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  • Stories & Articles by Sonia

Articles and Stories by Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Sonia's unpublished article about Sarasota attorney Liz Alpert, July 11, 2015.


This morning I received an email from Jennifer Cohen, head of the Sarasota-Manatee chapter of NOW; Jen is kindly trying to arrange a vegan meal for me so I can attend this year's Women's Equity Day celebration at the Polo  Grill.

Suddenly, I had a flashback to another Women's Equity Day celebration and what an effect that had on my life, and I realized it was time to write that experience down.

Some years ago, I was walking around the booths at an earlier Women's Equity Day celebration when I noticed a stunning blond woman handing out fliers. I went over to chat with her and learned that she was Liz Alpert, an attorney with offices in Sarasota and Tampa, and she was running as a Democrat for the Florida Legislature. Thereafter, I remained in touch with Liz and supported her campaign. She was subsequently not elected.

In 2013, I received an email from Brooksley Born, chair of the American Bar Association's Senior Lawyers Division Committee overseeing the Women Trailblazers Project, whose director was Linda Ferren. She wrote that this was a project that entailed securing the interviews of senior women pioneering lawyers, judges, and academicians who had entered the profession in the 1960s and made important contributions to the law and to women lawyers.  The purpose of the Project was to capture the oral histories of these women, memorialize their stories in their own voices, and preserve their experiences and observations for future generations. Jill Norgren, professor emerita of political science at the Graduate School and University Center of the John Jay college of Criminal Justice, CUNY, is writing a book about the women included. The Project's website is here. Brooksley invited me to be included.

Naturally, I was honored and accepted. The Project required that each participant be interviewed in a series of one-two hour interviews by a local woman lawyer.

Some years ago, I was accepted as the first honorary member of the Sarasota chapter of the Florida Association of Women Lawyers.  That seemed to be the logical place for me to find an interviewer for this Project, I thought. So, I contacted an active member of that chapter and asked if any member might be interested in interviewing me. Subsequently, the woman I contacted told me that she had asked four-five members of the chapter if they would be interested in interviewing me.  None were. This was understandable. Why would a busy woman lawyer want to give up a considerable period of her time to interview me? What was in it for her?

I am a Cornell University graduate, class of 1950, and am regularly in touch with faculty, administrative staff, and students at Cornell. One of these people is Peter Cronin, associate dean for alumni affairs and development for the Cornell Law School, and I emailed him of my dilemma.  In short order, Peter emailed me back that he had found a woman lawyer in Boca Raton, FL who would be willing to come to Sarasota on the several occasions required to interview me; he further said that Cornell would fund her expenses in doing so. I couldn't believe it and was thrilled and grateful.  I asked Brooksley if this would be satisfactory. "No," she responded, the interviewer had to be a local woman attorney.

At that point, I was stumped. And then I did a ridiculous thing.  I asked Liz Alpert, a woman lawyer with offices in two cities, if she could conduct a series of interviews of me for this Project. She immediately said she'd be delighted and honored to do so.

During the next two years, Liz came to my condo on six occasions and interviewed me for one-two hours each time. Brooksley had sent her a good-sized manual of the procedures she was to follow and there was considerable paperwork involved, too.

Brooksley did all that was required, and that is why the written transcriptions of my interviews are now on the Project's website. That is also why this fall the transcriptions and the oral interviews themselves will be housed in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America in Cambridge, MA.

Earlier this year, Liz  mounted another political campaign, this time for the City Commission of Sarasota.  As one of her many supporters, I was delighted when she was elected. She now sits as one of Sarasota's five city commissioners.