and

pertinent, of course, relevant, and that takes a lot of time. I don’t do all of the checking at

once. Sometimes I have to write an analysis of where I think the case is going or may go.

Sometimes it’s an analysis of the law and I may have to go back and see if that really was

the testimony. So, it’s a combination of sources.

Do I write anything? Now, what happens after I have, let’s say, a reasonably solid

draft, I print it out and then I write on it, handwritten, and I don’t do another draft on the

computer until I have handwritten something on that draft, usually a lot, actually. It’s not

just something; it’s usually quite a bit. A lot of it is editing but editing sometimes sounds

like, oh, well; we know what that means. But what it means, in good part, is checking to

see if, analytically, your decision-making is holding, [is it] cohesive, does it really say

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what you want to say, and sometimes it really doesn’t. That part is maybe doing a second

level of analysis, sometimes just moving things, sometimes taking out things that are

totally wrong. It just gets to be quite comprehensive and complicated.

I can tell you this: I never did that on the newspaper. No. You go out and you

write a story and you come back and the deadline’s at 2:00. I worked on the afternoon

paper, by the way. They used to have morning and afternoon. That’s different. It’s a

different kind of writing.

CNA: What made you decide to retire?

RPA: Well, I was thinking ahead at the time when I would be seventy years old,

and I thought, “Do I really want to find myself on the bench at seventy?” Not, did I want

to work at seventy, but did I really want to still be on the bench at seventy and not

explore some other things I might do. I thought, “Well, I don’t think so,” not that I had

[02:40:05]

something I really wanted to do, and I actually thought I didn’t want to do anything that

involved judging or lawyering or anything, but I didn’t have anything particular in mind.

So, I retired, and I did start doing some mediation and some arbitration.

I did have an interest in some international work, and one of the reasons I went

with JAMS, which is a national and international alternate dispute resolution service

provider, arbitration and mediation, is because I had some idea that I might want to do

international arbitration. In fact, I think I was introduced to JAMS because I went to a

seminar in New York City on international arbitration even before I got off the bench.

I’m not sure how I got invited or why I went exactly. I met a senior, so to speak, well-

established arbitrator there from JAMS who was doing international arbitration, and I got

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to talking, I sat right next to him, and he asked me what I was doing there. I said, “Well,

I’m going to get off the bench someday,” and he said, “Well, here’s my card,” and that’s

how I got to go with JAMS, because when I started thinking about it I thought, “Well,

maybe I should try this. Maybe I’ll do some international arbitration.”

The end of the story on that is I did do one international arbitration, it was the first

arbitration I ever did, and it was because of who were the other two people on the panel.

They needed a third, they needed the chair. Now, mind you, I’d never done any

arbitrations internationally. It was here, fortunately, and I did that one and I’ve never

done another one. [Laughs]

CNA: Is there a reason why?

RPA: Yeah, there are two reasons. One, to really become an international

arbitrator you probably–. I think most international arbitrators have had a long career as

lawyers in international work and arbitration, even as lawyers, one; two, my work that I

do have–. I was a senior judge still, right, and what I have as mediator and arbitration is

fine; I’m very happy to stay domestically. I don’t necessarily want to travel all over the

world arbitrating at this point in my life, so I’m happy with that. And three, probably, I’m

not sure about this – I’ve thought about it – generally there are very few women in

arbitration and there are even fewer, I think, in international, but I’m not sure that’s true.

I’ve been to a couple of colloquiums or conferences on it. There are not that many. There

are some, and those that are, are really good. It was not the right time for me. I should

have started at twenty instead of when I started. [Laughs]

CNA: Well, just a couple of last questions, and this is going back to your role on

the Court of Appeals.

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RPA: Okay.

CNA: The judges you were working with, what was that relationship like? Were

there parts of that that you liked, and I’m not talking about the personalities but just the

procedures or processes, and were there things that you didn’t really like about it?

RPA: Yes. I would say all of the above probably could be answered. There were

things that I liked and didn’t like. Let’s start with the process a moment because it came

right to mind. When I first got on the Court of Appeals the decision making was all in

writing. We would exchange our proposed opinion or dissent, and I always found that

very odd because I think I was actually told, “We don’t call each other,” because I think

it looked like we might be trying to sway people one on one and it was supposed to be a

panel decision. I think that’s changed, and I don’t agree with that view. I think not being

able to talk one on one really was not helpful. It’s still a panel decision because you still

have to decide it in writing. So, I think that’s loosened up a bit.

We did have a lot of discussion after the cases were argued, which I thought was

absolutely on the money, but maybe not enough, and that’s why the emphasis was on

reviewing the analyses in writing, and that’s still, I think, a good way to go, frankly, and

[02:45:04]

without it I don’t think you–. I think the U.S. Supreme Court–. I’m not sure it’s that

court. They don’t have a lot of discussion at all and they just have to write something that

they think is going to meet approval by their colleagues on the panel. I think that’s really

hard. But, in any event, we had both. I liked that.

