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Lawyer Edith Spivack, NYC's Longest Serving Civil Servant
By
Jen Chung
Published Jul 28, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jul 28, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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The NY Times has an obituary for 95 year old Edith Spivack, a lawyer for the city's Law Department, and she lived a long, amazing life. Spivack started working for the city in 1934 and only retired last year, and in those 70 years of working for the city (and through 10 mayors, from LaGuardia to Bloomberg), she helped keep the city out of bankruptcy in the 1960s and would make foreign consulates pay their water bills by calling them up herself. Plus, Spivack was funny:
At a Christmas party last year at which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg awarded her a public service plaque, the mayor tried to make small talk and asked when she graduated from college. Ms. Spivack replied that she graduated from Barnard College in 1929.
The mayor said his mother had graduated from New York University in the same year. Ms. Spivack looked at the mayor and said, "Well, I guess she couldn't get into Barnard."
She also graduated from Columbia Law School (and was one of the first women accepted) and married classmate Bernard Goldstein, which was the school's first student marriage. Newsday adds that Spivack had to work without a paycheck, to prove herself as a female lawyer, for the first year. Somebody, make a movie out of her life!
Photograph from the NY Times
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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