56 years ago this April I was born in Reno, Nevada during the war. Suppose that brought out the risk-taker in me from which instinct I feel my life truly has been blessed.

Since Reno I have lived in: Oberlin, Ohio. A small town of 7,000 people including 2,000 college students. My father taught Mathematics at Oberlin College (the first college to admit women and African Americans in 1833). My mother performed many good works for humanity as a volunteer. I was raised with two brothers and a sister - very naive, for example, until I went to college I never realized a person's last name indicated anything of significance about them. In Oberlin I was as free as a bird. For example, I wanted to walk home alone from nursery school at the age of 3. My mother was reluctant to let me do this. When the nursery school teacher told her if she did not let me go now, I would rebel later, she agreed. Just think what it would have been like had she not given me freedom then!

Charlevoix, Michigan. I spent a short year here in sixth grade when my father was on sabbatical writing one of his text books. While in Charlevoix, I experienced discrimination for the first time. I drank out of a drinking fountain after one of the native Chippewa Indians. People I thought were my friends didn't speak to me for days.

Oberlin, Ohio again for my teenage years. I learned my friends were my friends, giving me their piece of mind and, at the same time, standing by me through thick and thin. Oberlin as a community prided itself on acceptance of all races. I fell in love with Delbert, the quarterback on the football team who also played center at basketball - he just happened to be African American. After walking to lunch one day holding hands, the high school faculty sent an emissary to talk with my parents and let them know what was going on. What had happened to the community that prided itself on acceptance of all? What I was told and what was my reality seemed to be very different. The issues raised between me and my mother were finally healed in my 30s and with my father in my 40s. It took me that long to accept them for who they were at the time. After 3 years together Delbert and I parted as a couple. We connected again some 15 years later. We are good friends today.

Appleton, Wisconsin. I began college at what is now known as Lawrence University. I met my first husband. I participated in Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War activities - eventually finding myself uncomfortable on what came to feel like an extreme fringe.

Ann Arbor, Michigan. I married (for safety's sake) and finished college at the University of Michigan (undoubtedly because my father told me when I got married he didn't think I ever would). I continued as a community activist following in my parents' footsteps (both my parents always were active in their community. My father came from a long line of missionaries to China and India, so I come by this bent honestly). I also gave birth to my two children who are very dear to me, Tommy (now 33 living in New York, Divisional VP of Visual Merchandising for Coach) and Margaret (now 29 living in Boston, Assistant to the Curator of the Poetry Room at Harvard and editing her own magazine - "Compost" - a collection of creative writing and poetry distributed in the U.S. and elsewhere).

Paris and Lyon, France for 1 1/2 years. My husband worked on his dissertation, and I cared for Tom and Margaret and soaked up different sights, smells, sounds and experiences.

Evanston, Illinois. I fell out of love with my husband for reasons which are the subject of a more personal story. I continued to raise Tom and Margaret and was a community organizer, often referred to by the "powers that be" as one of the local "jackals". When I was 30, having been told once too often my "good works" would be reviewed by the city attorney, I entered law school. My swan song in Evanston was running 94 precincts for a successful gubernatorial campaign during my first year in law school.

Chicago, Illinois. I received my law degree at age 33. I married a wonderful man, Tim Griffin, who, to this day, makes my heart sing. His mother did tell me never to marry anyone until I met someone I felt I could not stand to live without. She was right about that. I served as Chair of the State Human Rights Commission - appointed by Governor Dan Walker. I was appointed by President Jimmy Carter and served as Chair of the National Advisory Council for Women's Educational Programs - a Presidential council created to develop programs to encourage compliance with Title IX Amendments to the Civil Rights Act.

