By Jay Meisel

Meisel@hometownnewsol.com

FORT PIERCE - A family story goes that when Elsie O'Laughlin was a young woman during the 1940s, she asked her father to buy her a car.

In what now seems like an unusual response for that era, her father, John Merritt, a chief deputy for the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office, agreed if she would attend law school.

Mrs. O'Laughlin, who was Miss Merritt at the time, accepted the challenge and was one of three women to attend Stetson Law School in 1945. She went onto become St. Lucie County's first female attorney, judge and bar association president, long-time residents say. One of her most notable cases was the estate of author Zora Neale Hurston, who died in Fort Pierce in 1960.

Mrs. O'Laughlin, 86, died June 11 in Decatur, Ga., where she lived for the past couple of years with her daughter and son-in-law, Kathleen and Ron Jayson. Funeral services were held June 20.

"She was a great mother and she had all the time in the world for her kids, even though she worked every day," said John O'Laughlin, her son. "She still found time to cook for us and help us with our homework."

"She loved being a lawyer and we were all so very proud of her because of the so many firsts she achieved in St. Lucie County," Mr. O'Laughlin said.

While she was born in Ambrose, Ga., on Nov. 19, 1922, she lived most of her life in St. Lucie County.

Her son said besides being chief deputy, Mrs. O'Laughlin's father owned a store. While growing up, she worked at the store, he said.

Later, while attending Stetson, she met Red O'Laughlin, who was as a paratrooper during D-Day on June 6, 1944.

She returned to Fort Pierce with her husband and they practiced law together in a two-story building on Second Street across from the St. Lucie County Courthouse. Her husband, who served as mayor of Fort Pierce from 1962 to 1964, died in 1995.

John Brennan, a long-time attorney in Fort Pierce, said he isn't aware of any woman who practiced law in St. Lucie County before Mrs. O'Laughlin.

When she began practicing, former Circuit Judge Phillip Nourse said, she was not received well in the male-dominated legal establishment of that era.

But as time passed, other attorneys accepted her and saw that she did a competent job.

While serving as a prosecutor before he became a judge, Mrs. O'Laughlin "helped me out when I was in need of help particularly with juveniles," Mr. Nourse said.

"She was a very nice person," he recalled.

Mr. Brennan said as far as he knows, she also was the first female judge in the county, serving as a small claims judge from 1963 to 1965.

The position became open in 1963 and Mr. Brennan, who didn't meet the length of residency requirement for it, recommended her for the job, he said.

In a courtroom where people often represented themselves, he said, "she did a very good job controlling the situation."

Since then, small claims courts have been consolidated with county courts.

"She liked helping people get just results," he said in general about her legal practice.

She did a lot of work in juvenile cases and handled civil matters, including probate, John O'Laughlin said.

For many years, the family wasn't aware she had handled the Hurston case.

When she retired several years after her husband died, she had "all her files moved to her garage, and there were tons of them," said Mr. Jayson.

"Family members were looking through them, when one of them, totally by happenstance, came up on the name on the manila envelope tab, Zora Neale Hurston, and we couldn't believe it," he said. "Elsie talked about the case, but took it in stride, as she did just about everything else," Mr. Jayson noted.

In Valerie Boyd's biography of Ms. Hurston, "Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, she thanked Mrs. O'Laughlin for access to the files.