Reflections of a lawyer-politician

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Nation: "Editor's note: This High Profile first appeared in The Dallas Morning News on July 28, 1991.

Depending on who is talking, there seem to be three women named Harriet Miers in Dallas.

One is the hard-nosed career lawyer, a partner in the Dallas firm of Locke Purnell Rain Harrell, who has just become the first woman president-elect of the State Bar of Texas. This Harriet Miers is a commercial litigator with a reputation for being tough, smart and shrewd. She is a tireless champion of the law, one who yearns to set society's wrongs aright.

Another Harriet Miers is finishing her two-year term as an at-large member of the Dallas City Council. To her colleagues, she often comes across as dour, cold, uncompromising and uncommunicative -- a maverick and a cipher.

And then there is the Harriet Miers her friends and family know, the one who seldom reveals herself to fellow council members. This one is warm, sensitive, humorous, loyal, the favorite aunt of everyone's children. She is a model of self-sacrifice, a woman whose moral code will not allow her to act against her conscience.

Which is the real Harriet Miers?"