Social Law

When she was growing up, Donna Claxton Deming outwardly said she always wanted to be a lawyer.

"That came way before I went to Yale," Deming recalled recently. "Because I was sort of a trouble-maker in school in terms of speaking my mind. And people told me you should be a lawyer," she went on with a laugh.

Deming, who grew up in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, was a first-generation college student in her family. Her parents - Deming's mother was a home-maker, and her father worked for the federal government - had a keen awareness of the importance of education. They enrolled her at a small private school in Philadelphia (Springside), where Donna blossomed as a student from the beginning of her enrollment in seventh grade.

"Even though I had the scholarship to go to this private school," said Deming, "as anyone who's gone to private school will tell you, the tuition is just part of it. There was a lot of sacrifice on my parents' part."

Some of those sacrifices undoubtedly involved Deming's athletic career, which began as a result of a sport requirement in seventh and eighth grade. Thus, came her exposure to the sport of field hockey.

All the hard work and sacrifices paid off when Deming applied and was accepted to Yale. Her classroom excellence continued in New Haven, and she also earned three varsity letters as a field hockey player. Deming then had a chance to pursue her outward goal at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She fulfilled her law school degree requirements in 1979 and set out to find her first job.

This is where the inward part of the story begins to unfold. Drawn by, as she said it, the "prestige thing," Deming started her career in corporate law with a large firm in Philadelphia. She described the work itself as boring, but then she followed up with the heart-of-the-matter statement.

"I think deep down inside what I really wanted to be was a social worker," she said. "I'm not an adversarial person, and I want everybody to get along. I think I could've been a mediator, but that wasn't what I was hired to do at the firm ... so I just left."

The high-powered world of law practice behind her, Deming instead set her sights on helping out those who wanted to be lawyers. She was hired by Temple University Law School; first, in the admissions office and then with student services and academic affairs. Then, her husband, Ned, two years older than Donna and also a Yalie, landed a job in Seattle six years ago, moving the Deming family children Andrew (14) and Sarah (9) about as far away from Philadelphia as is possible.

Now the Associate Dean for Internal Affairs at Seattle University Law School, Deming does a substantial amount of academic and personal counseling, and she coordinates all student services. "Law students are a microcosm of our society," said Deming. "They don't have the same kinds of issues as undergraduates. I've got students, for example, who are fighting custody battles where their ex-spouse files the complaint the day before their first exam. [The complainant] has attorneys who know that's when the test time is."

Deming is happy with her job and with life in the Pacific Northwest. She's very active at her children's school, and the family does "a lot" of hiking. "I really didn't want to move," recalled Deming, saying further that her whole life was back east. But Ned had moved to Philadelphia for Donna, and now it was her turn.

The quality of life answers given by Deming, in regard to Seattle, were heartening - the pace, the people, the growing-up environment for her children - but the interviewer couldn't resist the "precipitation" question. "I don't mind the rain," she laughed, "because it doesn't get really cold or really hot. I've learned to put up with it."

One of the other titles Deming has is Chair of Yale's Alumni Schools Committee for Pierce County. That means she does some interviewing of potential candidates, and when the Admissions Office comes the west coast each year she goes to the "show and tell" presentation about the university.

Any potential athletes that might cross her path will have a much different experience than women in the early days of Yale women's sports. "What I remember," she began with a chuckle, "is picking up glass and charcoal on Monday mornings after the football tailgates because that was the field we played on. When they finally gave us uniforms, they told us we'd have to wash our own uniforms. We were in the basement of the field house, whereas the guys were upstairs. The football players had managers and all that, and what they gave us was a washer to wash our clothes."

Though she hasn't been back to New Haven recently, Deming got the rare opportunity to relive her college days through her sister, who graduated from Yale in 1990. "I would give anything to relive those years with the kind of maturity I have now," she said. "There were so many opportunities that I didn't take advantage of. And when my sister was there, I'd say, `Oh, you need to do that. You need to take this seriously.' But she was 18 years old and did a lot of the same things I did."

Deming has no question about what Yale did for her, however. "I think Yale opened a lot of doors for me," she continued. "People identify Yale with the quality of education and the kinds of students they turn out. I think I had a lot of opportunities in terms of jobs because they see that on my resume."

The law profession is one that takes a beating on an almost-daily basis in the eyes of the public at large. Only when pressed did Deming offer up her philosophical explanation for that. "I think people don't really understand the role lawyers play," she began. "People are still saying, `I don't know how lawyers can defend slime balls.' Well, that's the way our system is set up. Everyone is entitled to a defense.

The other thing I'd say is that we get people who come to law school who are not very nice people, and just because they come to law school does not make them nicer. They will be the same person they were when they came here, and they will use the law in a way that I probably hope they wouldn't. But most of them who come here are really good people, and they will use the law for good. Just like in any profession, you have bad teachers, bad coaches, and it's not the profession that makes them bad, it's the kind of people they are," concluded Deming.

She probably wouldn't take all credit, what with all the different people in her life and the experiences she's had, but after 45 minutes on the telephone you get the feeling that Donna Claxton Deming is a good person.

-- Charles Yrigoyen III

***Please note, this story was written for a previous Ivy League Black History Month celebration. It is reproduced here for archival purposes and has not been updated.***