Dear Editor:
Judge Reva Beck Bosone has served as a role model and inspiration to many Utah women who have desired to become lawyers. I was reminded of this recently and decided to write concerning my limited experience with Judge Bosone.
Judge Bosone became the first Judicial Officer in what was then the Post Office. Since that time the Postal Service became a semi-independent agency in the Federal Government.
I graduated from Stanford Law School in 1959, a time when it was extremely difficult for women to get employment in law firms or private business. Thanks to the Utah State Bar in 1998, I found out I was the 40th woman admitted to the Utah Bar. I was also admitted to the California Bar. To find employment I moved to the Washington, D.C. area and obtained positions with the Federal Government, including eight years on the Department of Interior’s Board of Land Appeals and then in 1980 I moved to the Postal Service’s Board of Contract Appeals within the Judicial Department.
I learned then that I was only the second woman employed as an Administrative Judge in that Department – Judge Bosone and myself. We were both from Utah. Some of our support staff had worked with Judge Bosone. They had very favorable comments about her work and about her as a boss.
I had the privilege of meeting Judge Bosone at a luncheon for graduates of the University of Utah’s Law School to which I had been invited. Though Judge Bosone was very old then and quite frail she still had that indomitable spirit which marked her legal and legislative career. I feel privileged to have followed somewhat in her footsteps.
Joan Bear Thompson