It’s convenient and comforting for us to read an obituary, like the one below, that harks back to a darker time. A time that we can look back on, and go “tsk tsk”, and feel superior and grand.
Lucille Lawson was a woman and she drove a cab. There was a time that that was unique and strange. It’s not anymore. So it’s cool for us to look back and look down at those who felt it was odd and/or wrong that a woman was earning money by transporting people in yellow vehicles.
I wonder what we’ll look back on in 50 years and feel superior about. Maybe the idea that it used to be OK to kill thousands of people because the guy who runs their country won’t share his oil with you.
LUCILLE LAWSON, 84
One of Chicago’s 1st female cabdrivers
By Brad Webber
Tribune staff reporter
February 7, 2003
In the mid-1950s, Flash Cab Co. in Chicago took an unusual turn and put women behind the wheel.
One in that vanguard of seven was Lucille Lawson, a veteran driver tired of passenger double takes. She had previously tooled the streets of rural Crystal Lake as a taxi driver for two years and operated 2.5-ton cargo trucks at a Florida air base during World War II.
Mrs. Lawson, 84, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease Friday, Jan. 31, in a nursing home in Minerva, Ohio.
“She was a woman ahead of her time, gutsy and fiercely independent,” said her daughter, Carol Pace. “She never had a bad experience [as a cabbie]. But my mother was a beautiful girl. She wasn’t like a truck driver.”
Despite being an accomplished road warrior and a radio dispatcher with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city, Mrs. Lawson–then Lucille Craven–told the Tribune: “Men whistle and kids laugh. But I like to drive and I like people. It seems perfectly normal to me.”
Her best tip at the time was $1.65 on a $3.55 fare.
“There were very few women brave enough to venture into the field,” said Paloma Ott, an administrative assistant at Flash, who said there were no female drivers when she started with the company in 1946. “It was a male occupation. Many of the passengers were astonished to see a woman driver.”
Javad Rahmaniasl, a manager at the company, said: “It took courage at the time to drive a cab. I’ve been in the cab business since 1972, and I didn’t see that many women drivers into the 1980s.”
Mrs. Lawson was born in Chicago and attended Lucy Flower High School on the North Side before working as a truck driver and cabbie, homemaker, switchboard operator and worker at a small electronics firm.
“But driving was a passion of her life,” said her daughter, a former bus driver for Elgin-based Unit School District 46. A son, Gary Craven, drives a bus for disabled children in Ohio.
“She had no fear. Anytime she had a problem, there was a good Samaritan willing to help, but she was always one to help others too,” her daughter said.
In her later years Mrs. Lawson would not hesitate to hop in the car for a drive to Florida and back. And though she was a good driver, she never thought twice about batting her eyes to get out of a traffic ticket, her daughter said.
“I remember us heading to a Cubs game and going down Clark Street. She saw a parking spot on the other side of the street and pulled a U-ey. A police officer pulled us over and she told me, `Whatever you do, let me do all the talking,’” she said.
“So here this sweet little old lady from Crystal Lake is saying, `Oh, Officer, what did I do?’ And she’s got this big Cubs shirt on. He never gave her a ticket.
“She was always happy when she was driving a car.”
Other survivors include two more sons, Thomas and Ronald Craven; 15 grandchildren; and 23 great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held Friday in Ohio.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune (Registration required)