Following law school, I started my own law firm because no law firm hired me. Firms were hiring women, if any, who were young 23 year olds. No one yet recognized what we older women later did in retrospect: we put our hearts and souls into our work with a passion for the work as well as a fear we might not measure up to the work of the "younger and brighter" 23 year olds (usually men). Firms who hired us, we later increasingly would recognize, got much more for less money. Quite simply, I learned to "eat nails for breakfast" as one of my later partners used to say. I did well enough representing plaintiffs in employment discrimination litigation that defendants who my plaintiffs had sued asked me to represent them in defending cases brought against them (2 of my clients were with me for some 20 years). I like to think there has been a shift in their behavior. There certainly has been a broadening of my own awareness and perception. The first case I tried was brought in federal court before Judge Julius Hoffman of the "Chicago 7" and Abbie Hoffman fame, who by then was much older and doddered off the bench at lunch timeappearing to come back only to take his afternoon nap. There were 2 high lights of the trial: Judge Hoffman praised me daily from the bench for how I was dressed. (I witnessed Judge Hoffman's lambasting of several women who showed up in his court room in pants suits during the 7 week trial.) Opposing counsel told me in open court to tell my client to "go get F'd". The judge was too hard of hearing to hear this comment, and I was too "green" to take advantage of the opportunity. Opposing counsel returned the following Monday telling me he had prayed for forgiveness while he was in church over the weekend. A sign of how this case would end came when I had a dream in which Judge Hoffman gave me the decision on toilet paper that seemed to unwind forever. One aspect of the case did go all the way to the Supreme Court - my argument prevailed. When I went to give my argument to the court and was waiting in the Attorneys' Waiting Room for my case to be called, I needed, suddenly and not surprisingly, to go to the bathroom. There was a door in the waiting room marked "Men". I asked the Bailiff where I could go to the bathroom and he pointed down a long hall to the public women's bathroom. A year later after telling this story many times, Sandra Day O'Connor was confirmed as a Justice. I wrote to her suggesting she remedy this by removing the sign "Men" and replacing it with "Bathroom" and a lock on the door. She wrote back saying "the wheels of justice grind slowly" and she hoped by the next time I was there the situation would have been corrected. Last year a woman who presented an argument to the court in an interview on the radio commented on this same situation - nothing had been changed - maybe by the year 2000?

I merged my practice with a medium-sized law firm. I represented clients establishing precedential standards fordecision-making in handicap discrimination and fair housing cases, while continuing to represent employers in defense of some claims. I won the highest verdict for a strip search case in the country at the time. Women had been routinely strip searched after every arrest in Chicago from 1953- 1979. Men had not. The City said this was because women had more places to hide things than men. The City lost, appealed, and the Seventh Circuit said the City was wrong. The mini-trials that followed included one for Joan W, a young Orthodox Jewish woman who had just moved to Chicago to take up her residency as a psychiatrist at Hines Hospital for the mentally ill. She had been in Chicago six weeks when she had her first weekend off. She and her sister got in the car to go to the Art Institute and went the wrong way down a one-way street. She was stopped by the cops, taken to 11th and State where she was strip-searched by 5 burly matrons who told her if she did not strip for them they "would do it for her." Joan W never had undressed in front of anyone. As the trial approached she agreed to settle for $35,000 and a written apology from Mayor Harold Washington. Whether Corporation Counsel's Office ever asked Mayor Washington or not,no apology was forthcoming, so we went to trial. The verdict of the jury was $112,000, $14,000 of the $20,000 requested for each of the adjectives used by the appellate court to describe the strip search: "humiliating," "embarrassing," "demeaning," etc.

The light by now was dawning on me that in most cases, there was a better way to manage conflict. I trained as a mediator. I merged my practice with a large law firm where I served as head of the Employment Litigation Department. My office was between the 2 moguls of the firm. I kept raisins, nuts and candy kisses on my desk.By the time I left I knew every secret in the firm. Every time anyone came to pay homage to the moguls they stopped at my desk to tell me part of their story.

