The Cincinnati Enquirer

Three people whose career accomplishments were underscored by their efforts toward desegregation, literacy and job parity for women will be honored Feb. 26 as the latest recipients of the Great Living Cincinnatians award.

The Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce will confer the awards at its annual dinner at the Hyatt Regency Cincinnati downtown. With these recipients, the awards program that began in 1967 has now honored 96 people.

Named Great Living Cincinnatians Friday were:

Retired judge, city solicitor and law school professor William McClain, 89. The Cincinnati Bar Association's first black member when he joined in 1950, Mr. McClain is a counsel to the Manley Burke law firm in Cincinnati and is law director for the city of Lincoln Heights.

Charles Scripps, longtime chairman of The E.W. Scripps Co., the media group based in Cincinnati. Mr. Scripps, 82, retired as chairman in 1994, but remains on the board of directors and serves as chairman of The Edward W. Scripps Trust.

Phyllis Shapiro Sewell, retired senior vice president of Federated Department Stores. Mrs. Sewell, 71, spent her entire 36-year career at Federated, retiring in 1988. She has served on the boards of five publicly traded companies and four local charitable organizations.

The three were chosen on the basis of community service, business and civic attainment, leadership, awareness of the needs of others, and distinctive accomplishments that have brought favorable attention to their community, institution or organization.

Mr. McClain

Mr. McClain, a North Carolina native, came to Cincinnati in 1937 after graduating from the University of Michigan Law School. A cab driver refused to drive him from Union Terminal because he was black. It was a defining moment as he set out to establish a career in what he called "one of the most segregated towns in the north."

Influenced by Theodore Berry - Cincinnati's first black mayor - and Judge Stanley Struble, Mr. McClain set out to bring down racial barriers in the legal profession. He was the first black member of the Cincinnati Lawyers Club, in 1947. He was the city's first black solicitor, a job he held from 1963 to 1972.

From there, he became the first African-American to serve in a major Cincinnati law firm, Keating, Muething & Klekamp. In 1975, he became Hamilton County's first black Common Pleas Court judge.

"My role was to be a mentor for young lawyers and young people," Mr. McClain said Friday. "I stood on a lot of shoulders. Therefore, I owe an obligation to help others stand on my shoulders. People don't always need your money; they need your humanity."

Mrs. Sewell

Phyllis Shapiro Sewell encountered a different barrier when she set out to find work after graduating with honors from Wellesley College with an economics degree in 1952. The barrier appeared daily in newspaper want ads under the header: "Help Wanted - Female."

Mrs. Sewell joined Federated as a junior analyst and rose to research director by the time she married at 28. After the Sewells' 2-month-old son Charles was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in 1963, Mrs. Sewell sought a flexible work schedule at a time when flex time didn't exist. Her boss suggested a leave of absence. She got her flex time.

Mrs. Sewell was named one of Business Week's top 100 corporate women in 1976 and one of Industry Week's top 85 women business executives in 1985. She has served on the boards of Lee Enterprises, Huffy Corp., Pitney Bowes and the former U.S. Shoe, as well as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Cincinnati, the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati, the Jewish Federation and United Way. She remains on the board of Sysco Corp.

"I'm very honored to be in the same category with these people," she said of the Great Living Cincinnatians award. "It's a prestigious group of people."

Mr. Scripps

Mr. Scripps was born into a newspaper family, became a cops and courts reporter before World War II and worked his way up to chairman of the company founded by and named after his grandfather, E. W. Scripps. The company owns the Cincinnati Post, the Kentucky Post and WCPO-TV, Channel 9.

The newspaperman became an outspoken champion of literacy in the mid-1980s, and the Scripps Howard Foundation created an annual award for literacy efforts by newspapers and broadcasting companies.

"Literacy is the receiving end of print journalism, just as radio receivers are needed to interpret radio signals," Mr. Scripps said. "All our newspapers should be interested in seeing people read efficiently."

Mr. Scripps has received numerous journalism awards and is past president of the Inter-American Press Association. He is a trustee for the Children's Protective Service of the Ohio Humane Society and serves on the advisory boards of the Greater Cincinnati Salvation Army and Hamilton County Juvenile Court.

About 900 people are expected to attend the Chamber banquet Feb. 26.