Presenter:
the director of the foundation, and like those of you in the audience today, I may someday read about this, reflect upon and describe this morning's events to my grandchildren. Hopefully it all goes as planned for my great grandchildren.

[laughter]

Presenter:
Now, in 1959, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater ______________ U.S. Senate and entering his second term in office addressed what we _________________ his home state. The law of primary tort material that docented the history of Arizona and the greater southwest. Thus, he founded the Arizona Historical Foundation ___________ Senator Goldwater to collect, preserve and disseminate the history of the State _______. ________________ which now embodies the Arizona Historical Foundation _____________ development of ____ legal and judicial history, political history and __________ economic history. This year, obviously, are the _______ the legal and judicial history of Arizona . These ___________ honor Senator Goldwater for the ________ legacy in establishing these organizations dedicated to preserving our history and cultural heritage. I would like to thank our staff ______________ Historical Foundation volunteers, my board of directors and ______________ and _____________ and our partner in various nerous efforts to ___________ foundation. And of course, the Kerr Cultural Center staff without whom today's lecture could not take place. Now for this morning's program. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor _____________________ Arizona entered Stanford University in 1947 and graduated in 1950. And ________ Stanford University Law School and graduated in 1952. At Stanford, she met and married Thomas J. O'Connor and the couple settled and began to raise their family in Phoenix , Arizona . From this point forward, there was a steady ___________ professional _______. Justice O'Connor served in Arizona as an attorney general in 1955 and 19__9 when at that time she was appointed to __________ of the Arizona State Senate. In 1974 she ran successfully for __________, a position she held until she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals __________________

[laughter]

Presenter:
A few months later, she ______ 1981, Arizona 's own Sandra Day O'Connor became the U.S. Supreme Court's _______ justice and its first female justice. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

[applause]

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. I remember well when I was living in the Phoenix area for 25 some years. I became active with the Heard Muse. Many of you must know that quite well. And we started a little lecture series there and Barry Goldwater had made it possible for the Heard Muse to have his Kachina collection in time, which is still there and we used to get him to be part of the lecture series because he had had much involvement with a nber of the Indian tribes in Arizona and we all remember the excitement of getting speakers for that series and getting him quite often and it was always fun. You never knew what you were gonna hear, it was

[laughter]

O'Connor
straight from here to here to you. So, we kind of liked that plain speaking and I didn't realize that this was going to be part of a Arizona and the Law Series. I might have designed something else to talk to you about besides the Lazy B ranch, but maybe we'll get to a little of that. I'm so glad that Chief Justice McGreggor is here. She is doing a great job as Arizona 's Chief Justice and I take personal prided because my first year on the Supreme Court of the United States 1981, guess who I asked to come back with me to help me? It was a brilliant, young, lawyer in the Fennemore Craig firm, Ruth McGreggor.

[applause]