[Pauses] I don’t know if there’s anything–. I like the fact that I was with a court

that was the first court of appeals judge. I think almost everybody – except the person I

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replaced, who died. I mean, I replaced somebody, obviously. But it was the first court of

appeals court in Virginia and I thought they had done a terrific job in setting out

procedures, both in terms of the rules of court, their input there, the way they interrelated

with each other, the fact that we sat in different parts of the state, the discussions on

paper. I think it was a very respectful way of dealing with a court, both respectful in

terms of the people on the court and the litigants and lawyers that we served, because we

felt very strongly that–. It was a burden for the litigants and their lawyers to come from

all parts of the world to a court that was going to be handling cases of the sort we were

handling, both criminal and family law in particular, and workers’ comp, actually.

So, I really thought they had done a very good job of developing a court that I

think over the years has proved to be a superb way of decision making, traditional

decision making. So I thought that was very interesting, a lot of strong personalities, a lot

of difference of opinion on some issues, but everyone was pretty well willing to listen, I

thought, and we had our power to dissent. I didn’t write a whole lot of dissents but when I

felt strongly, you know, I did do that.

The only curious, sort of funny episode that I can think of right off the bat is I had

one judge who told me I couldn’t wear a pantsuit to court. [Laughs] So, I know that was

kind of interesting.

CNA: What century was he in?

RPA: [Laughs] I don’t know, but I figured I had bigger battles so I said okay. So

for several times when I sat with this particular judge I didn’t wear a pantsuit; I just wore

skirts and dresses. Eventually I said, “Eh, I give up. I’m going to wear them anyway.” So

I did, and there was nothing said, and we went on. [Laughs] I don’t know what the

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purpose of that was. Maybe he got used to me and realized that I was quite feminine,

notwithstanding my trial attorney background. I don’t know. It just went away. [Laughs]

CNA: Well, one of the things that struck me in looking at your material is that

you were recognized in Who’s Who for the prize of fighting for public justice. I want you

to tell me a little bit about that.

RPA: That was the case that I handled as Hall, Surovell, Jackson, and Colten’s

primary research writer, legal argument-giver person, and I started the case there with

one of the partners, who actually had come into the firm the same time I did only he came

in as a partner and I came in as an associate. It was a medical malpractice case and the

issue was the malpractice cap that existed in Virginia, and they gave me the assignment

of convincing the courts–. We were in the federal court, by the way, with this case, a

couple of federal courts. No, one federal court; the other we stayed in the state court. [I

was assigned to convince the courts] that the cap was unconstitutional, and so I did all the

brief writing in this case that went to federal court, in which I convinced the federal judge

that the cap was unconstitutional, and that was enough to get me in their book – the Trial

Lawyers for Public Justice, I think they’re called – in their book called Fighting for

Public Justice: [Cases and Trial Lawyers That Made] a Difference.

[02:50:09]

So, our case got in there because, based on the argument that the cap violated the

right to a jury trial, the judge agreed, but interestingly the Supreme Court of Virginia

didn’t agree. I don’t know if that argument was actually made but you know what

happened. At the same time we had our case in federal court there was another case here

in Virginia, the Supreme Court, and they found the cap constitutional, so that kind of

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wiped out the federal court ruling and it wiped out part of our recovery, which was

actually, at the time, the biggest verdict in Virginia. It diminished it. It was an interesting

journey. It was an interesting issue to pick on. I was not the first to think of it, I readily

admitted that. There were a few cases in the west of the country, I’ve forgotten which

states – I think maybe Indiana – where lawyers had been arguing the right to jury trial as

a basis for challenging the cap, and I thought it was a really interesting and very good

argument, and one federal judge agreed, so. [Laughs]

CNA: Well now, looking back over a varied career that’s still ongoing, so let’s

project us maybe twenty, thirty years in the future. What aspect of your life [do] you want

people to most remember about you?

RPA: The relationship I’ve had with them, period, on a one-to-one basis,

probably, either as a friend or as a mentor, to the extent I mentored anybody, or as a

colleague, or as a parent, or a wife. Does that cover everything? Sister. I think that’s

probably the only thing that is worth being remembered by. Now, if I had written the

great American novel, as I had once hoped, I’d have a different answer for you. [Laughs]

But I haven’t written it.

CNA: And that great American novel would have been on what topic?

RPA: Oh, let’s see. Living in Paris, [Laughs] having to come home and leave all

my friends and colleagues there, leaving a city behind that I really loved. I don’t know

what it would be about. There is a book that’s written something like the kind of book I

would have hoped to write – it’s very popular right now – called All the Light that We

Cannot See. I think I’ve got the title right. The Light We Cannot See, maybe, not “all the

light.” Very interesting, very popular right now. It takes place in Paris and the

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relationship is between a young French girl, young girl who’s blind, and a young German

boy who’s in the Hitler Youth, one in Germany, one in France; very interesting.

I don’t know what it would have been about; about people, that relationship, all

kinds of relationships, undoubtedly. Although, one final comment on that, I don’t read

novels anymore, I just read nonfiction, so maybe it would have been something in

nonfiction, like wouldn’t I love to write a biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [Laughs]

Something like that.

CNA: Well, I look forward to the next chapter of your multi-chapter life, and I

thank you so much for your interview.

RPA: You’re very nice to say that. Thank you for your questions.

[02:53:57]

END OF INTERVIEW

Transcriber: Deborah Mitchum

Date: April 6, 2016

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