2019–20 VSB President Marni E. Byrum: Building Homes, Breaking Ceilings by Jackie Kruszewski Marni Byrum and Martha McQuade showed up to help build a Habitat for Humanity house in Costa Rica in 2003 and were met with more than a little skepticism. The three men at the construction site were unsure what to make of two small women lawyers from America, especially since they spoke only English and the men spoke only Spanish. “The ﬁ rst day, they’re sort of look-ing at us like we’re an oddity,” Byrum says. “Like, what are you doing here? Are you just going to be in my way?” There were no cranes or bulldoz-ers. Foundations lines were marked by string to be dug by hand. Byrum and McQuade worked at the rock-hard ground and, after that, followed the builders around, watching what they were doing, moving in to help when they could. “By the end of the second day, they were engaging us,” says Byrum. “And by the third day, we had very speciﬁ c tasks to do.” Sifting rocks out of sand to make concrete, tying rebar, placing concrete blocks for walls — Byrum and McQuade kept showing up every day, and that made all the difference. “At the end of our ‘vacation,’ they seemed genuinely sorry to see us go, and we hated to leave!” The sense of accomplishment you get building a house is unique, Byrum notes, but not unlike practicing law. “No matter how small the job is you’re working on, you’re making a difference in someone’s life,” she says. “You do both to make a difference.” Byrum’s dedication to the law, service, and her professional organizations began a new chapter in June when she was sworn in as the Virginia State Bar’s 81st president for the 2019–20 year. 10 VIRGINIA LAWYER | June 2019 | Vol. 68 Byrum says she can’t pinpoint when she decided to be a lawyer — perhaps in high school debate class. She didn’t know any lawyers growing up. But she knew that she wanted to join their ranks. Born in Keysville, Virginia, a small town south of Farmville boasting two trafﬁ c lights and surrounded by tobacco ﬁ elds, she found her ﬁ rst mentor in ele-mentary school. An administrator, Betty Hunter-Clapp, was the ﬁ rst woman Byrum knew in a leadership position. “She was the ﬁ rst role model I had for someone who could, as a woman, show me that there really shouldn’t be any limitations,” Byrum says. As for many people, Byrum’s ﬁ rst interaction with a lawyer was during one of the worst periods of her life. On July 31, 1973, just after Byrum graduat-ed from Richmond’s Douglas Freeman High School, Delta ﬂ ight 723 tried landing in low clouds and heavy fog at Boston’s Logan Airport. Its landing gear struck a seawall, and the plane crashed. All 89 people on board died, Byrum’s father among them. The family engaged a lawyer and was part of a class action suit. That ﬁ rst, heartbreaking contact with the law left a lasting impression but did noth-ing to disabuse her of her interest in becoming a lawyer. Byrum later took an aviation accident law class and studied the case stemming from the crash. She remembers long conversations with her professor, grappling with the objective legal implications of the deeply personal tragedy. Political science was considered the major for aspiring lawyers at the time, and Byrum — as a teenager — met with the head of the political science depart-ment at Virginia Tech. He won her over to their program versus the University of Virginia’s or William & Mary’s. “[The Tech political science department] was really growing and invigorating,” Byrum says. “And Dorothy James, who was about to become chair, was really on the cutting edge of a lot of things happening in the political science ﬁ eld.” That James would be the only wom-an political science department chair in Virginia was also appealing. Byrum graduated from Tech in three years in 1976. Though she shortened her stay for ﬁ nancial reasons, “I do regret spending just three years in Blacksburg because it was, and is, a wonderful place.” She’s still actively involved at the university, visiting several times a year. When it was time to choose law school, the beaches of Malibu beckoned. Well, sort of. The Pepperdine School of Law was actually housed in a warehouse in Anaheim at the time, Byrum is quick to note. But a professor at Tech recom-mended she consider the school, as it offered unique courses and had a small student-faculty ratio. In her ﬁ rst year, she was exposed to arbitration and alternative dispute resolution and found a passion. The www.vsb.org