Breaking the County Attorney’s Office Barrier
Phyllis Gene (Bambusch) Jones was the first woman to serve as an attorney in any County Attorney’s office in the State of Minnesota. She was appointed Assistant County Attorney of Ramsey County in 1960, the year she graduated from William Mitchell College of Law, one of three women in her class. She served in that office until 1971, when she became general counsel for the Minnesota Urban County Attorneys Board (1971-73) and then became director of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association (1973-75). She returned to the Ramsey County Attorney’s office as a special assistant in 1975 to help implement the recently revised Rules of Criminal Procedure.
As with many women of her era, Jones was told by hiring partners at major law firms in the Twin Cities that they were not interested in adding a woman to their firms. However, after her public service positions, she had the opportunity to work in private practice in St. Paul and Cottage Grove for nine years. Jones was appointed to the 10th Judicial District Court bench in 1984, where she served until 1993.
Judge Jones presided over two high-profile cases filed against the Catholic Church for childhood sexual abuse at the hands of Father James Porter, who abused at least 100 children as he was moved from state to state by the Church, and Father Thomas Adamson, who abused children in the Diocese of Winona.
As a retired district judge, Jones served several three-month appointments on the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and in that capacity, she wrote a number of opinions. In one, State v. Peng, 524 N.W.2d 21 (Minn. Ct. App. 1994), she wrote that victims of an acupuncturist who had touched his patients’ intimate parts after inserting needles were “physically helpless” within the meaning of the sexual criminal conduct statute, even if they could communicate their non-consent to his touching. In another, State v. Krebsbach, 524 N.W.2d 17 (1994), she held that a defendant was not deprived of his First Amendment rights when the sentencing court considered his association with “skinheads” because he was not punished for abstract beliefs but for his propensity to violence based on statements he made.
Judge Jones was described as “a powerful advocate for women; she advocated by setting an example for younger women about what could be accomplished with kindness, graciousness, and steely determination. She would not tolerate incivility or mean-spiritedness but behaved in such a manner that all who knew her aspired to achieve her degree of professionalism. She never complained [about] (in fact barely mentioned) any slights or discrimination she may have endured by being in the forefront.”
As an advocate for women, Jones also served as the president of Minnesota Women Lawyers in 1977. Justice Rosalie Wahl recounts that her meeting with Jones and Esther Tomljanovich as a law student was transformational for her, helping her realize that she was “not a duck. . . but a swan.”
Jones was also a member of the Minnesota State Bar Association, where she served as chair of its victimless crimes committee from 1974-75 and co-chair of its senior lawyers committee from 1997-99. As a member of the Ramsey County Bar Association, she also served on its executive committee from 1982-83. She was a member of the American Bar Association.
A Woman Local and Global
Jones worked her way through Macalester College, graduating in 1944. During World War II, she worked as an Associated Press wire photo operator (1943-45) and later as a Pioneer Press reporter (1945-46).
Inspired by her Macalester College professor Hubert Humphrey, she was active in DFL politics, running unsuccessfully for St. Paul City Council in 1954, though she survived the primary. Jones served as Ramsey County DFL chair in 1956 and oversaw the construction of the DFL pavilion at the Minnesota State Fair. Despite these contributions, she was denied a delegate seat to the Democratic National Convention because she was a woman.
Jones also served as a supervisor on the Grey Cloud town board in the 1970s when environmentalists squared off against the J.L. Shiely Company, which was conducting gravel mining operations in the township.
A lover of travel, Judge Jones was able to visit all of seven continents. Several of her trips were with colleagues and involved sharing law and legal culture with local lawyers and judges. A particularly meaningful trip Jones took was in 1993 was to Homorodszentpeter, Romania, to her congregation’s sister church.
Fascinated with the local history of Grey Cloud Township, where she lived with her second husband, Jones also served on the Washington County Historical Association Board from 2000-2007, as well as the Macalester College Alumni Board.
Personal History
Jones was born on May 29, 1923, in Fargo, N.D., to Rosina and Joseph Bambusch. Her father was the child of German-speaking Hungarian immigrants, and her mother was a schoolteacher of Scottish and Yankee descent, who taught Phyllis to love reading.
Jones married Dwight Bangs Jones, the managing editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, in 1945; they met when she worked as a wire service operator. Before he died in 1958, they had three children together. As a suddenly widowed mother in a time when childcare was not readily available after school, she juggled her maternal responsibilities with her studies as a law student and a job at the Ramsey County Clerk of Courts from 1958-1960. In 1970, she married Dr. David Norman, who died in 1983. She died on September 8, 2013.
References
* The quotations in this biography are taken from the references below.
Breaking the Wave: Women, Their Organizations, and Feminism, 1945-1985 (Kathleen A. Laughlin & Jacqueline L. Castledine eds., 2011)
Memorial Proceedings of the Ramsey County Bar Association 2014, Memorial for The Honorable Phyllis Gene Jones (May 29, 1923 – September 8, 2013), http://www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org/assets/Ramsey%20Mem%20-%202014.pdf
Phyllis Gene Jones Obituary, https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/twincities/obituary.aspx?n=phyllis-gene-jones&pid=166921529 and https://www.startribune.com/obituaries/detail/13895619/