O'Connor:
And .. Between us we tried to muddle through that first year. And I can tell you it was hard, because we didn't have anybody in my chambers who had ever worked at the Supreme Court before. And we didn't know -- there are no written rules, so to speak, for how to do it, you know, how the paper flows in the court and the customs. And the law clerks and I had to try to figure that out, and we made a few mistakes along the way, but it all worked out I guess. Anyway, she's had great experience to be doing what she's now doing. And when I was in the legislature in Arizona , that was in the days when Arizona still had totally partisan political elections of judges at all levels. Now, I frankly didn't think that produced the best caliber of judge across the board. We had some very good judges but we had some that maybe didn't fall in that category. And it just seemed to be a process that didn't work very well. I decided while I was in the legislature that the voters of Arizona should at least consider going to a Missouri type plan, for having initial appointment of judges, at least at the appellate level, by the governor, from a list supplied by a bi-partisan, non-partisan commission, and then having periodic retention elections. So that the voters after seeing how this person served could say “No! We don't like you, you're out.” But otherwise, they could say “Yes. Stay on for another term.” And I couldn't get it out of the House of Representatives. They didn't want to do it. So we had to do it by initiative measure. Got voters signatures, put it on the ballot, and that was at the time that I decided I had served in the executive branch in Arizona and the legislative branch and I thought it would be good to get back to my legal training and be a judge. And I ran for the office of Judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court, in the same year that we voted on the Missouri-type plan for selection of judges. And so I went through the partisan election process. And it was terrible. You know, it was really bad. ‘Cause the opponents would all say, “Oh. I'll be tougher on the criminals, than my opponents would.” And, you know, that's just pie in the sky stuff. You don't know what to make of that. And where do you get your contributions? From the lawyers who appear before you. I don't think that's very good!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
I mean . God! That's . Have you read about some of the trials in Texas ? And maybe, Pennsylvania ? It's not good. And I was so proud of the Arizona voters that year, because they voted for the merit-selection change. Because the voters keep a role in Arizona , but it's a more informed role. And I thought that was great. So, I hope Arizona will see fit to keep that in place. I've been around long enough to see that very much improved caliber of judges across the board, so I like it and that's why I'm glad Ruth McGreggor's here. Now a far cry from the court, was The Lazy B Ranch. I mean, really that was h pretty different. , the ranch was actually half in Greenlee County , Arizona and half in Hidalgo County , New Mexico . If you've ever driven ov over there, it was along the Gila river, between Duncan , Arizona and Lordsburg , New Mexico . And if it's a high desert plateau area, ringed by some volcanic mountains called, the Peloncillos. Now that is the part of Arizona where Coronado came, when he landed on the coast of Mexico, below Mexico City, and he had some soldiers with him and some horses, and he had a few Catholic priests along with him. And they made their way North. Now why did they come? They came as most of the Spanish explorers did, to find gold to send back to the king who had financed their trip. And the goal was gold. They had heard stories that gold could be found in quantities up that way, north. So they kept marching north and boy what long march that had to be. Can you imagine? And when they entered what is now the United States , but then was still Mexico , they followed a tributary of the Gila River . The Gila starts over in the mountains north of Silver City , New Mexico in the Gila wilderness. And it flows down and it flows right through Duncan , Arizona , right through where the Lazy B Ranch was. And there was a tributary that flowed into it from the north, and Coronado obviously followed that, they had to have water when they went along. And it came through the area that's now Clifton , Arizona . And then north of that are these gorgeous mountains .Deep pine tree woods and lots of wild game and plenty of water in those mountains, and that's where Coronado went. And as he went along, he kept hearing stories about, “Keep going, you'll find the gold. There are these Indian villages and they have lots of gold”. Well one of the Indian villages he came to was the Zuni Pueblo. And it was these are pueblo that build kind of apartment like structures out of Adobe. And there was big central plaza, and the Coronado party settled in for awhile. And they discovered they didn't have gold, they had corn and beans and baskets and rugs maybe a little pottery. And they just couldn't believe it. But the Zuni said, “Oh yeah! Just keep going there is . there's gold up there.”

[laughter]

O'Connor:
But in the meantime the priests went to work on the Indians and said “You have to become Christians.” Now I don't know how they communicated. I've never learned; and this would be a good history project. How did these Spaniards learn how to communicate with the different Indian tribes? But they did well enough to convert many of the Zunis and persuade them to build a church in the middle of the plaza, of the Zuni Pueblo. And this adobe structure was built right there in the plaza, and it was squarish rectangle, I guess. And from the time of Coronado in the 1500's until the 1960's, it was there and served as a church. Now, after Coronado and his men left, the Zunis took over and they plastered the inside of the church. And instead of religious figures up there, they had some of their tribe paint, Zuni-Kachina figures on the walls at the four times the four seasons of the year. The paintings were just spectacular! But, they certainly were a far cry from what you would expect to see in a Catholic church!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
So anyway, that's the way it was. And in the 1960's the roof caved in. And then the rains came and washed off the murals and it was tragic! And the Zunis didn't have money to repair it and the church didn't either. Finally, what do you suppose happened? Yup. A federal grant. And they got some money and repaired the church. And I visited there. Oh, I don't know, ten years ago or so. In the late afternoon, because I heard that the church had been restored and that they had even repainted some murals. So when you get a chance, drive up to the Zuni Pueblo and visit that church, and you will see it restored and you will again see, murals with Zuni-Kachinas on the walls. Just gorgeous murals. And you will see what Coronado experienced in those days.

