ABA Senior Lawyers Division Women Trailblazers in the Law ORAL HISTORY of ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER Interviewer: Karen A. Clanton Dates of Interviews: August 20, 2007 August 28, 2007 September 28, 2007 November 8, 2007
ORAL HISTORY OF HON. ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER Second Interview August 28, 2007 This is the second interview of the oral history of Hon. Ilana Diamond Rovner, which is being taken on behalf of the Women Trailblazers in the Law, a project of the American Bar Association. It is being conducted by Karen A. Clanton on August 28, 2007. I knew I wanted to go to law school all my life. I was seven years old when I wrote an essay saying I wanted to be a lawyer, and I never stopped feeling that way. And I think I told you last week that I was one of only two women in my entire class at Bryn Mawr who went on to law school at that time. A number of them did it twenty years later, that sort of thing. But I went to England to study at Oxford and decided that I wanted to go to London to study law. So then I came back to the United States... But tell me about it. Tell me more. Well, I mean, it was just a fabulous time in my life. I met, you know, people I never would have met, and became very, very friendly with people from all over the world because I lived in William Goodenough House which is now William Goodenough College, and it was just a fantastic time. And London was very exciting in the early 60s as everyone knows. Anyway, then I came back to Georgetown. They held my place for me at Georgetown, and I was at Georgetown for two and a half years. I met my husband in my second year. We had gotten married. He was at the National Institutes of Health and the next year he was leaving to start his career, and we decided on Chicago. And in those days, you couldn't just do half a year somewhere. You had to do two years, and you couldn't get your degree if you didn't. And it never occurred to me to stay on at
Georgetown and have my husband move. That was not a thought in the early 60s. In 1964, no one was going to, well, maybe someone would do it, but I certainly wasn't going to do that. And I came to IIT and it was a wonderful, wonderful choice for me. I learned a great deal about life at IIT that I had not learned before. Because I was going to school with a lot of people who were working days, coming to school exhausted at night, or coming days and working at night. And my professors, most of them, were actual practicing lawyers and it was just an incredibly practical education along with everything else. But when I graduated, I did not take the bar. We were desperately trying to have a child, well, I don't want to go into this. It's very personal stuff. I just, I didn't take the bar. And instead I had my family. And my family turned out to be one son, one natural son, and of course, I had my foster son, but that was much much later on. When our son went off to school, I decided it was time to take the bar. And that was a lot of years later. So here I was. What I did was, I bought the books from the Bar Review School, and went to the library with them and read those and read hornbooks. I read the hornbooks because they were now teaching subjects that I had never even taken. Like commercial paper, I had studied sales. Now, you know, they weren't teaching sales anymore. They were teaching the UCC. So it was quite an undertaking when I think about it. How long did it take you to study? I would say, well, it was a better part of a year to do it because I still had all my responsibilities at home. And I really needed to, I mean, you know, after six or seven years, you really need to refresh your memory. But I will tell you when I
took the bar, I was so excited about it, going to do it. Of course, I was fearful, too. But most of all what I recall is the excitement of finally doing it. I remember sitting down and saying to the person next to me, "I am so thrilled to be here." And I remember him looking at me as if I were insane. But there was a lot that was very wonderful about this because I didn't know anyone else that was taking the bar. So the applicants didn't hysterize me the way that mob mentality of hysteria did. Secondly, because I didn't know anyone, I had no one to have lunch with. In those days, the bar was two and a half days. I had no one to talk with, really. And so I didn't talk to anyone and people were, as I say, hysterizing other people. "Oh, did you do this, did you get that?" I could hear people talking to each other. But I wasn't part of that. I went off on my own. I brought sandwiches, and then came back and took the other half of each session. And that was the first time ever that the multiple choice exam was given. And now I understand the bar is just two days. Yeah, it was when I took it. Yes, and not two and a half And you know, that extra half day made a difference. What was on the extra half day? That was the multiple choice. Were there many women who sat for the bar when you were there was it majority, mostly men? No. No, it still was primarily men. It was 1972. Whatever that first year was with the multiple choice in Illinois. And it was in February. And when did you get your results?
