A keen mind,
a driven spirit A keen mind,
a driven spirit A keen mind,
a driven spirit

Carolyn R. Dimmick, ’53, spent her career shattering glass ceilings at every level of the state’s legal and judicial systems: She was the first woman appointed to the Washington state Supreme Court and the second woman appointed to the federal bench in the Evergreen State. Not bad for someone who was told by a student adviser not to go to law school because she would “take up the space meant for a man.”

Then again, it seems that Dimmick was preordained to overcome obstacles, seeing how she was born on Black Thursday, Oct. 24, 1929, the day of the devastating stock market crash. The experience of growing up the daughter of a master mariner (her dad) and schoolteacher mom, and spending her early years in Juneau, Alaska, fortified her for the path she sought. At the UW School of Law, she was one of only three women in her law-school class, and in 1953, she received her J.D. Her first job out of law school was working for the Attorney General’s office in Olympia. She was on her way.

She later worked as a King County prosecutor, and it was her lawyer husband, Cy, who suggested that she apply for a judicial job with King County at the Northeast District Court. Her keen intellect and ability to manage complex cases caught the eye of Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, who in 1981 appointed Dimmick the first woman on the Washington state Supreme Court. “It was daunting,” Dimmick said. “But I don’t think it was a big deal to anyone—I was just another person on the court. ”Three years later, she became only the second woman to serve as a federal judge in Washington. She also was the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington from 1994 to 1997.

In all, Dimmick served nearly 60 years as a judge on the state and federal levels. “Judge Dimmick owns so many ‘firsts,’” Washington Supreme Court Chief Justice Debra Stephens told The Seattle Times. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez, ’77, ’80, who worked alongside Dimmick for three decades, told the newspaper: “Exceptionally competent and possessed of a keen legal mind, Judge Dimmick was deeply respected by all who appeared in her courtroom—litigants, lawyers and members of the public alike. She was warm and personable, plainspoken and willing to help her colleagues.”

Dimmick died Dec. 24 at the age of 96.

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