When Gertrude Foran Handrick died in 1937, Cleveland City Council issued a Resolution of Condolence for the city's first female attorney. It recognized
"the courage and depth of character which enabled Mrs. Handrick, as the bereaved widow of Doctor Franklin Handrick, to persist, often secretly, in her studies in the law, in the face of parental discouragement back in those days before suffrage was voted to womankind."
A signed copy of this resolution, stapled to a blue sheet of legal-sized paper and folded into quarters, arrived at the Ohio History Connection as a donation last year. It was tucked into one of Handrick’s scrapbooks, most likely by her son, Martin. Handrick's second child, Martin was named for his grandfather, the judge and congressman Martin A. Foran (see above re: parental discouragement).
Judge Foran, a Cleveland Democrat, certainly knew of his daughter’s affinity for the law; he was the first one to hire her as a legal secretary, following the deaths of her husband in 1901 and daughter Martha in 1906. But that did not automatically translate into support for Handrick's desire to seek the Bar herself. She had to do that alone, taking classes on the sly at Baldwin University and sitting for (and passing) the bar exam in December of 1911.
