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x 109 xChapter Six Wahl for Justice Ijust happened to be standing in the right place at the right time in history ,” Rosalie told a Minneapolis reporter shortly after the tumult at the St. Cloud State University arena had died down. At that triumphant moment and always thereafter, she assigned credit for her professional success to lucky timing and the assistance of others, especially other women. She rode the “second wave” women’s movement of the twentieth century that was washing over Minnesota, she often said. If she saw herself as a new leader of that movement, she didn’t make that claim. But those who had been doing the leading welcomed her to their ranks. Koryne Horbal, the DFL feminist general, approached Rosalie at a reception shortly after her appointment, took her hand, and said words Rosalie never forgot: “Thank you for being ready.” Another DFL Feminist Caucus founder, Yvette Oldendorf of Lake Elmo, made a similarly lasting impression when she told Rosalie, “I used to wonder on those cold winter nights when I would drive thirty miles alone in the dark to speak to five or six women, why I was doing it. Now I know.”1 Rosalie keenly felt the weight of being a standard-bearer for her gender . “The only concern I have is not to fail the people who share my concerns,” she told one Minneapolis reporter in the days after she returned home from St. Cloud. She told another: “Probably there were many women before me who were eminently more qualified than I. And probably in the future, women won’t have to wait as long” for such posts.2 Rosalie herself still had four months to wait. Perpich had announced his choice well in advance of the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Harry MacLaughlin to the federal bench. MacLaughlin finally got that nod on September 16. Rosalie’s swearing-in ceremony was set for October 3 in “ 110 x Rosalie Wahl and the Minnesota Women’s Movement the ornate supreme court chamber that dominates the east wing of the capitol. That delay gave Rosalie one last, sweet summer of comparative leisure , but not of privacy. She had become an object of curiosity to many Minnesotans and a target of resentment by some ambitious male attorneys who deemed themselves more deserving of gubernatorial favor. Those sentiments swirled around the Twin Cities’ courts-covering beat reporters, who kept calling Rosalie for interviews. “On the surface, Rosalie Wahl is that soft little Quaker woman, but there’s a fiery core there,” reported Gwenyth Jones of the Minneapolis Star, quoting an unnamed Wahl friend. The quotable lines she got from Rosalie are the careful words of a committed but politically prudent femi­ nist. Rosalie allowed that a female could have something to contribute to a court’s outlook that males don’t have—and vice versa. “I’m sure men would think there was something missing if there were a court sitting up there made up of nine women,” Rosalie told Jones. The reporter noted that among the eight male justices with whom Rosalie would be seated, two had been criminal prosecutors, but none had Rosalie’s background as a defense attorney. A consummate beat reporter who was herself a gender pioneer in her profession, Jones had undoubtedly picked up comments about Rosalie’s atypical supreme court qualifications from courthouse sources—men more willing to suggest that Wahl was unqualified than to openly disparage her gender or lament the fact that the state’s judicial candidate pool had just been significantly enlarged.3 An editorial in the June 9 edition of the Circulating Pines weekly newspaper—the publication that Rosalie helped found in 1951 as a “volunteer editor”—revealed a bit more about the “fiery core” to which Jones alluded: “Even 25 years ago people who knew Rosalie Wahl recognized she had more than ordinary strength and ability. Hers has not been an easy life. There have been sorrows and disappointments as well as singing and recognition. But all the experiences she has had have been preparing her for this important job on the highest court in the state. We are confident she will bring not only knowledge of the law but compassion into her decisions.”4 Interest in Rosalie and her appointment also brought her a wave of speaking invitations in the summer of 1977. Those invitations stirred the teacher in her. They were her chance to explain to average Minnesotans [18.191.211.66...

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