O'Connor:
Now, back to the Gila River and the part of the state where I lived. The original border between Mexico and the United States followed the Gila River . Did you know that? That was the border. And so what was the Lazy B Ranch was originally it would have been part of Mexico . Why did that change? It changed because of railroads. And steam-engines were invented and it became possible to build railroads across the United States . That was a big deal! And the Southern Pacific Railroad wanted to put one in from New Orleans , that was before the flood, and they wanted to run it all the way to Los Angeles . And they needed some land, they didn't want to go up over the mountains. They wanted to follow the lower route and that would have put them in Mexico and they didn't want to go into Mexico . So Franklin Pierce was President of the United States , not that name doesn't slip off the tongue, we don't remember him a whole lot. And he sent a diplomat named, James Gadsden, down to Mexico to negotiate. Well we'd just fought a war with Mexico and won it. Remember the halls of Monteza that the Marines conquered back in the 18 . well, they had just won that war. It was fought from 1846 to 48. So, President Pierce sent Gadsden to Mexico thinking maybe they'd negotiate, and they did. And he was down there a long time. And what a deal he came back with. Mexico agreed to sell to the United States what is now the whole southern part of New Mexico and Arizona , as well as all of what is today's Sonora , Mexico plus what is today known as Baja , California . All the water, all the gulf, I mean, my gosh!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
What do you suppose the price was? Fifteen million dollars! Well, Frank Gadsden thought he had performed a real service. And he went back to report. Well, Congress and the President were very busy anticipating what became the Civil War. They had lots of problems to face .They were they had issues of tariffs and slavery and threatened secession. And they decided that 15million was too much. But the railroads were pressing and so Gadsden went back down and he came back with that strip that became the Gadsden Purchase . Just enough for the railroad. It went south of the Gila River in the present boundary if you look at it on the map. And we had to pay ten million dollars for that little strip! So I don't think we got the best bargain in the world, but anyway . Here was that Gadsden strip and the Southern Pacific Line went through, before that it had been the Butterfield Stage. And, my grandfather, H.C. Day had grown up in Vermont in a farm area. And he said he had picked up the last rock out of our farm field in Vermont that he ever intended to pick up.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
So when he was twenty-one he went a few miles north to the Canadian border and opened a store, and he prospered. And that building is still on the Canadian border. And then Wichita , Kansas emerged and that emerged because Congress, in its wisdom, decided to appropriate the land that had been claimed around Wichita by several Indian tribes. In fact, there was a fort there just to protect settlers from Indian raids at Wichita . And Congress said, “Well, we're just gonna take all that.” And they announced that it now belonged to the United States and it was open for settlement in what became Wichita . And people kind of flocked in there. It was at the confluence of two rivers and it was pretty good farm land. And so my grandfather, H.C. Day, went off to Wichita , he thought he could provide building materials for people who were building all this community. And sure enough, he did. And prospered it. And he ended up having some ranches in the Kansas area, and he was too busy to get married till he was in his mid-40's. And then he married the 18 year old daughter

[laughter]

O'Connor:
of a judge! And so

[laughter]

O'Connor:
he was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life and he knew about the Gadsden Purchase and the land belonged to the United States , but it was open for people to use. And if you wanted to go run cattle on it you could. So he went out there and he bought a herd of cattle in Mexico and put them on the property that became the Lazy B Ranch in time. There wasn't anybody else there except for occasional Apache raids. And he took the son of someone he knew in Wichita to come out and try to run the ranch, because H.C. Day didn't really want to stay there, he wanted to go on to Pasadena and live a comfortable life. So he put this young man out there to run the ranch with the Lazy B brand on the cattle and the Lazy B Ranch is what it became. And every now and then Geronimo and his band would come and help themselves to some horses and a few cattle. But, life went on and it was okay. And other people began to use the same lands as well, and all of the cattle would go wherever there was water, you know, there weren't any fences. So, you had to have communal round ups and sort out everybody's calves and cattle from round ups. And things went along pretty well accept that this young man started putting his own brand instead of Lazy B on the calves!

[laughter]

O'Connor:

So my grandfather Day had to abandon plans for a comfortable life and he went out, just along the Gila River and built a house and he built a little school house and he by that time he had several children. They ended up having five, my father was the youngest. And they'd bring a school teacher from Kansas . And he planted orchards. And tried to run the ranch in a good way, and he was quite a businessman. He did okay. Believe it or not. And my father was born out there. He never had a birth certificate. We had a hard time when he tried to get a passport .He was born in 1898, in that area along the Gila River . And, anyway, eventually my grandfather found someone else who would come out and go in partnership with him to run the ranch and he moved back to Pasadena where lived happily with his family. And my father went to school in Pasadena . And then his parents died. His father was old by the time he had my father. So both his parents died within a very short time of each other. And the lawyers had to settle the estate. And they needed to do something about the Lazy B Ranch, while they were doing all of this. And they sent my father, who was then about 18, out to run that ranch. Well, he had no desire to stay there at all. He wanted to go off and go to Stanford and get an education, but it didn't turn out that way. It took years. And they ended up in a lawsuit involving the settlement, and that stretched on and on. My father never left the Lazy B. And he discovered that they needed to buy some bulls, and he bought a car load of bulls from a W.W. Wilke in El Paso , Texas . And he went down to El Paso to receive the shipment of the bulls. And Mr. Wilke said, “Well Harry, why don't you come out to our house for dinner tonight? If you aren't busy.” And my father did. And there was Mr. Wilke's daughter Ada May.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And they met, and there really is such a thing as love at first sight. I mean that was it! One night at dinner. And he then left with the bulls to go back to the Lazy B.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
But they started writing each other. And pretty soon they were writing each other every day. And they it just really was romantic. I guess they saw each other one other time, and then finally my father wrote to Ada May, and he said, “This just is ridiculous. I can't possibly marry you. You're wonderful. You're beautiful. You're polished and educated ” She had gone to University of Arizona , had a degree and had been a teacher. And he said, “I can't take you out to the ranch!” He said, “It's in a God-forsaken place. I don't have any money.” He said, “I looked in my pants and my clothes yesterday, and I have a total of about $36.29.” And he said, “I just can't We just can't get married. I'm so sorry, you're fabulous, but you deserve better.” Well, that was the end of the letters, but about three weeks later, they eloped.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
I'm not sure what happened. I have all those letters, but then here they just stopped. And they went to Las Cruses, New Mexico and were married. And they moved out there. And my grandmother Wilke, my mother's mother, was so unhappy about it. She didn't think that was a good life for her daughter. There was a four room adobe house out on the ranch. They weren't living in the house that my grandfather had built down by the river, they had a house more centrally located for the ranch property. And it had a screen porch around it. And the cowboys slept on the screen porch. They had no running water, no indoor plbing .nothing! I mean it was quite primitive. And here was my mother, living out in this environment, and she was a city girl, and very attractive, lot's of nice clothes I don't know, somehow they were really in love, so it worked out. And the next thing that happened was, she got pregnant with me and my father thought that would never work, but my mother said, “Don't worry it will be fine.”

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And I don't know how she managed! Image trying to wash diapers. They didn't have throw-away diapers in those days. With water, you had to haul 300 yards from the windmill, and then heat on a wood burning stove in the smer when its up over 100 degrees Come on! And I was fine. And as soon as I could sit up, the cowboys thought it was great to have a little baby around, and they'd plop me up on the saddle and off we'd go. So, that was quite an upbringing to have. And in those days eh we had, eventually, an old Model-T Ford pickup that was the only vehicle on the ranch and everything else was done by horseback. And they'd go to town about once a week. And go to Duncan and Lordsburg and buy groceries and supplies and then come back. And my father provided my first pet. He'd been out on round-up when I was still very little and he found a little bobcat, and it was just a little kitten, and it was scrawny and crying and there was no evidence of a mother and he was concerned and he thought something had happened. So he picked the little thing up and put it in his jacket pocket, brought it home, fed it with an eye-dropper milk. We had plenty of cow's milk. And the little thing grew up, and so that was my first pet! A great big bobcat.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And he was like a housecat for the most part. He'd purr and didn't mind being stroked and he you know he just kinda ran around the house and went in and out at his own will. But if a beef was butchered, somewhere in the vicinity, boy would he get snarly, and Rrrrrr! He knew.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And anyway, he had an imaginative name, he was called ‘Bob'.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And Bob was with us a long time and then he disappeared! And we just couldn't imagine what had happened to Bob. And pretty soon, every night one of our chickens in the chicken coop was murdered. And my father said, “You know I wonder if Bob hasn't returned.” And he knew where the chicken coop was. And so my father stayed up one night, and sure enough, Bob trotted back to the chicken coop and my father persuaded Bob to come back to the house. Offered him some nice beef instead of chicken. And Bob stayed for some months and then disappeared again and we never saw him. But I imagine he found a Mrs. Bob somewhere.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And went off into the wilds. And my parents stayed on that ranch for the rest of their lives. They each passed away in their own beds at the ranch after a very long life. And they both agreed, they were in their mid-80's by the time they died, they lived long enough to come to Washington and see me sworn in as a justice on the court. I got to sit on that bench in 1981, in September, and look down, and there were my parents and there was the President and Mrs. Reagan and our three sons and that was quite a moment. And I really can't believe that it's been 25 years since then. And they're both, dead .their ashes are placed on the top of Round Mountain , which was the highest point on the Lazy B. It's a volcanic brown mountain. It's on many air maps, and its it kinda juts up over the surrounding area. And from the top was a fabulous view of the entire Lazy B Ranch. So it was a good place for them. They loved their life on the Lazy B. They did get indoor plbing eventually. My father arranged for it.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And he was a very intelligent man. Before I'd ever heard of solar heating, he designed and built a solar water heating system. And it worked like a charm, always. So they had hot water and running water and indoor plbing. And lived very and they built a bunkhouse for the cowboys, and they enlarged the main house. So, all was well. And my mother was one of these people who was a great cook and liked company. And living on a ranch, people would come from a long distance to get there and having come that far. they had to stay awhile. Maybe over night, maybe several nights, and certainly for several meals. And so you got to know people a little bit. When you live in a city and a community, you meet people and say, “How are you?” and you know, exchange pleasantries for five minutes, but you don't really know them. But when you're out like that, and people stay overnight and stay a while after you stop talking about the weather and when it rained last and the price of cattle, then you get down to a lot of interesting discussion. And so you really got to know people, and we enjoyed that aspect of ranch life. But that's where they are and the Round Mountain is surrounded by rattle snakes. We had a lot of rattle snakes on the Lazy B. And I never grew fond of them.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And so when we'd go up to see the top of the Lazy B, we're always very, very careful, as we pick our way up and we never fail to see a bunch of rattle snakes who guard that spot with a lot of care I guess. Now, I'm supposed to stop talking and let you ask some questions. So, I guess we'll do that now. Yes?