I think I got them in April. Because I started work in May. So how did you decide where to look, how to... I didn't look. You didn't? My story is amazing. I went to a dinner party and I was seated next to Judge James B. Parsons at this dinner. And he was complaining about having to start the search for a new law clerk on Monday. And I said to him, "I'll be your law clerk." And he said, "Oh, my dear. You don't understand. You have to be a lawyer to be a law clerk." And I said, "Oh, but I am a lawyer. I just passed the bar." And he said, "Really?" He said, "Well, bring me your resume and come in on Monday morning." I later learned that he went to work that Monday and said to his secretary, "I can't believe what I did. I sat next to this young woman and I told her to come in for an interview and I can't possibly have a woman law clerk because a woman will cry if I don't like her work. I won't be able to roll my sleeves up. I will have to wear a jacket at all times. And I just cannot have a woman as a law clerk. So when she arrives, tell her that I've chosen a law clerk." And his secretary who wanted to be a lawyer, but it was the Depression and she could not afford to go to law school, said to him, "You should be ashamed of yourself You, the first Afr-, well in those days, they didn't use the word "African-American," the first negro judge, not willing to give a woman a chance, that's just wrong. You cannot send her away. At least interview her." He interviewed me and gave me the job. She helped me immeasurably. What type of things did he even ask you in the interview? Do you recall?
Basically, I think, you know, about my grades. So he gave you a fair interview? He gave me a fair interview. And about, you know, my maturity level. I mean, he saw that I was very motivated. And I was his only law clerk. He only had one law clerk. And I will say this, I worked my heart out for him. I really did. There was a pretty famous story actually. It was a Saturday night and he was coming home from a party at about eleven o'clock. And we had something that absolutely had to be done by Monday morning. And in those days, there was no heat in the building on weekends and it was winter. I used to have a pair of wool gloves with cut-out fingers that I worked with. I used to sit in my coat and blankets and work at night because, you know, we didn't have computers. We didn't have anything, if there were any errors, we had to use Whiteout. And he heard on the radio that there was a bomb threat to the Dirksen Building. So I was there on the 19th floor and he called and said GO HOME. I mean, I really did work very hard. How did you deal with child care and all that? I was unbelievably lucky with child care. Just incredibly lucky. And I had perhaps the most supportive husband that ever walked the face of this earth. How did you two meet? Oh, my gosh! We met in Washington at a dinner party at a restaurant. How long did you date? Four weeks, six days. Really?
Yes. Once he called and asked me for a date, yes. We got married. Can you believe that? And we were married for almost forty-seven years. And your parents approved? Once they met him. Once they met him? Yes. And his parents were thrilled. Because he was almost thirty-two and in those days, that was older. And I was twenty-four and a half That was older, too Was that old? Yes. Really? Unbelievable, isn't it? It is. Because now if someone gets married at 24, you are wondering what's going on. And then I got my next job the same way. Jim Thompson, who was the U.S. Attorney, was in Judge Parsons' chambers on a case. And he came in and sat down in my office. And he said to me, "Do you have any interest in coming to the U.S. Attorney's office?" I had expected to go and work for Dick Phelan. Dick Phelan was the person who talked me into taking the bar. He had said to me, "If you take the bar, we can work together." How did you two meet? Dick Phelan? The Phelans and we met walking in a civil rights parade. That's how we met, over civil rights. So Jim Thompson said, I'll never forget, "Send a formal application." So I got a scroll. Put my resume on this scroll and attached a picture
of my husband and me in formal clothing. Can you believe it? I still have it. It was a button of me in a gown and Dick in a tuxedo. "Here is my formal application." But it was 1973. They were looking for women. And I was, I believe I was the fifth woman in his office, which was considered very forward looking. I mean, they did articles in the newspaper about us. That was considered amazing to have that many women. But it was Mary Sfasciotti, Glynna Freeman, Ann Plunkett, Carol Kipperman and I. And they were all there at the same time. Did they mentor you and each other or what was the relationship like or were they all peers? We were all friends, but we were unbelievably busy because we were all trying to prove that we belonged there. When I became the first woman supervisor in the history of that office, there was one man that just would not work with me wouldn't work under me. I mean, they just, you know, the young women today can't possibly, I said that the other day, they can't possibly understand the pressures of being first. I was on a panel at that time regarding women, working mothers, and legal jobs at the Chicago Bar Association. And I was asked what can we do about, you know, these men that are so mean? And I said, "The only thing we can do is outlive them." And that was true. We would have to wait for them to die. Because some of them were not welcoming in any sense of the word no matter what we did. Nothing was good enough, and it took me an awful lot of years to realize how good many of the women really were in relationship to the men's talents. I mean, when I think of it, men that were hundreds of places below us in class were getting great jobs and there were no jobs for us. But I said that
