On May 1, a day devoted to celebrating the rule of law and its contributions to freedom, Selma Cash Paty had a nightcap and went to bed.
The 89-year-old pioneer attorney never woke up. Her family said Paty died from natural causes.
Paty was an institution in Chattanooga.
The revered attorney had served as president of the Chattanooga Bar Association and president of the Chattanooga Trial Lawyers Association. She was a member of the National Association of Trial Advocates, a member of the Juvenile Court Commission and a member of the Tennessee Commission on the Status of Women. She argued a case before the Tennessee Supreme Court at a time when male judges thought women shouldn't practice law. And she fiercely believed in defending the disenfranchised against the courts system and the political villains of the world - "thus always to tyrants."
"She feared no one, and everyone feared her," said attorney Brandy Spurgin.
But family, friends and colleagues on Wednesday best remembered "Sunny," the queenly woman who pioneered the way for other female attorneys. The one who posed in a leopard-skin blouse when reporters interviewed her during her first murder trial. And the one who drove a red convertible with the top down. Who once said of practicing law: "I love the power. I love the money. I love the glory. Amen."
"I did have one domestic matter with her," said longtime defense maverick Jerry Summers. "She was kind of putting it to my client pretty good. So I tried it out on her client and got on her pretty good. And she said, 'Jerry, you shouldn't get on me like that, I'm a lady.' And I said, 'Well, when you act like a lady, I'll treat you like one.' She could be tough as nails."
Born March 2, 1927, in New York City, Paty moved to Chattanooga when she was 10 years old. Her father came from Russia, without his parents, and after years of sleeping on concrete floors and sewing shirts he became a peddler, then a manufacturer, then went broke as the Great Depression ravaged the American economy. He looked for cheap labor in the South and ultimately opened a factory on 11th Street.
Growing up, Paty wanted to be a journalist. Convinced there was a program, she followed her husband to Cumberland University.
"And so she got up there and they only had seminary and law," said her oldest child, attorney Pamela O'Dwyer. "And we're Jewish, so you can't do seminary."
That left law.
And Paty studied it with a fervor, earning perfect marks while her male classmates pushed young Pamela up and down the hallway in a pram. As a 4- or 5-year-old, they would ask Pamela: "Are you going to be a lawyer when you grow up?"
As an adult, O'Dwyer found herself assisting Paty on cases. She marveled at her mother's ability to maneuver deftly while being extremely feminine, to balance the holy and the profane.
"I remember this one really, really funny story where she was doing a jury trial and I was assisting her," O'Dwyer said. "She went to the ladies room and when she came back in, she was walking past the jury, and some toilet paper hung on the back of her skirt and was trailing out. And I'm running behind her, trying to jump on her to stop it. And she went, 'Nothing to worry about' and snapped it off and tossed it away like it was intentional."
On Wednesday, O'Dwyer flipped through old newspaper clippings of her mother. Staring at a large mural of Paty, O'Dwyer began to sing "Yiddishe Momme," a vaudevillian classic she used to perform for Paty:
"My Yiddishe Momme, I love her more than ever/My Yiddishe Momme, I'd love to kiss her wrinkled brow/Oh I know that I owe what I am today/To that dear little woman so old and grey."
"And she said I had a terrible voice," O'Dwyer said. "What kind of mother would say that to her daughter?"
Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at zpeter son@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347 with story ideas or tips. Follow @zackpeterson918.