MCCORD, GRACE BERNARDINA DOERING (16 June 1890-31 Jan. 1983) became one of the first Cleveland women to achieve prominence in the legal profession. The daughter of Anton and Frances Langer Doering, she was born in downtown Cleveland and graduated from CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL. She taught for several years in Ohio high schools after receiving a bachelor's degree from Western Reserve University (see CASE WESTERN RESERVE) in 1911. She graduated from Cleveland Law School (see CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY) in 1925 with the highest scholastic average in the school's history and acquired a master's degree 2 years later from the John Marshall Law School (see also CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY). In 1933, the same year she began private practice with her brothers Milan and Roy, she became Ohio's first woman law professor with a class on appellate practive and procedure at the Marshall Law School. From 1935-42 McCord served as Cleveland's assistant law director. During WORLD WAR II she was named a regional attorney for the Office of Price Administration. She had been a founding member in 1919 of the BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL WOMEN'S CLUB OF GREATER CLEVELAND (BPW), and in 1957 she became president of the National Ass'n. of Women Lawyers. In 1957 she also married John W. McCord, an Alaskan mining entrepreneur who died in 1969. Mrs. McCord was a frequent lecturer on the status of women and a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. Besides numerous articles in professional journals, she wrote a sketch in 1935 on 2 controversial Ohio Supreme Court cases, entitled "Alice in Lawyerland." Childless, she died in EAST CLEVELAND.

Grace Coering McCord Papers, WRHS.

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