and I also said, "When their daughters and granddaughters and nieces become lawyers, maybe then they will help the rest of us succeed." And that was, I think, a great measure to the key. When I think back, because if you have someone in your family who is doing it, a light bulb comes on. They begin to think maybe these women can do it. How did you keep your esteem and confidence and all of that up in a, not a hostile environment, but an environment where... Oh, sometimes it was downright hostile. How? I was asked that question. And you know my answer is the same today as it was then. Raw desire to succeed. The desire to succeed was greater than any obstacles placed in my way. It had been and it was my dream and these people were not going to do anything to make me show that I felt like a lesser being even when I did. But this I will say. There also were men who wanted us to succeed. Who greatly wanted us to succeed. They didn't want us to take the jobs that they wanted but they were happy to see us do well. Did they mentor you or...? Yes. It was the only way then. There were women like Kay Agar, who was the only woman partner at McDermott Will & Emery, who started as a legal secretary. There were women like Teddy Gordon. May they both just be revered forever. There were women like Esther Rothstein. There were these women, there were women like Bea Fox, who should have been a federal judge, who was a career clerk to two federal judges, who mentored and aided and helped us. I was one of the women who was in the Women's Bar Association when there were less
than a dozen of us meeting at a table in the back of the President's Room at the Chicago Bar Association. And when we would walk past the tables, some of the men would chant "Here come the ladies, here come the ladies." And you see, this was early in the 1970's and some of the larger organizations, you know, the men's organizations were allowing women in, so the women were abandoning the Women's Bar Association because they wanted to be transitioned in to the larger bar associations. There weren't that many of us staying with the Women's Bar Association. I was saying to my friends, "We've got to do both. We've got to belong to the mainstream organizations and we've got to also keep the Women's Bar going." And that is what a number of us were doing. Every week we had a meeting and we were plotting and planning and trying to figure out strategies for success. But the problem was that it's expensive to belong to five or six organizations and also, you can't give your time to five or six. I mean, if you're being honest, you can only give your time to so much when you're also working, having families. People have their churches, they have their charity work, they have crises. I mean, how many bar associations can you be involved in? What can you do? What can you afford to do? So that was, you know, that was difficult. So which ones did you belong to at the time or did you choose...? I chose, I belonged to the Chicago Council of Lawyers and the Women's Bar and the Chicago Bar Association and the Decalogue Society and the Federal Bar Association. The ABA, there were seven bar associations that I was paying dues to. And you know, add that up. And also the Illinois State Bar. So it was, you
know, you can't do that when there are huge loans to pay. You have to have priorities. But the two that I was really active in were the Women's Bar and the Federal Bar. And I eventually became president of the Federal Bar Association of Chicago. How did that happen? Thanks to the men in the Bar Association. I should not name names I suppose because I'm going to forget some of them. The late, great Harvey Silets was extremely welcoming. There were many men who were welcoming. Don't forget where women got their first real opportunities. In government and the Federal Bar Association was basically the Bar Association of the government lawyers, the federal government lawyers. That's where women had a lot of opportunity. So when you were first working for Thompson, what was that like, what were the types of matters that you handled? In those days, I said to him, "I would really like to do civil rights work." And he said, "Oh, fine. Good." Because there weren't, the men were all clamoring to do the glamorous criminal cases and the big time civil cases. They weren't clamoring to do the kinds of things that I wanted to do. So I was put in the Public Protection Unit immediately and we did consumer fraud, vote fraud, and civil rights. Both civil and criminal. And I was thrown into the Chicago Police and Fire cases immediately. Who helped you with that? How did you navigate that being a... The people from Washington. I was the only person from Chicago. And so I was thrown into the fire because whenever there were emergencies, they had to fly in
