Honorees

Marguerite Dorothy Blackwell Stein

1924-2005

Born in Evanston, Illinois in 1924, her family moved to Miami and then to New York.  At 16 years of age she graduated from Cathedral High School in New York City, and she then attended Hunter College of New York City.  After college, she enlisted in the Navy and quickly earned certification as a shorthand reporter which she applied as a reporter in naval courts martial. 

She was given a discharge so that she could work as a civilian for the Army at the War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.  After serving at the Nuremberg Trials she worked in Vienna and Italy.  When she returned to New York City she attended Fordham University.  She married a Marine Corps Officer, Alfred F. Stein, and they had five children.  After their divorce, she moved with her children to San Francisco where she earned the first of her four degrees, a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, at the University of San Francisco.

She then moved with her children to Chula Vista and worked as a court reporter in the Superior Court of San Diego.  While other court reporters were using machines, she still used the shorthand method.  She loved the work so much that she soon enrolled at the University of San Diego, School of Law.  She felt, according to her son, she could be a lawyer since she was smarter than a lot of the lawyers she saw.

Busy raising 5 children and working as a court reporter during the day while attending law school by night, she became the only woman to graduate from her class of 15 (the class was initially 47).  All five children, the oldest of which was 16, attended her graduation.

She joined the Office of the District Attorney in San Diego being the first woman in three decades to become a prosecutor there.  After just two years she got her first “murder-one” conviction.  She enjoyed a reputation for being tough and aggressive.  She also opened the way for other women to join the office as prosecutors.  While working at the D.A.’s Office, Stein taught law at three colleges in the city.

In 1979, Stein left the D.A.’s Office and moved to Napa.  There she worked for the county counsel’s office.  She also served as a lector and minister.  This latter role took her several times to halfway homes and mental hospitals.  She studied the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi.  She soon associated with the School Sisters of St. Francis moving to Wisconsin.  At that time she also earned a master’s degree in theology at the Sacred School of Theology in Hales Corner, Wisconsin.  She left the convent to go to Ottawa, Canada.  In 1990 she earned her second master’s degree at the St. Paul Pontifical University at Ottawa.  She continued to serve as a national canonist for the Secular Franciscan Order. 
In 1994 she returned to San Diego to work as a judge for the Roman Catholic Diocese.  In 1995, she moved to Santa Rosa where she was minister of the Junipero Serra Region of the Secular Franciscan Order.

In 2002 she returned to San Diego and continued to be active in the Secular Franciscan Order.  Her life involved teaching, acting, singing, sports, law, and spiritual pursuits.  Her experience in law ranged from the Nuremberg Trials on to murder trials in San Diego.  In 2005, she died in San Diego from complications from heart surgery.  She was 80 years of age.  

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