Lizabeth A. Moody

Lizabeth A. Moody July 29, 2009; August 19, 2009; September 18, 2009; November 2, 2009; November 16, 2009; November 19, 2009 Recommended Transcript of Interview with Lizabeth A. Moody (July 29, 2009; Aug. 19, Citation 2009; Sept. 18, 2009; Nov. 2, 2009; Nov. 16, 2009; Nov. 19, 2009), https://abawtp.law.stanford.edu/exhibits/show/lizabeth-a-moody. Attribution The American Bar Association is the copyright owner or licensee for this collection. Citations, quotations, and use of materials in this collection made under fair use must acknowledge their source as the American Bar Association. Terms of Use This oral history is part of the American Bar Association Women Trailblazers in the Law Project, a project initiated by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and sponsored by the ABA Senior Lawyers Division. This is a collaborative research project between the American Bar Association and the American Bar Foundation. Reprinted with permission from the American Bar Association. All rights reserved. Contact Please contact the Robert Crown Law Library at Information [email protected] with questions about the ABA Women Trailblazers Project. Questions regarding copyright use and permissions should be directed to the American Bar Association Office of General Counsel, 321 N Clark St., Chicago, IL 60654-7598; 312-988-5214. ABA Senior Lawyers Division Women Trarlblazers in the Law ORAL HISTORY of LIZABETH MOODY Interviewer: Ellen Podgor Dates of Interviews: July 29, 2009 August19,2009 September 18, 2009 November 2, 2009 November 16, 2009 November 19, 2009 Tape 1 Transcription of E. Podgor and L. Moody This is the Women Trailblazers Project. It is July 29, 2009, and we are in Gulfport, Florida. My name is Ellen Podgor and I am interviewing Lizabeth Moody. Hello. Could you tell us where you were born? Easy enough. I was born in Johnson City, Tennessee. And what do you recall about your early years growing up there? Well I was born in the middle of the great depression, sounds familiar now, and I was the only child of a very poor family - still recovering from the Civil War. And my father was a laborer in the lumber companies near Johnson City. Then came World War II and my parents moved to Dayton, Ohio because by that time my father had lost his job and there was no work in the Appalachian area and so my parents went to Dayton, Ohio, where my uncle had gone in advance, looking for work. I stayed in Johnson City and went to school; I lived with my grandmother for several years before I joined my parents in Ohio. What was it like growing up with your grandmother? My grandmother was an interesting lady. She had had six children and therefore nothing really fazed her. My mother's family were involved in farming and they also had a grocery store. My grandfather died at an early age. Therefore my grandmother was responsible for the six children. Although by that time my mother's brothers had been in World War I. It was interesting; here again was an example that I think happened all over the U.S. in that the male members of the family got very good educations but the female members were overlooked when it came to college. My mother and her brothers and sisters had gone to a one room school. It was an amazing school because they learned Latin and Greek, modern and medieval history and how to write. My grandfather had insisted that they each go to school all summer learning penmanship because he wasn't going to have children who couldn't write. On the other hand my father never really went to school and could not read or write. About all he could do was the headlines in the newspapers. What's your first memory of going to school there? I started school in the first_grade. There was no such thing as kindergartens at that time. walked to school every day. But I was a sick child. I was always catching things at school. First it was the measles, then it was the mumps and then was this that or the other thing. So mostly I stayed home and my mother tutored me through much of my early education. 1 What types of things did she tutor you on? What sort of subjects or what do you recall learning back then? Interestingly enough I learned Latin. When I got to high school they didn't really know what to do with me because I had already had Latin I, so they put me into two Latin courses, both I and II at the same time. And so I spent a long time on reading and I won some prizes for reading, and writing English literature; - all of these things I learned at home. My mother always sent away for the books that the schools used because she really didn't think that the books given out by the public schools were clean. So where did she send for the books -- to the companies, the publishers? She would get the companies to send her the books and she paid for them. I always had my own set of books. Do you recall the types of books you used to read? Was there any special literature that you focused on in the early years? I learned how to read with Dick and Jane. Wrong! I think a number of us who learned to read with Dick and Jane now have problems in spelling because we didn't learn phonetics, we learned Dick and Jane. I was working with a friend of mine several years ago who was the same age as I. He also had Dick and Jane. He had graduated from Harvard the same year I graduated from Yale and neither of us could spell. We were working with someone who had gone to more regional schools who said he could spell. We could not spell, despite all of our education. So I use a dictionary all the time. During the early years were you active in any kind of activities outside of school? Generally yes. My mother was the head of the school at the church. So I learned to do speeches all of time. When I was four years old I was giving speeches at the church. Little things that I memorized. That was one of the things I did a lot. I went to church Vacation Bible School and we were, fundamentalists and we did not for example, cook on Sundays. We always cooked on Saturdays. In my grandmother's house there was always a lot of people at dinner on Sunday after church. What was it like holiday time? Holidays were big things. Christmas was amazing in that everybody celebrated Christmas. Of course we always went to my grandmother's house with the whole family. Even on non holiday times, everybody gathered around the piano and sang all the hymns, all the Christmas carols. So it was a nice family. And did you learn to play the piano? Not very well. I always have a piano in my house, but I did learn to play the cello. The school gave me a cello and I took cello lessons for years and years and years until I went to college and then I gave up the cello. When I was in high school I played with maybe six different orchestras. When I went to high school I had moved to Dayton, Ohio and I was very much involved in all of the high school activities. I was in the band. I couldn't play the cello in the band so I got a clarinet and took lessons. I was of course in the orchestra. I was in the theatre groups. The 2 best thing that happened to me; I was the chairman of a Junior Achievement company. We were very successful - we printed a newspaper. It was sold throughout all of the schools in Dayton, Ohio where my parents and I then lived. When I graduated from high school I received a four year scholarship. I could go to any school in New York and choose Barnard of Columbia University. My job in return for that was that I was to be the associate editor of their magazine and later the editor of their magazine that they put out for other students who were members of Junior Achievement. Did you have any thought in your mind, back then, of becoming a lawyer? Yes. No question about it. I remember asking my father if I could be a lawyer because I'd been told women could not be lawyers. He said he didn't see any reason I couldn't be a lawyer. And I remember my first day in high school they went around the class and they said what are you going to do when you graduate from high school or college and I said I'm going to be a lawyer and everybody laughed. So that was the way it was. Tell me a little bit about between elementary school to high school, there was no middle school then? No that's right. And so what was it like the transition, who were you living with then and what was going on in your life then? Well I was living with my parents then. And I went in the ninth grade because there was no middle school. Although, the local school had a ninth grade and there was a great decision making process as to whether I would stay at the local school or go to the downtown high school.

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