ROANOKE TIMES  
                      Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, December 27, 1995           TAG: 9512270085
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-4  EDITION: METRO  
                                             TYPE: NEWS OBIT  
SOURCE: S.D. HARRINGTON STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
      Published correction ran on December 28, 1995.
         In a story Wednesday about the death of Melba Casey Pirkey, the first
      name of one of her employers, former Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney 
      Leroy Moran, was omitted.

WOMAN WAS LEGAL PIONEER

Melba Casey Pirkey, the first woman to open her own law practice in Roanoke, died Monday of cancer at age 77.

"I am not for the idea of competing with men. I like the term 'human rights.' That's what women are striving for," Pirkey told a reporter in 1970 while discussing the women's rights movement.

Before marriage, Melba Casey, a native of Rockingham County and graduate of Bridgewater College, taught commercial subjects and English in Rockingham County schools.

She married Norman T. Pirkey, a C&P Telephone Co. worker from Roanoke. He died in 1990.

After her first child was born, Pirkey did not work for about 15 years but became active in civic groups and at Rosalind Hills Baptist Church, where she and her husband were charter members.

Pirkey went back to work, first as a substitute teacher, then as a correspondence clerk for the Veterans Admini- stration.

For the next eight years, Pirkey studied law in her spare time. And at 50, she passed the Virginia Bar Exam on her first attempt.

Pirkey took her first legal job as a trustee in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, then opened her own practice in 1976. She retired five years ago.

Pirkey's sister, Wilma Warren, said Pirkey lived modestly in the house she and her husband bought 40 years ago.

"She was a very generous and warm-hearted person," Warren said.

As a professional, Moran said Pirkey worked with intensity and approached everything with a business mind.

That description fit well with something Pirkey said in 1970 about women's rights:

"How women conduct themselves will have a lot to do with how effective the movement is. They should pursue it in a businesslike way."

LENGTH: Short :   48 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  (headshot) Pirkey