Question:
Sandra, I have always been curious where the brand of the Lazy B began.

O'Connor:
It was on those cattle th .that my grandfather bought in Mexico . Now a lazy means it's lying down on its side, you probably know that. If it were just a ‘B' it would be standing up, you know like a ‘B'. But if it is lazy then it's lying down on its side. And the cattle that he bought had that brand on the left hip. And we just kept the brand and called the ranch the Lazy B. Now it's sorta dark and I can't see Yes?

Question:
How about your schooling?

O'Connor:
That was the problem. You know, for ranchers that was the sad problem! When you have children, what do you do? Particularly if it's as remote as ours was. It was not feasible when I was ready for school to make the trip to Duncan or Lordsburg everyday for school and the _______anyway, so My parents had to make a decision. Should my mother move to town -- move to El Paso or something and live and provide a place for me while I went to school, or should they send me away? And they really were in love and they didn't want to have her move away. And I had a grandmother, Grandmother Wilke, living in El Paso , my grandfather too initially. He was in the cattle business. And so they sent me off to live with the Wilke's. And that was fine. My grandmother was young for a grandmother. She had married Willis Wilson Wilke at sixteen. And she was very attractive and very smart. She could do any math problem in her head. I mean, amazing. And she was a bridge player and she remembered every card that had been played.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
She liked to play duplicate and nothing pleased her more than winning some bridge tournament which she often did. So, anyway, she was happy to have me and I stayed with her. Now, there was just – my grandfather hand a heart attack and died. And my grandmother never forgave him because he died at a time when cattle prices were low and he was a man who bought the cattle, would put them on feed and then we'd sell them hoping to have a gain in weight and an increase in price. And that was how he'd make money. And as – you'd do about as well if you went to Las Vegas and shot craps, I suppose. But he happened to die on a down cycle and left my grandmother financially strapped and she very unhappy about it. But, anyway, my parents ended up buying a house for her and I lived there with her and she was a character. She had grown up in Mexico because her father ran a freight service to the mines initially in Sonora . I mean, in the Chihuahua side of Mexico on that side, eastern side of the Sierra Nevadas and he had quite a good little business and then at some point in this life, he decided to relocate on the Sonora side, with his business. And they joined a Mormon wagon train to go from the Chihuahua side over the top of the Sierra Madres and down to the Sonora side. And my grandmother said she rode at the head of the wagon train because her Spanish was better than her English and there she was and she used to describe that incredible trip. I guess it was quite something. Anyway, they ended up on the Sonora side and she met W.W. Wilke, an attractive good looking fellow and they married and she was very young. But, the problem with Grandmother Wilke was she never stopped talking. If her eyes were open, her lips were moving!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
Did you ever know anybody like that? And, you know, I was trying to be a good little student and stuff and I'd come home with homework to do and I had to learn to do my homework while she talked incessantly and to say, “Yes, Grandmother.” “No, Grandmother.” at all the right times, but never hear a word she said.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
So that was how life was with Grandmother Wilke. And she never did, I think, forgive my father for marrying my mother and taking her off to the Lazy B, even though my mother liked it. Anybody else? Yes? What? Where? Yes?

