Betty Barry Deal 6024

Justice Betty Barry-Deal was the first woman to serve on the First District Court of Appeal in California. She grew up in Susanville, a small town in Lassen County, and graduated from the University of California in 1944. She attended Boalt Hall School of Law, where she met and married her husband John Pierpont Deal. After he died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1951, she was left to care for her two young children and miraculously was able to finish her legal studies, pass the bar, and find a way to practice law in an almost all-male-dominated profession. Justice Barry-Deal talks about her childhood growing up in Susanville, her experience attending college, and her decision to pursue a career in law.