Sandra Day O'Connor
How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice
By Joan Biskupic
Ecco
ISBN: 0-06-059018-1
Chapter One
Pioneer Roots
To ready herself for the birth of her first child, Ada Mae Day left her
home on an Arizona ranch and her husband of three years. She traveled two
hundred miles east, to her mother's place in El Paso, Texas, to be near a
city hospital. After baby Sandra was born on March 26, 1930, at the Hotel
Dieu Hospital, Harry Day came by train to see Ada Mae and his new
daughter. "Although I cannot say that I feel any great parental love for
Sandra yet," Harry wrote to his wife upon his return to the Lazy B, "I
would like to see her and touch her again."
Sandra was a mixed blessing for Harry. The deep passion he felt for Ada
Mae was complicated by the infant, as was the burden of making a living
from the dry expanse of the Lazy B. He could not abide separation from his
young wife. "I wonder continually what you are doing, where you are, who
you are with," he wrote to her a year after they married. "I wonder what
you will be like when I see you again. Will you be changed? Somehow I am
afraid you will be different." Harry's insecurities were ratcheted up by
the looming Depression. Even before the arrival of this new mouth to feed,
life was defined by scarcity. Too little water. Too few hands for the work
to be done.
Decades later, as a Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor would write
a nostalgically sweet memoir of her ranch childhood. In it, her father,
Harry, is painted as a rugged American type, a self-taught man who would
become the greatest single influence on her life. Yet, beneath the Gary
Cooper of her portrayal, was a man who bequeathed a complex legacy to his
children. Harry Day was harsh, demanding, and unpredictable. But Sandra
left the Lazy B with a lesson in the virtues of hard work, a talent for
maneuvering among tough characters, and a competitive drive that sustained
her through a journey no woman had taken before.
Harry Day was the fifth and last child of Henry Clay Day, who headed off
from Vermont in the mid-1870s to make his fortune. The father, named for
the Whig politician Henry Clay, had worked his family's farm in Coventry,
Vermont, until 1865, when he turned 21. Then he moved west, first laboring
in a general merchandise store on the Canadian border, and later opening
his own building-supply business in Wichita, Kansas. There, when he was
35, he met and married Alice Edith Hilton, 18, the daughter of a rector in
the Episcopal Church. With his angular New England visage, bushy mustache,
and stone-faced demeanor, H. C. Day was marked by his Yankee heritage. But
he also could not stay put. He constantly looked for fresh adventures and
travel.
In 1880, Day sought acreage in the newly opened public lands of the New
Mexico Territory for the grazing of livestock. Down in Mexico, he bought a
herd of cattle and settled on a parcel of his new land south of the Gila
River, on what would become the border between New Mexico and Arizona. The
Mexican cattle had been branded on the left hip with a B lying down flat
- a "lazy" B. So, he named his ranch for the brand, and it endured as the
Lazy B through the generations. Joining the rush for open range, H. C. Day
arrived just as cattle-grazing conditions were becoming harder for
ranchers. Dry spells and overstocking were quickly destroying the arid and
fragile land. Cattle prices were tumbling. The pioneers were being sorely
tested.
Day hired a foreman to manage operations at the Lazy B, began taking steps
to move his family to the more pleasant environs of Pasadena, California,
and continued his travels, now to England and Germany. The flinty New
Englander wanted to be based in California, in a promising city where the
orange trees blossomed year round, but Day soon discovered that the ranch
foreman was stealing from him. So, he brought his family back to the Gila
River valley and the Lazy B, where he built a house and a one-room school
for his children. The youngest of H. C.'s and Alice's children, Harry was
born at that ranch house in 1898 and lived there until he was about 10
years old. H. C. Day, by then, had a foreman he trusted, and California
continued to beckon. He moved his wife and children back to the sweetness
of Pasadena. An athletic boy with an attractive smile, young Harry thrived
in city schools. He won state swimming awards. So pleased was he to
graduate in 1918 from Pasadena High School that he saved his fancy,
typeset commencement program and high school picture until the day he
died. Harry wore the trappings of city life well. In photographs from
these years, Harry looks the dashing young fellow in blazer and cap. He
had hopes of college and travel to exotic places.
H. C. was preoccupied, as usual, with his business enterprises. As a
father, he was more aloof than affectionate. On the other hand, Harry's
mother, Alice, doted on the boy. When he was away from home, she wrote him
long, worried letters about whether he had enough clothes to keep warm and
whether he was taking care of himself. "Be a good boy and don't lift heavy
things or do anything else to injure yourself," she wrote at one point.
From both parents, Harry received a sense for business and handling
financial affairs.
Harry's dream, born in his Pasadena years, was to attend Stanford
University. But as he graduated from high school, Harry was drafted for
World War I. The war, however, ended before he saw any action. Then, in
1919, H. C. Day's health slipped and, as he worried about the ranch's
finances, he sent Harry, the second of his two sons, to check on its
operation. Harry, then 21 years old, found the land a terrible place to
live, and hoped to stay at the Lazy B only long enough to make some money
and then find someone else to run it....
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sandra Day O'Connor
by Joan Biskupic Excerpted by permission.
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