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I promise to do my best
WEST CHESTER — Paula Francisco Ott, sworn in Tuesday to a seat on the state Superior Court, holds a number of firsts in Chester County legal history.
She was the first woman at her old West Chester law firm, first woman elected to the county Common Pleas Court and the first woman to serve as the county's president judge.
But it was another first that drew attention at the installation ceremony held in the grand space of the new Courtroom One she helped to create in the county's Justice Center, the construction of which she was responsible for overseeing. She recalled the first time that she became interested in the law, the field to which she has devoted her adult life.
James E. McErlane, a West Chester attorney and political mentor of Ott, said in his tribute to her before an overflow crowd of attorneys, judges, court personnel and family and friends
that as a child from East Marlborough, the young Paula Francisco had come to revere the legal profession at the side of her grandfather, a small-town attorney in upstate Pennsylvania.
In his office, McErlane said, Ott would watch him work and help him impress various legal documents with a certified seal. At the end of the day, nearly every piece of paper on his desk was stamped with that seal.
Ott later paid tribute to the man who gave her the first taste of the law by being sworn in on his Bible, she said. "I always wanted to be an attorney, just like him."
Ott took the oath of office that will make her only the third person from Chester County to sit on the state Superior Court, the first level of appellate courts above the county Common Pleas courts. She was elected on Nov. 3 after a furious three-month campaign to replace former Judge Maureen Lally-Green, who retired from the bench in May and who presented Ott with her commission from Gov. Ed Rendell at the ceremonies Tuesday.
Lally-Green called Ott her friend and colleague and praised her for running for the seat.
"You took the challenge. You rode the wave and you kept your focus. You made it," Lally-Green said. "We are blessed to have the talents of Paula Ott on the Superior Court."
The others from the county who sat on the court include Judge John B. Hannum, who left that seat to take a place on the federal bench in Philadelphia, and Judge Robert S. Gawthrop, who founded the law firm where Ott worked after leaving the county Solicitor's Office in the 1970s, Gawthrop, Greenwood & Halstead.
"Thank you for giving me this opportunity," Ott told those who gathered for the swearing-in ceremony, which was attended by 13 Superior Court judges and overseen by Superior Court President Judge Kate Ford Elliott. "As I started this new part of my career, I am proud to represent Chester County. I promise to do my best to make Chester County proud."
Ott, 59, was first elected Common Pleas Court judge in November 1991 and retained in November 2001 for a second 10-year term. She was elected to a five-year term as president judge commencing Jan. 12, 2005. She had served as supervising judge in county Juvenile Court until 2005, and was also assigned to the county's Orphan's Court.
In July 2001, Ott was appointed to the joint state government commission's advisory committee on decedents' estates laws. She is a past president of the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges. Also, she has served as a member of the state Orphans Court Procedural Rules Committee; the Inter-branch Commission for Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness; and on the Task Force for the National Center for Juvenile Justice.
At her ceremony, she was lauded by McErlane; her former law partner John Halstead, who hired her after working with her in the solicitor's office; and Judge Thomas G. Gavin, her colleague on the county bench. They said Ott is a jurist of dedication and character with a strong work ethic and a sense of collegiality.
Halstead said he believed she would make her mark on the court on which she will now sit. "I would like the people of the state to know that we are sending to the Superior Court a very superior person and judge," although he also joked that he remembers fondly the days "she didn't wear black to work and occasionally made coffee."
Ott paid tribute in her remarks to those she said had helped her attain the seat, including MacErlane, Chester County GOP Chairman Joseph "Skip" Brion, and state Republican Party Chairman Robert Gleason, who was in the audience.
She also thanked her family, including parents Jack and Janet Francisco, who for years attended some of the high-profile trials she oversaw, and her husband, Ray Ott, a former West Chester borough councilman she met when she was a young attorney and he worked for the county Planning Commission. And she praised the work done for her by her longtime secretary, Susan Woodall, who will follow her to her new court offices in West Chester.
It was left to Gavin, who said he had first met Ott in 1975 when she worked as a prosecutor under then-District Attorney William lamb, who also attended the ceremonies, to put into perspective her place in the annals of county legal history.
Noting her professional connection to the Gawthrop family, Gavin reminded the audience of the words that were published in the Daily Local News when Robert S. Gawthrop was appointed to the Superior Court in 1922.
"Her election is an honor to the county and she will no doubt fill the place most acceptably," Gavin said quoting the newspaper. "Paula, in a few minutes you will no longer have to dream the impossible dream. Your dream has come true. May it be everything you imagined it to be."
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan, send an e-mail to mrellahan@dailylocal.com
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