Martha Hodges

is honored with a Medium Paver from Paul Arabia, S. Christine Gutierrez

A Memory

Pictures of Martha fail to show her intelligence, her self-deprecating humor and her laughter. Like photographs of her heroine, Susan B. Anthony, they seem too serious and without the whimsy that was part of their lives. Martha was a complex and simple "character" all in the same breath. She was one of those special people who born out of time. Perhaps, she was born exactly one hundred years too late as Martha Rebecca Hodges in Wichita, KS, on May 18, 1943, to Dorsey and Mary Hodges. She was raised in "Hilltop Manor," a war built housing project. She could and did throw an occasional punch when bullies messed with her brother Winston. She went to Wichita schools and graduated from Valley Center in 1961. Early on, she learned from the neighborhood boys to be tough, a lesson that lingered. She would need that later when her mom killed herself and Martha found her body, an event that changed her life.

Had she been born in the century before, she would have joined the movement for the emancipation of women. She would have been too young to have signed the declaration of principles at the Seneca Falls Convention; however, if she'd then lived to be an old woman she would have rejoiced when women belatedly received the vote in 1919. The emancipation of both women and men from conventional assigned social roles was in her nature. She was, in truth, an honest-to-God humanist, although she did not verbally walk away from those who wanted to call her a feminist as a put-down. Martha did not suffer fools in silence; to paraphrase Queen Victoria, there were occasions during which she was not amused.

Martha preferred to do things in life rather than being told what to do. As a kid, she took part in 4-H activities such as woodworking. Since her dad Dorsey worked at a car dealership, Martha and Winston would "test drive" some of the fastest cars on the lot. She liked cars; and as a child, had a "heavy foot."

Martha graduated from KU undergraduate school in 1965. Armed with speech and English courses, she quickly finished law school. Martha's goal was to become a real working attorney with all of the rights and privileges, not just a "paper jockey." Lael Alkire, a prominent advocate, said she could do it; and Martha, with his encouragement and as a member of his firm, shattered the glass ceiling that then held the painfully few (3) Wichita women lawyers down. She liked to "fight with the boys," and it was an almost an all-male lawyers club in 1968. She started in private practice as an associate with Alkire, Clausing, Coldsnow & Bradley, and later became a senior staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Wichita in the beginning days of that entity. She joined Terry O'Keefe in a lawsuit against Eagle-Picher Mining Company of Galena and "Big Brutus," the world's largest steam shovel. She liked the trenches of legal warfare and had the guts, instincts and brains that earned her hard won respect from opposing male lawyers; then almost the entire bar. She was the first of the females at the local bar to actually try cases by herself, just like the male lawyers.

For fun, Martha helped put together a theatre repertory company which was the aegis for "Shakespeare in the Park," and served as President (1981-82) of the Wichita Association for Repertory Arts (WARA) which also provided live theater at the renovated Marple Theater on East Douglas. She was always amused as the actors forgot their lines; took too many Valiums to calm themselves; and when the live music and acting "got out of sync." She loved actors and music. Theatre parties often moved over to Martha's house in College Hill and became the dawn busters on which she thrived. Sometimes Martha met other members of the bar as she was going home, and they were going to work.

Martha loved cats, dogs, strays and purebred. She was a member of the Kansas Humane Society and believed that animals probably had souls. She had other distinct beliefs embracing the medical benefits of certain now unfashionable "herbs." As an individualist, she claimed the right to believe in what she believed and acted in her own conscience. She was a generous and kind friend to those whom she freely chose to love. She was too busy to gossip and didn't really care about what folks did "as long as they didn't scare, or beat, the horses." She refused to be "picked on" and didn't pick on others - unless they richly deserved it.

Although Martha Hodges worked, she also found the time to help found The Wichita Area Assault Center and serve on its board of directors (1977-78). Later, that organization would become the Wichita Area Rape Center. She was an interim director (1975-79) at the Wichita Women's Crisis Shelter. She was president of the Wichita Women's Political Caucus (1979).

Martha believed in "sisterhood" and expected the same kind of support from her "sisters" that she saw some men give to their own. In the end, when she was dying, her friends, caught up in their lives and successes, didn't come around; she was wise and forgiving although she was badly hurt. She was tough-minded. She never whined for pity and rarely complained. The idealistic part of her expected those she had encouraged and helped would find her suffering and offer to help. But, she really knew they couldn't. She learned to deal with the pain and forbade her very closest friends to tell anyone she was mortally ill. Lawyers, being the supreme egotists they are, didn't even miss her, some for years after she was gone. She was a fair, considerate and finally, wise woman. She is sorely missed by those who had the privilege of walking along the path with her.

Though she always looked like an old-fashioned schoolmarm, she was anything but. She is pictured in 1981 with a group who partied under the nom de festival, "Derelict Society," at a gathering which she called "the braziered-weenie feast." She's in the center of the snapshot surrounded by friends, proudly, properly gloved, wearing a glittering genuine rhinestone tiara.