By Jessica Huseman
In a profession built on library research, Lea Courington finds her escape from the law … in libraries and research.
Courington, a partner at Curran Tomko Tarski in Dallas, finds her out-of-office passion as board president for the Archives of Women of the Southwest at Southern Methodist University’s DeGolyer Library.
Courington, who graduated from SMU in the early ’70s before heading to Duke for law school, said returning to her campus role is a “source of continuity of experience” in her life.
“Each time I am at SMU for some event or meeting — and during parts of the year, that is a frequent experience — I am reminded what a real treasure in our midst SMU is,” she said. “There is some very fine work being done there, and it is a university that puts real importance on the quality of teaching of undergraduates, which is not something one finds at every university.”
The Archives of Women of the Southwest, she believes, adds to the SMU educational experience. The archives document the historical experiences of women in the Southwest, with special emphasis on Dallas and North Texas, as well as a regional focus that includes Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and the Spanish Borderlands.
Courington first became involved with the archives when a friend from her days at SMU asked if she would buy a plaque through the archives’ “Remember the Ladies! Campaign” to honor Emmie Baine, who was dean of women when Courington and her friend were at SMU.
She did, and also chose to honor her favorite professor, Ann Early, who championed, developed and taught for the women’s studies program at SMU.
“One of the great pleasures of honoring someone is getting to write about why one has honored them and having that tribute included in a memorial booklet the university publishes,” she said. “I hope that years from now someone will see those tributes and then want to know more about these very special women.”
(To see her tributes to either of the important women, click here.)
After participating in that fundraiser, Courington found herself hooked. She was elated to be among some and inspiring women, such as Ruth Morgan, former provost at SMU and notable author on civil rights, and Mary Blake Meadows, the chair of numerous non-profits in Dallas.
“That work brought me back into touch with some amazing women — including community leaders, business and professional women, and professors — I had known at SMU in the early 1970s when, as a student, I chaired SMU’s annual Women’s Symposium,” she said.
She is swept away by the stories of women whose lives have sparked national wonder.
“I myself grew up in southeastern Arizona, in a small cattle ranching and farming town,” she said, “and two women from the Southwest who are of particular interest to me are Isabella Greenway, who was Arizona’s first congresswoman and also the founder of the wonderful Arizona Inn in Tucson, and, of course, Sandra Day O’Connor, who grew up within a hundred miles of so of my own hometown.”
The stories of these women, she said, have inspired her in her life and in her career and she hopes her personal fascination with literature and the archives will help inspire to future generations.
At the least, she will help the archives grow. She and the other board members have been working to raise $1 million to provide an archivist for the collection, and she said they are only months away from reaching that goal.
“When I am in the archives and look at a letter or diary that may never have been saved or preserved for the future but for these archives,” she said, “it gives me a great deal of pleasure to think that I helped at least in some small way to make that available for someone to read many years from now.”
Are you a business lawyer with a unique hobby or talent? Does one of your colleagues have a little-known pastime that would make for fun reading? Contact Jessica at Jessica.huseman@TexasLawBook.net.
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