Roxana Cannon Arsht papers

The Honorable Roxana Cannon Arsht was born in 1915 in Wilmington, Delaware, to Samuel and Tillie Statnekoo Cannon. She received a B.A. in chemistry from Goucher College, and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania (1939.) After passing the Delaware bar in 1941, she was unable to find employment in her field, especially after she married another lawyer, Samuel Arsht. She was the fifth woman to pass the Delaware bar; in 1965 her daughter, Adrienne Arsht, was the eleventh.

In 1962, Roxana Arsht began working as a volunteer master in the Family Court. After serving without pay for nine years, she was appointed by Governor Russell W. Peterson as a judge of the Family Court in 1971. After she retired in 1983, she and her husband and she and her husband were active as philanthropists.

Over the years, she gave her time and financial support to numerous charities, including Red Feather Agency, Planned Parenthood, Visiting Nurse Association, First Stage at Tower Hill School, and Winterthur museum. Among the many gifts she and her husband gave are the S. Samuel and Roxana C. Arsht Hall at the University of Delaware Academy of Lifelong Learning, the Roxana Cannon Arsht Surgicenter, and the Arsht-Cannon Fund at the Delaware Community Foundation. After her husband's death from cancer in 1999, Judge Arsht became a founding member of the Cancer Care Connection at Christiana Care, Inc., where she had earlier served as the first woman member of the board of directors. Judge Arsht was also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Trailblazer Award, the First State Distinguished Service Award, the Josiah Marvel Cup, and the annual award of recognition from the National Conference for Community and Justice. In 1986, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Delaware Women.