but I was on site. So I was Johnny-on-the spot. I was doing the work that I had always wanted to do. And I was being paid to do it. It was almost incomprehensible to me. And how long did it take you before you became a supervisor? I think it was, well, let's see. I can figure it out. About sixteen months. And how did you prepare to manage people? What was that initiation into... The truth? The way I managed my family. I turned, I tried to turn us into a little family. And I think a lot of women manage that way. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I don't know, but that was my approach. And my first criminal trial was interesting because one of the FBI agents was very welcoming, but the other one could not believe that a woman was going to be on this case because it involved someone who they alleged was in the mob and they had been trying to indict him for many years. And it involved stolen forklift trucks, and one of the trucks had been brought in from interstate, from Indiana, so it was interstate theft. One of the FBI agents said to me "Do you even know what a forklift truck is?" And I said, "Do I know what a forklift truck is?" And I drew him a crane. I had no idea. No idea. Anyway, I was thrown into it over the weekend, but I was just to present the documents witnesses. Do the research, if research was needed. In his opening statement, the assistant U.S. attorney who was first chair said to the jury, "There are going to be a lot of very boring parts to this case. But they're very important and we're going to ask you to listen very carefully even though it may seem very boring because we will be presenting dry documents." So I get up to question the first government witness and all the court buffs are in the
courtroom because a woman was the assistant U.S. attorney in the trial. They had watched me when I was with Judge Parsons and I had visited with them. There was a woman court buff. She had a beehive hairdo. She had always wanted to be a lawyer and never could afford to attend law school. She wanted me to succeed like nothing on earth. It was sisterhood in action. The first thing I did was a terrible faux pas. I got up before the jury and I said, "Hello, Jury. My name is Ilana Rovner. And I am going to be doing the boring part." And Judge Hubert Will looked down and said, "Bore on, Mrs. Rovner," and he did not think that was funny. So immediately, you know, I'm terribly nervous. I'm standing in these heels, which I still have. I wore them for every trial my good luck high heels. And you know, I'm shaking. And I turned to the witness on the stand and said, "Please state your name and spell it for the court reporter." And with that I made a little half-turn and went back toward the gallery and with that, the court buff, this wonderful woman, is half-sitting, half-standing, and she's giving a "V" for victory with her hand. I mean, she was so excited to see me there. You know, to see someone else living out her dream because she, like Judge Parson's secretary, had wanted to be a lawyer. Just think of that largesse of spirit. So okay, so, the case is tried. The defendant is found guilty. He was 76 years old. And he had a heart condition. And when it came time for the sentencing, the first chair was out of town and I was told that I was going to have to do the sentencing. So I go up to do the sentencing. And I'll never forget Judge Will, he said to this fellow, "I go to the opera and I see your name listed among the huge donors and when I go to the symphony, there's your name listed as a large donor, but you are a thief' or
something to that effect. And then he said, "Due to your illness, due to your age, I'm going to only give you ninety days." Well, you know, there was discretion in sentencing in those days. His lawyer, Mr. Amendela, said, "Judge, he has a terrible heart condition and if he goes in for ninety days, it will probably be his last Thanksgiving, his last Christmas, his last New Years. Would you make it sixty days?" Okay. In those days, that's how they did it. So Judge Will looks down and says, "Well, I'm going to leave it up to the Assistant U.S. Attorney. What do you say, Mrs. Rovner?" "Is it 60 or 90?" And I said, "Judge Will, I would never beg for thirty days of a man's life. Judge Will said, "My goodness, this is a first OK, 60 days it is." Out in the hall, the family thanked me, the defendant is hugging me. I go back to my office and word had already spread. I was called to the U.S. Attorney's office and sitting there were all the top brass. The First Assistant, Joel Flaum, is in there, Sam Skinner was in there, Tony Valukas was in there, Ty Fahner was in there, John Simon was in there. Thompson says to me, "Okay, you want to be a fairy godmother? That's what you want to be? You'll have to find another line of work if you want to be a fairy godmother. This is serious business." And he said to me, "From now on, it's civil cases for you." So that Christmas, the office gave me a tiara, a pair of angel wings and a wand and I still have them. And from that time on, I was known as the fairy godmother. Isn't that funny? That is. I know. I carried that title into state government. The fairy godmother. And do you see that wonderful cartoon up there? I bought it. Here, it is this one over
here. I bought the original for fifty dollars. And you won't believe it. This appeared in the newspaper on my birthday. The grouch behind the desk is saying, "How the hell did you get past the receptionist?" And it's the fairy godmother flying over his head. Isn't that perfect? That is. Isn't it perfect? "How the hell did you get past the receptionist?" I thought I was going to be fired. I was about to say. Were you terrified when they...? Well, yes. I was. Except in retrospect would they really want to see that headline. "Assistant U.S. Attorney fired for showing compassion for 76-year-old thief?"