Club Au Courant studies the life of Olga Lapin, Kilgore's first "First Lady"

Club Au Courant met on April 16th at the home of Yvonne Kennedy, with Deana Covin and Janice Slater serving as co-hostesses.

President Vivian Patton opened the meeting with the Club Collect repeated by the membership.

Ellen Watson suggested we all save and deliver plastic bags to Helping Hands.

Charlotte Austin and Ima Roberts celebrate birthdays during the month of April.

In May the club will travel to Marshall to visit and dine at Roseville Plantation. Officers for the coming year will be installed at that time.

Ima Roberts brought a program on Olga Lapin.

Mart Lapin, the only child of Mrs. Lapin reported to Ima the following:

She was a trailblazer for women in her profession, especially in East Texas. She was short in stature and hardly tall enough to see over the dashboard of the big car she drove. It was jokingly said when people saw her coming, they got off the road.

Olga Gladys Herrmann was born Aug. 1st in Decator, Ga. To Pauline Leola Lovejoy Herrmann and Frederick Herrmann. She was one of five children and the only one not born in Texas. Her mother was visiting relatives in Georgia at the time. One of her greatest regrets was "Why my mother could not get back to Texas before I was born, I

Will never know".

Her mother was born on 1861 and her father in 1865 and had the same birthdate. Frederick Herrmann was a native of Bremen, Germany and was the nephew of German composer, Richard Wagner. He shipped in on a whaler and finally ended up in Galveston, where he was a pianist, organist, music teacher and an artist. He died in 1932. Mrs. Herrmann lived to be 84 and died in Kilgore, where she lived for a number of years. She came from a long line of circuit riding Methodist preachers and had two brothers who were Presiding Elders of the Methodist Church.

When she was six years old she lived through the 1900 hurricane in Galveston, which killed over 1000 people. Her father floated her out of the only house left standing in that area in a bathtub. She was vain about her age, but always told people she was 6 years old at the time of the 1900 storm.

At age 16 she was teaching school at Ball High School in Galveston. She later went to the Univ. of Texas (did not finish) and went one year to the Univ. of Texas Medical School in Galveston. During her early life she lived in Houston and Dallas, where she was employed in the insurance industry and as a secretary in a large Dallas law firm. She later became the secretary to Judge Nugent and while there she went to law school at night at the Univ. of Houston (a different school from the present U of H), where she had a class with Foster Bean.

She obtained her law license in 1927. She got a job as the secretary for the Chamber of Commerce in Grand Saline and the Chamber allowed her to practice law on the side. This was also where she met J. M. Lapin She knew him as Jacques Martaine Lapin. After he died, she wrote to the church in Webster, S.D., where he was christened and got a copy of his christening papers and his name was John Martin Lapinski. There were seven children in his family and they also changed their names to Lapin, La Pin or Lipin.)

They came to Kilgore on the day after the Lou Della Crim #1 was brought in at Laird Hill on Christmas Day in 1931. They lived in the old Kilgore Hotel for a period of time. They then rented a duplex from A.B. Couch on S. Main St. In 1933 they purchased a three room house at 417 S. Martin, where she lived until her death at 84 in 1978.

She had an office downtown from the early 1930's until 1939. At that time she moved her office to S. Martin, so an office, a dining room and a second bedroom was added in 1933 for $1,850, which was also the amount of the original cost of the house.

In 1936 or 1937 her husband was drilling wells in Marion County (Jefferson), so opened a law office there but came back to Kilgore on the weekends.

Her first business card gave her name as O. G. Herrmann. She did not use her first name as women in the law were not accepted very easily. One of her early clients was H. L. Hunt. She did a lot of trial work and always wore a hat and gloves into court. One judge, however, would not allow her into his court, so when she had a case before him, she had to turn it over to a male lawyer. She also always wore a dress or suit.

On May 23, 1944, while in Miss. blocking up acreage to drill a well, her husband had a massive heart attack. She chartered a plane and flew to Jackson, Miss. but arrived only an hour or so before his death on May 24th. From that time on she had to make a living to provide for her son Mart, who was 12 yrs. old. She never has a secretary. She started out on an old Underwood portable typewriter, then an Adler and finally a IBM Selectric. She never had office hours as she lived at the same location. Often clients came to see her after hours and she always took care of them.

She was an avid sports fan. It is said she never missed a sporting event her son played in and she went to a lot of practices. She would simply close her office and go to wherever he was playing. She loved football and made no difference what the weather. She was there. She and Mart sat through a Kilgore College game in rain so heavy there were probably not 20 people there. She and Leta Wade drove to Savannah, Ga., when K.C. played in a bowl game there. In 1946 K. C. played in the Little Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Mart was 14 at the time, but he convinced her to let him go on the train by himself. She made arrangements for him to stay with a cousin in Santa Anna while there.

She and some others chartered two planes (C-47's) and came out to see the game. He flew back with her.

In 1948, she was honored by Beta Sigma Phi as Kilgore's first "First Lady".

She subsequently was elected the first woman on the school board and the first woman president of the school board.

Mart graduated from high school in 1950, attended K. C. , then went on to the Univ. of Texas. She of course sent money each month. During this time she developed severe arthritis and was confined to a wheel chair. This would not do, so she went to physical therapy five days a week for several years and went swimming with Elsie Canterbury every day during the summer and overcame this.

Mart said she never suggested he go to law school or that he come back to Kilgore. He says he did this on his own and spent twenty wonderful years as her partner. She retired at the age of 82 and died at 84.

Recently she was portrayed in the Lottie Guthrey musical "Boom," as the first and only female attorney during the Oil Boom.

Those enjoying this wonderful program were Charlotte Austin, Dorothy Camp, Deana Covin, Marcella Harkrider, Yvonne Kennedy, Barbara Johnson, Kay McKinley, Agnes Oliver, Vivian Patton, Clemmie Richards, Ima Roberts. Jean Robertson, Pat Sers, Janice Slater, Dr. Opal Stewart, Ellen Watson, and Diane Wilson.