Forty years ago today, September 4, 1979, I started working for Hallmark Cards. It was the day after Labor Day, summer was over, and it was time to get to work.
My husband and I had spent the summer studying for the bar exam, taking the three-day test at the end of July. Then we worried all through August whether we had passed. While we worried, we took time apart (me to Richland, Washington, to visit my parents, and him to his two-week active duty commitment with the Navy Reserve), and then we went on a long-delayed honeymoon to London.
But all the time we worried. Had we both passed the bar? It would be worse if only one of us passed than if neither did. But, of course, we hoped we both passed.
Results would be published in The Kansas City Star on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Beginning at midnight, before the newspaper was delivered, we could call The Missouri Bar office in Jefferson City to find out our results—pass or fail. Should we call or should we wait for the paper? We called. After several busy signals, we finally got through. We had both passed.
We checked the paper on Sunday for confirmation. Our names were both listed.
A friend of ours from the bar review course had passed, but his name was not published in the paper. He had a lot of explaining to do at the law firm where he worked the following week. Another friend did not pass. She had even more explaining to do.
But we had passed. And on Tuesday morning, we were ready to work. We donned our best work clothes (I only had five suitable work outfits at the time), and got on the bus for the ten-block ride from our apartment toward our jobs. I got off at the stop closest to Hallmark, and my husband continued to his law firm’s building two stops later.
I had not been given instructions as to where to go on that first morning, so I took the elevator to the Legal Division’s offices on the fifth floor. I walked into the department and saw the attorney who had interviewed me at Stanford almost a year earlier. “Mr. O____,” I said. That was the last time I called him Mr. O. We were colleagues now—I was a full-fledged attorney, no longer a lowly law student begging for a job.
They knew I was coming, but my office was not ready. I was put into another lawyer’s office, that of someone who was on vacation, and given a legal research project to do. Not much different than my law clerk jobs of the preceding two summers. The only difference was that I had to go to Personnel later that morning to sign paperwork. That was the extent of my orientation.
The Legal Division was expanding, both in terms of personnel and of office space, and it was the following week before I could move into my office. There was nothing to move but a few law books I had removed from the law library in the department. But finally, I had my own office with my name on the door. I was a real attorney.
The following weekend, my husband and I drove to Jefferson City to be formally sworn in as members of The Missouri Bar. When my turn came to step forward, the bar official proclaimed, “Mary Theresa Claudson Hupp.” The man who presented me with my certificate shook my hand and said with a patronizing smile, “My, what a big name for such a little lady.”
Such condescension toward young, short women persisted for many years. At long last, I outgrew my youth, but I remained short and female.
Nevertheless, I think over time I convinced most people I encountered that I deserved the bar certificate, the job, and more respect than I received at my swearing-in ceremony.
What do you remember about your first days of work?