I trained staff attorneys to manage litigation, and set about the business of shifting my focus. I began to work with both plaintiffs and defendants (employees and employers) in a much different way - asking them what they wanted, including them in strategy and decision-making, and generally fostering independence (the only lawyer I knew at the time whose goal was to teach clients techniques for solving problems and to work myself out of a job). I worked with corporate clients as they Downsized or closed businesses Merged departments Transitioned key employees Started new ventures Resolved disputes and threatened litigation. I coached individuals as they; transitioned out of their positions, sought to resolve disputes with their employers, started new businesses and sought to enhance their management skills. I didn't really do the hard work; my clients did. I just helped them maintain their focus. The result was clients who were more discerning about when and how they spent their time, energy and money, and who discovered they did not have to go to their lawyer every time they turned around if they just used basic common sense in managing human relationships.

My work there was done, and on April Fool's Day in 1988 I went home. I opened an office in our loft in Printers' Row, and continued to work with clients who sought me out while I looked for what I wanted - something I later discovered was simpler than I had imagined - a quieter joyful life.

Going home to our loft also gave me the opportunity to nurse Tim's mother for a month as she made her final transition in our home - a more personal story for another time.

Beverly Shores, Indiana. My heart has always been in Beverly Shores ever since my very first visit. I fell in love with Tim here. When we were married we built a house overlooking Lake Michigan. When people who were first meeting us would ask us where we lived, I always said "We live in Chicago, but our hearts are really in Beverly Shores." As I continued to search for who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do when I grew up, Tim encouraged me in my down time in Chicago to "go to the Dunes, Suzy. Take a break." I did. It felt so right. Eventually I becamelicensed to practice law in Indiana.

My work continued in its shift to the management of human relationships. Increasingly I was drawn to managing human relationships in the context of Health Care concerns whether you are a hospital, a third-party-payor, doctor, nurse, patient, or family member. Four years ago I returned to law school and I received my degree as Master of Health Law. From this experience I gained three things: An understanding of what I have learned in 20 years; A good grounding in health law as it applies to managing human relationships, An awareness that this part of my life - my "practice" of law - was complete. I decided it was time to give myself a reward. I gave myself something I had been promising myself for 10 years. My mother taught me to knit when I was 12. By college I was knitting a sweater a year. By law school I had at least 3 projects under construction at a time. By the time I left Chicago I was producing some 16 sweaters a year of my own design. I decided to learn to weave - something my Soul really appreciates. At the same time, as a new member of the Michigan City Area Chamber of Commerce (near Beverly Shores), I created and now manage the Women in Management Mentoring or Partnership Program with Even-Start. This program pairs working women in the Michigan City community with young women with children in high school or finishing their GEDs. I also volunteered as a new member of the Michigan City Rotary Club to manage their mentoring program (STRIVE) which pairs business and retired people with students who initially are in the lowest 1/3 of their high school class as sophomores and follow them through graduation. One thing has led to another, and I now consult with the Michigan City Area Schools, among others, to create and support mentoring programs at all school levels. I also use several techniques, including one called Life Mask (which I developed several years ago for team building in a corporate setting) to "bond" these mentoring partnerships at the out-set. Promotional videos and other materials are available (just had to get a plug in).

For the past 4 years I have been "dropping out" one day each month to go to the Westville Correctional Center where I work with Maximum and Minimum Security prisoners in their art program. This is where I have found the freedom to develop techniques encouraging positive human interaction. Much of the material for these workshops and seminars I now do for corporate groups and mentoring programs originates at Westville. When I first came to Michigan City I joined the Michigan City Bar Association hoping to be of service to the community in which I was working. I discovered the Michigan City Bar Association is not a service organization. I joined Rotary for 2 reasons: It is in my blood. My first memory of Rotary is at the age of 4 when I went to Rotaryin Cleveland with my grandfather. My father is an avid member of Rotary. Rotary is a service organization - the heart of which is my first love - human interaction. Today, almost at 56, I feel very lucky. I have given myself permission to just be me.

Adapted from a Biographical Presentation for Rotary (required with new membership) April 3, 1997