[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 50 (Friday, April 6, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Page S3702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              MARY WALTERS

 Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I learned this morning that Mary 
Walters, one of New Mexico's most outstanding citizens has died at age 
79. She was a pioneering spirit if there ever was one, and many of us 
who knew and admired her feel this loss keenly.
  Not yet twenty-one, she served as a WASP, Women's Auxiliary Service 
Pilots transport pilot during World War II. In a move that would shape 
her later career, she used her soon-to-expire GI benefits to go to 
college and then went on to earn a law degree at age forty. For the 
next half of her life, she went places no woman had gone before in New 
Mexico. She was President of the New Mexico Women's Political Caucus 
and served in a leadership position in the Constitutional Convention. 
She was the first woman named to the district court. Her service on the 
New Mexico Court of Appeals, 1978-1984, led to the New Mexico Supreme 
Court where she became the first woman to sit on that bench.
  During a critical period for women's rights, Mary Walters took the 
lead in our state and in our profession. She had many admirers. My 
wife, Anne, and I, were among them. She was a marvelous person whose 
life was a blessing to all who appreciated her strength and spirit, and 
whose death reminds us all what a force for good she was.

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