Cynthia Gillespie, 51, Co-Founder Of Law Center, Acclaimed Author

Cynthia Gillespie, author of the acclaimed work "Justifiable Homicide" and a co-founder of the Northwest Women's Law Center, died Friday of breast cancer. She was 51.

A tireless advocate of feminist causes, Gillespie will be remembered in services at 4 p.m. tomorrow in the Linda Hodges Gallery, 401 Occidental Ave. S. in Pioneer Square.

During her final hours, one of her physicians seemed particularly distraught. "My daughter plays basketball," he told Gillespie's longtime partner, Dale Jones.

Gillespie lived long enough to witness her own legacy. As the Law Center's first director, she argued persuasively that women's athletics deserved equal funding under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The result has been the flourishing of women's participation in sports at the college level.

Gillespie, who discovered her cancer two years ago, went public with her battle, urging women to get regular checkups and mammograms. Her final wish, Jones said, was that women conduct frequent self-examinations. An estimated 46,000 women will die of breast cancer in the U.S. in 1993.

"Justifiable Homicide," published in 1989, was a cogent examination of women's right to self-defense against battering. Gillespie argued that self-defense law did not fit the situation of battered women.

"The law makes sense for what it was designed for - two men in a bar fight," she said, but not "for a woman trying to defend herself from a man who has threatened to kill her before."

Gillespie's view was bolstered early in 1991 when Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste granted clemency to 26 battered women serving time for killing their boyfriends or husbands. Celeste had been given an autographed copy of "Justifiable Homicide" by his wife.

The years of research behind her richly documented book paid off: "Justifiable Homicide" was a semifinalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Award and honored as an outstanding book of 1989 by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights.

"She often talked about getting calls from women who said they were out of jail because of her book," said Carol Pencke, a friend who chairs the national board of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).

Born in Summit, N.J., Gillespie attended Wellesley College as a classics major, then pursued the subject for a master's at the University of California at Berkeley, where, she said, a professor announced that although he could not ban women from his classes, he'd "be damned if he was going to acknowledge their presence" by calling on any. She received her law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1974, then entered private practice, focusing on family law and women's rights.

She founded the Law Center in 1978 and served as its mater familias through the 1980s, helping make it a political and social force in the region. She also was active in NARAL, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Delia Alaniz Committee, which provides support for battered women in prison.

Gillespie was at work on a second book analyzing the dilemma of free speech and pornography when she was diagnosed with the cancer that spread to her brain and lungs.

"She fought right along, but she was clear about it when the time came," said Pencke. "She taught us how to die - with clarity and grace."

Gillespie is survived by two sons, David of Palo Alto, Calif., and Steven, of Albuquerque, N.M.; a sister, Nancy Bissell of Tucson; her mother, Jane Thorne of Scottsdale, Ariz., and father, George Keebler of Tucson.

Rememberances are suggested to the Northwest Women's Law Center.