Ruth M. Paven was among the first women admitted to Harvard Law School, then transferred before her final year and in 1953 became the first woman to graduate from Georgetown University Law Center.
After returning to Massachusetts she represented the Woodward School for Girls, her alma mater in her hometown of Quincy, which she credited with laying the foundation for her pioneering legal career. The late founder, Dr. Ebenezer Woodward, had left money for a private school that would educate Quincy-born girls. He specified in his will that if the school failed to do so, his endowment should revert to his alma mater, Dartmouth College.
Facing higher operating costs and fluctuating enrollments in the late 1960s, the private Woodward School decided to admit girls from other towns and charge them more tuition than Quincy girls, and Dartmouth went after the endowment in court. To help keep her alma mater open, Mrs. Paven took the case all the way to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which rejected Dartmouth’s claim in 1970.
“She was a champion for Woodward at every turn,’’ the school’s current head, Carol Andrews, said in remarks last month to students during annual Founder’s Night festivities, which were dedicated this year to Mrs. Paven. “Her many achievements mainly focused on advancing and helping others and her sense of responsibility and civic virtue make her a singular role model to the young women of the Woodward School.’’
Mrs. Paven, who spent much of her legal career representing the Massachusetts Nurses Association and state divisions of labor and capital planning, died from complications of dementia March 21 in the Linden Ponds retirement community in Hingham. She was 86.
“She was just a wonderful person, extremely practical and likable. She had great relations with everyone she came across,’’ said Robert P. Garrity, an attorney who was counsel for the state’s capital planning and operations division in the early 1980s when he hired Mrs. Paven based on her expertise in state bidding laws.
Her skills and friendly demeanor won respect from those in the predominantly male world of state construction contracts then, he said. “They all loved Ruth because she was fair and she knew her business. I can’t think of one person who didn’t respect her, even if they disagreed with her,’’ Garrity said.
Born in Weymouth and raised in Quincy, Mrs. Paven was the only child of Hyman Marshall and the former Ann Nankin. Her father, who emigrated from Eastern Europe, was an engineer who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and ran his own home heating oil business. Her mother had studied piano at New England Conservatory.
“They raised my mother without limitations,’’ said her son, Andrew of Hingham.
After graduating from the Woodward School in 1946, Mrs. Paven went to Radcliffe College, where she majored in English. Upon graduation, she told her family, the world appeared to hold only three career options: She could become a teacher, a secretary, or a junior editor at a publishing house with little opportunity to advance into senior ranks.
Instead, she opted for Harvard Law School, where she was among the first women admitted. She would later recall to her family that there were no restroom accommodations for women.
“She had to walk across campus to pee,’’ said her daughter Nathalie of San Francisco.
In law school, she met Nathan Paven, a World War II veteran who was two years ahead of her. They married in June 1952 and he worked in Washington while she continued her law studies at Harvard.
Unhappy at living in a different city, Mrs. Paven transferred to Georgetown in Washington after two years at Harvard, just as that law school began admitting women. The move earned her a place in Georgetown’s history as its first female law school graduate.
The Pavens eventually settled back in Quincy, where they raised three children and Mrs. Paven volunteered for the League of Women Voters. Gender discrimination made it difficult for her to find work as a lawyer, her family said.
She loved music and often would break into show tunes and comic songs for her children.
“We grew up on Tom Lehrer,’’ said Andrew, who recalled that he and his siblings drew strange looks from neighbors when they sang the musical satirist’s songs, such as “The Vatican Rag’’ and “Who’s Next?’’ — a ditty about nations achieving nuclear weapons capability.
In 1968, Mrs. Paven landed a job as general counsel for the Massachusetts Nurses Association and later went to work for the state’s capital planning and operations division and the Massachusetts Port Authority.
She recounted to her family a legal meeting in which she was the only woman at the table. The men involved sat quietly waiting for another attorney to arrive until they realized that Mrs. Paven was the person they were waiting for. The sexist slight didn’t seem to bother her much.
“She was not easily outraged,’’ said Nathalie, who is a social worker and who added that her mother “was kind and silly and smart. She was the most capable person I ever met.’’
In addition to her husband, Nathan, her son, Andrew, and daughter Nathalie, Mrs. Paven leaves another daughter, Melissa of Marietta, Ga.; and three granddaughters.
A service has been held and burial was in the Pine Hill Cemetery in Quincy.
In May 2011, during the Woodward School’s annual fund-raising dinner, Mrs. Paven and another alumna were honored as Woodward Women of Distinction and presented with Baccarat crystal shooting star trophies.
“Whatever success I have achieved in life, I attribute to Woodward,’’ Mrs. Paven told attendees, according to an account in the Patriot Ledger of Quincy.
J.M. Lawrence can be reached at jmlawrence@me.com.
