Dorrit Pealy: A Creature Of Politics -- Though Retired, She's Not Retiring

-- SHERIDAN BEACH

In this political year, a chance to talk to Dorrit Pealy about her favorite subject and academic field - politics - is a delight.

Pealy describes herself as an expert on local government. She holds a Ph. D. in political science and public administration, and in 44 years has taught at the college level and worked as a private consultant to cities and corporations.

Now in retirement, the Sheridan Beach resident still is active as a consultant to the committee investigating incorporation of Shoreline, and another committee on Whidbey Island investigating home rule government for Island County.

"I strongly support the incorporation of Shoreline," she said. "It is the only way Shoreline can maintain its school system and individuality. The Shoreline Management Act has made it compelling, because under that the possibility of Seattle expanding to include Shoreline is real."

AWARENESS BEGAN EARLY

Pealy's life-long interest in government and politics had its roots in her childhood. Born Dorothee Strauss in Germany, she fled with her mother and father, at the age of 8, to Spain in 1934 to escape the Nazis.

"My father was a psychiatrist, head of the psychiatry department at the University of Heidelberg," she explained. "In 1933 he noticed that some of his colleagues were disappearing and decided to leave. He felt he was particularly vulnerable and that it was only a matter of time before he would be marked because he had files on prominent Nazis in his possession."

Two and a half years later, the family had to flee again, this time to Switzerland, when civil war broke out in Spain. They eventually came to the United States in 1937.

"My attitudes were shaped by these experiences of my early youth and they influenced my choice of study when I became a student at Michigan State," she said.

Pealy, who earned her doctorate in 1957, was one of fewer than one percent of women who had a doctorate in the 1950s. She recalls a professor asking her upon her admittance to graduate school, "Why is the department wasting money on you? You'll just get married and have children."

Which she did, but that did not keep her from pursuing her goals. As a young mother, she ran for mayor of Ann Arbor, Mich., and almost won.

"It was a time when women didn't aspire to political office, my own mother was appalled. I was holding down a job, was a faculty wife and the mother of two. Nevertheless, I gave the campaign my all. Had I won - and I came close - I would have been the first elected woman mayor in the United States," she explained. "I've never done it again. I've been content to work with others on their campaigns."

Being among a very few women with a doctorate in her generation she encountered frustration at every turn and had difficulty getting a university teaching position.

WOMEN LOST OUT

Eyes flashing, she explained that the timing was wrong for women of the '50s. They grew up fighting to get hired. They took jobs just to get a work record. Later, when the pressure was on to hire women, they lost out because they had had only part-time jobs.

"We came to Seattle because my husband was hired by the University of Washington in the Political Science Department. I had sent out applications to colleges in the Seattle area before moving without results. The university was out because they had a policy of not hiring husbands and wives."

Years later, she finally got clearance to teach night school at the UW, but, she never got on as full staff.

"I took a job teaching at Western State, in Bellingham, because they needed someone now. It helped that a professor on the faculty was from Michigan and knew me. But, this meant commuting from Lake Forest Park twice a week," she explained. "I would leave the house at 8 a.m., hold office hours in the morning, teach classes in the afternoon, be on the way home by 4 p.m., and with luck be home by 6 p.m."

Pealy has worked as a field representative for Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., monitoring block grants in King County and Seattle; urban consultant to the Rand Corp.; consultant to Freeholders for the city of Seattle and many more.

Her volunteer activities, which include seven years on the Metro Council, have earned her a place in "Who's Who in the West."

"My attitudes were shaped by bullets flying through the air, of packing up and fleeing, and of civil war. I feel strongly about wasting life in a war. Mediation and negotiation are the only way."

Judy Van Deen's column on Shoreline people and places appears occasionally in this section.