Alice Plymell
Photo By Calvin Jones
Female attorney Alice Plymell:
Pew accuse me of being a lady ’
By PAULA ROSS
Of the Emerald
The office is small, two rooms. The
reception area is divided from the recep
tionist’s desk by a counter. Sitting at the
reception desk is a small, bright-eyed woman,
who, it turns out, is Alice Plymell, Attorney at
Law.
She speaks haltingly and with a little
difficulty, but it isn’t until she gets up from
the desk to lead to the second room, her office,
that it becomes obvious she is badly crippled.
Alice Pymell graduated from the
University School of Law in 1963. She was the
only woman in her graduating class. She is
now the only woman in Eugene with a private
law practice. Despite this singular position,
Plymell says she “thoroughly enjoyed” her
years in law school.
She felt no different from the rest of her
classmates and says she was treated no
differently by her instructors.
She grew up always with the idea of
becoming a lawyer. Discouraged by her
family, she became even more determined to
achieve her goal of a general law practice.
And that’s exactly what she has today.
She describes the first five years of
practice on her own (she had previously been
an associate of another lawyer before opening
her office) as “rugged, making a starvation
wage.”
She now has clients, from all kinds of
social backgrounds who have heard of her, or
who have been referred to her by other at
torneys.
There still lingers with the general public,
however, the stereotype that women cannot
succeed in law because they aren’t fighters.
The same attitude, she says, exists about
handicapped people. And Plymell is both
female and handicapped. But no matter,
Plymell says, her eyes twinkling, “Very few
people accuse me of being a lady.”
She has no particular association with
other women in law, partly because there
aren’t that many women practicing. Her
identification with the women’s movement
consists largely of her feeling that equal
payment for equal work is vital. She feels it is
important to convince the public that, given
the proper training, a woman in law can do a
job as well as a man.
Adamantly against the preferential
admission of women to law schools, Plymell
feels she was given no special treatment or
attention because of her sex or physical
disability. All she asked for an received was
equal treatment; that, she says, should be
adequate for anyone.
Though disavowing any strong ties to the
feminist movement, it is obvious that Plymell
is aware of resistance to women in
professions, particularly in hiring practices.
And she has on occassion encountered overt
male disapproval of females pursuing in
dependent careers.
She related one incident about a lawyer
who told her that he felt women belonged in
the home being wives and mothers. What, she
indignantly wanted to ask him but refrained
from doing, was a woman to do then if she
one, was not married and two, had not
children?
Her law practice keeps her very busy.
She does the research for all her own cases,
and is in her office by 7:30 or 7:45 a.m. In
addition, she was just recently elected a
member of the board of directors of the Lane
County Council on Alcoholism (L.C.C.A.). She
also serves as the chairman of Behanna
House, a rehabilitation center for women
alcoholics.
The involvement in programs for
alcoholics is a direct result of some of her
legal work. She saw many of her clients’
problems as consequences of drinking, either
their own or someone elses. And that in
dicated to her the need for some kind of
program that dealt with those issues.
It’s hard to imagine anyone not having
confidence in this spunky woman. She sees
herself as capable and competent and she’s
full of unexpected humorous jabs at herself
and the often times stodgy legal world in
which she obviously feels at home. She is
totally convincing about her ability to deal
with the man’s world of law on her own in
dividual terms.
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Area drivers beware-more radar traps
signal increased traffic enforcement plan
By SCOTT DALTON
Of the Emerald
You can expect to see an
increased number of radar traps
in the Eugene — Lane County
area over the next four months.
Lane County Sheriff David
Burks and Eugene Assistant
Chief of Police John Rutledge
announced the start of a federally
funded program of increased
traffic enforcement at a Monday
morning news conference.
“While our officers will be
watching for all hazardous traffic
law violations, their main con
cerns will be to slow down the
speeder and to watch for and
arrest drivers who are under the
influence of alcohol or drugs.”
The program is called Fatal
Accident Reduction Enforcement
(F.A.R.E.)
Burks explained that the
money was granted to the Oregon
Traffic Safety Commission by the
National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration. The state
commission appropriated grants
of $30,000 to both the city and the
county.
The funds will be used to pay
overtime to officers who will
have extra patrols in high ac
cident areas during the next four
months. Included in the areas of
increased concentration are
River Road and McKenzie High
way.
The money was given to Lane
County and Eugene because they
rate among the six top areas in
traffic accident occurence in
Oregon.
“We expect to have ap
proximately 158 man-hours of
overtime in the Police Depart
ment each week,” said Rutledge.
The county will add about 110
man hours of overtime per week.
The departments will use
radar in high accident areas
during the most hazardous hours
Read the Emerald Classifieds
of driving. Burks stated that
studies indicate peak accident
hours run from 7 to 10 a.m. and
4:30 to 7 p.m.
“The next four months are
the worst accident period during
the entire year for Lane County,”
said Burks.
Police Sergeant Larry
Spencer will be the F.A.R.E.
Field Supervisor in Eugene.
“We’ll be working mostly
early morning and evening
hours,” said Spencer. “I don’t
know why, but Wednesday night
is the worst night of the week,” he
added.
Neither department intends
to hire new patrolmen as a result
of receiving the funds. “Our
training program runs four
months,” explained Rutledge,
“we would not be able to use a
new man after the funds ran out
anyway.” Neither Rutledge or
Burks anticipated the grant being
renewed.
Spencer was asked how the
hours of overtime would be
assigned. “The men sign up for it
on a voluntary basis. The over
time is granted according to
seniority,” he said.
Police Chief Dale Allen was
away on vacation and did not
attend the announcement.