|
Stewart Myrent
Just finished "First: Sandra Day O'Connor", by Evan Thomas. Really enjoyed the book - took me a little over a week to finish. Sandra Day O'Connor & her husband, John O'Connor, were pretty much the toast of D.C. nightlife & were particularly known as great dancers, because mainly, every time they hit the dance floor, everyone else sat & watched them dance. More about John O'Connor's fate later, but did you know that back at Stanford law school, Sandra Day dated future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Bill Rehnquist, for several years. Before Sandra became a judge, she & her husband both volunteered for the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign, and before she ran for her judgeship, she was majority leader in the Arizona State Senate. Her father, Harry Day, owned a huge ranch (the Lazy B) covering thousands of acres that straddled Arizona & New Mexico. Some highlights from the book: from the "Prologue", "At the same time, she saw that women might have to work twice as hard to get ahead; that men might be threatened or at the very least unsure about the new order; and that there was no use fretting about it. She understood that she was being closely watched. 'It's good to be first,' she liked to say to her law clerks. 'But you don't want to be the last.'" From Chapter 5, "Arizona Judge", she was elected as one of three women on the Maricopa County Superior Court bench and, "In the summer of 1978, O'Connor was confronted with a particularly difficult case. A woman pleaded guilty in her courtroom to forging $3,500 in checks. She had probably kited many more checks - perhaps $100,000 worth. The woman was a college graduate from a well-off Scottsdale family. Deserted by her husband, an NFL football player, she sold real estate, but not enough to keep her in the manner to which she wished to be accustomed. Under the law, she deserved jail time. But O'Connor was faced with a dilemma. The woman had two very young children - one sixteen months and the other only 3 weeks old. If she sentenced the woman to prison, the children would become wards of the court and might wind up in foster care. The woman threw herself on the mercy of the court, begging for probation instead of jail. From the bench, O'Connor told the woman, 'I empathize with you as a mother. I've been anguishing over this case for weeks. It is the most difficult case I have had to resolve. You have intelligence, beauty, and two small children. You come from a fine and respected family. Yet, what is depressing is that someone with all your advantages must certainly have known better.' O'Connor proceeded to sentence the woman to 5 to 10 years in prison. As the defendant was led from the courtroom, she screamed, 'What about my babies? What about my babies?' Afterward, a reporter for the 'Arizona Republic' found Judge O'Connor sitting in her chambers, still wearing her black robe. She was weeping. (The woman rejoined her children after 18 months in prison.)" And from Chapter 14, "Affirmative Action", talking about a case involving upholding a Congressional statute to regulate "soft money" contributions to political campaigns, O'Connor "...wrote the phrase, 'Money, like water, will always find an outlet.'" But, also, "Sean Grimsley, one of the clerks most directly involved in the case. 'But she could identify before we could what really mattered. She would have been an extremely good executive, a great governor or president. She could cut to the chase, put aside what was not important, not get sucked in by irrelevant detail. And do it with grace. It never seemed to take much effort.'" Getting back to John O'Connor, the main reason the Sandra Day O'Connor retired from the Supreme Court, is that her husband, John, fell victim to Alzheimer's disease & eventually, it cost him his life. Sandra was also struck down, late in life, by either Alzheimer's, or possibly senile dementia - it wasn't very clear in the book. I never worry about Alzheimer's disease, because I don't remember any ancestors getting that affliction. However, Myrents almost always decline into senile dementia, eventually, if they life long enough. Way better than Alzheimer's. I've talked to quite a few people whose parents have developed Alzheimer's & they pretty much all said the same two things about that particular affliction: (1) their parents had absolutely no idea who they are. "Who are you?" "It's your son, John, Mom.", or "It's your daughter, Barbara, Dad." They have absolutely no idea who you are. "Who are you?", and (2) they can get really mean & nasty. But they're not being mean & nasty to you, their offspring. They're being mean & nasty to a total stranger. I would really recommend this book. It was fascinating.
|
