Oklahoma Portia was pioneering female lawyer

Por·tia (noun): A girl's name. A character in William Shakespeare's “The Merchant of Venice.” A female lawyer.

“Pretty Little Portia Gets the Gate.” This eyecatching headline appeared in The Oklahoman June 28, 1925.

The article, written by Edith Johnson, is not about a girl named Portia, but about Kathryn Van Leuven, an assistant state attorney who was fired by State Attorney General George Short.

Lest you think Van Leuven was hired for her looks (Edith Johnson described her as being a petite “justtoo-cute-for-words” woman), know that this divorced mother, raising a son, served as assistant Nowata County attorney, held a mob intent on lynching two prisoners at bay for four hours with a gun and secured a 50-year sentence against a rapist, an unseemly task for a woman, before being appointed the first female assistant to the state's attorney general by S.P. Freeling in 1920.

While serving in her post, Van Leuven was responsible for prosecuting the ouster suit resulting in the removal of Tulsa's police chief. She wrote the opinion that gave the governor the power to appoint the illiteracy commission. She wrote the law making child desertion a felony and the forestation bill which included a clause that one of the members of the commission shall be a woman.

Short, successor to S.P. Freeling, explained in a letter to a constituent published in The Oklahoman that he had requested Van Leuven's resignation for disloyalty and causing discordance in the office.

Van Leuven died in 1967 at the age of 79.

Her obituary from The Oklahoman listed her accomplishments:

“She was the first woman prosecuting attorney in Oklahoma, serving as assistant Nowata county attorney from 1915-17. She was assistant Oklahoma attorney general from 1922 to 1928 (1920-1925), the first woman in to hold the post.

“She was appointed to the Social Security commission legal staff in 1936 by President Franklin Roosevelt, but resigned to set up Oklahoma Job Insurance.

“Mrs. Van Leuven was legal advisor, legislative counsel and secretary for Oklahoma Associated Industries in the early 1940's.She resigned in 1945 to assume the position of attorney and service director for Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 1857. She reentered private practice in 1947.

She was a poet and writer, a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, Women' Democratic Cub, which she helped found, and served as the first women officer of the Young Democrats Club.”

A member of many civic organizations, she was the first female attorney asked to join the state bar association, and she was recognized by the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

Van Leuven attended Chicago University for two years but did not receive a law degree.

Born and married into a family of lawyers, she was taught the law by her father and husband.

What an amazing Oklahoma Portia!