Alice Kolnick bucked prevailing trends and blazed a trail for female lawyers when she began practicing law almost 60 years ago.
At a time when most women were expected to stay at home or work in more traditional roles, she was among three women in her DePaul University Law School graduating class. Degree in hand, she set up shop at a rented desk inside a bank in 1945, where she hoped to snare walk-up clients.
Ms. Kolnick, 84, died Saturday, Dec. 13, of ovarian cancer in Rush North Shore Medical Center in Skokie.
She grew up on the Northwest Side of Chicago, where she attended Steinmetz High School, her stepdaughter Linda Bilocerkowycz said.
After high school, she graduated from Chicago Teachers College and taught at Lane Tech and Crane Tech High Schools, her stepdaughter said. Ms. Kolnick entered the teaching profession to “make her parents happy,” she said.
Her first love, however, always had been the law, her stepson Steve Tokoph said.
So she began taking classes at DePaul at night while juggling a full-time teaching job during the day, he said.
Her decision “kind of embarrassed her parents,” said Elizabeth Rochford, a lawyer whom Ms. Kolnick took under her wing almost 20 years ago. “It was not the type of thing nice ladies do.”
“But women now have had so many doors opened for them because of women like her,” Rochford said.
Because she was a woman, she had to work “three times as hard” as her opponent just to survive, Rochford said. But the inequalities never dampened her mood.
“She never had a chip on her shoulder and she never complained,” Rochford said.
She married G. Dana Tokoph in 1961, and soon after, her three stepchildren came to love her like a mother, said stepson James Tokoph.
Her caring demeanor spread into her professional life, where she helped Rochford launch a successful law career.
One of Rochford’s first assignments as a lawyer was to tackle “an absolutely disastrous” real estate closing. Ms. Kolnick was the lawyer on the other side of the table and Rochford was hopelessly in over her head.
“I could have bluffed her or admit to her that I really didn’t know what was going on,” Rochford said. She opted to tell Ms. Kolnick the truth, and “she respected me for it,” Rochford said.
What could have been a “humiliating experience” became a turning point and a huge lesson in her career, thanks to Ms. Kolnick, Rochford said.
A few years later, Ms. Kolnick invited Rochford to share space in her Lincolnwood office, where they both had their own practices. Rochford has been in the building ever since–for the last 13 years.
Since becoming office mates, Rochford has helped Ms. Kolnick with some of her courtroom work because she was hampered by Guillain-Barre syndrome, which she was stricken with in her early 50s.
The handicap never slowed her down, she said. Even up to her last days, Rochford was still learning from her.
“I was truly lucky to have been mentored by her,” she said.
Besides her stepchildren, Ms. Kolnick is survived by her sister, Evelyn Burk.
Visitation will be held from 4 to 9 p.m. Tuesday in Smith-Corcoran Funeral Home, 6150 N. Cicero Ave. Services will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday in the funeral home.