Question:
Do you mind answering a political question?

O'Connor:
Probably.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
What's your question?

O'Connor:
Have you any qualms about the way in which the Supreme Court _____________?

O'Connor:
Well, it isn't up to me. Now, I had a wonderful colleague on the court. His name was Byron White. Remember Byron White? Now, there were lots there were – yes! He was the first and perhaps only ever member of the Supreme Court to have been a professional athlete. He was a professional football player. He had – he had played for Colorado and was a star in college and then he played professionally to help put himself through law school and in those days, the pros didn't earn very much, but he did manage to put himself through law school. Then he got drafted in World War II and he was in the Navy and he was quite a little hero and that's how he met or how he and John F. Kennedy met. It was during the Navy and those perilous times and that's how he ended up on the Supreme Court was because of his personal acquaintance with President Kennedy and Byron White was a marvelous man and he used to go up to the gym which is the space above the court room, there's space and the law clerks and Byron White would use it to play basketball and every year, some of these law clerks would come back injured.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
He had no idea how strong he was. My first day on the Supreme Court when I was sworn in, in September 1981, I went back to the room where all the justices meet each time before we go on the bench to shake hands and in those days, I wore a ring on this finger and I came to Justice White and we shook hands and I thought I was gonna die, right on the spot.

[laughter]

I mean, he had no idea how strong he was. My hand was pulverized and it was on that – have you ever had somebody do that to you with a ring on? Well, you wait till you have somebody like Byron White do it. And I just couldn't bear it ‘cause my first day on the court, here were the tears streaming down.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
Glad to meet you Justice White! So, anyway, Byron White told me that when you have a new justice on the court, you don't just have a new justice. You have a new court. So, we certainly have a new court now. We have a new Chief Justice and a new Associate Justice and it's a new court, so we'll all have to sit and see how all that plays out. Yes?

Question:
I think you know my father. He died in 1983, but he was a Supreme Court Justice in Arizona , ________, so you know him?

O'Connor:
Of course.

Question:
And I just want you to know if had lived, I think he would have been thrilled with your performance on the Supreme Court, even though he was very, very, very liberal.

O'Connor:
Well, I

[laughter]

O'Connor:
I think I think he would have too

[applause]

O'Connor:
I knew him and he had been a trial court judge, you know, and I appeared before him as a young lawyer in Arizona on a nber of occasions in his courtroom and he was very electable. He didn't have to worry about campaigns because everybody knew his name and he was easily elected and re-elected. And I think he would have been pleased because we were friends. Yes?

Question:
How did you end up at Stanford?

O'Connor:
It's the only place I applied and I'm not sure why, it was subconscious, I suppose. My father had hoped to go there and didn't get to go to college and I just always heard about Stanford and I applied. I was in Austin High School in El Paso , still living with Grandmother Wilke, still talking.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And the principal of my high school forgot to tell me when the college entrance exams were given and I didn't get to take them. And I had applied to Stanford, but they needed exams. And the principal of my school was just devastated. He couldn't stand it because he I thought I should get in. He telephoned Stanford and talked to the admissions director and he said, “Allison, you need this young woman. She's a great student and you must take her. I know she can pass. It's my fault that she didn't take the exams. Now, you give her the exam when she gets there.”

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And you know, Stanford did that!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
They wouldn't do it today, would they? But they did, so that's how I got in and I guess it's because he had always wanted to go and it was a very good choice. I loved it. Yes?

Question:
I'm wondering what it was like when you got out of law school, what it was like for a woman trying to make her way in the legal profession

Couldn't get a job.

and

O'Connor:
Now, I was a year ahead of John in law school, so we had at least a year to go and we both liked to eat and so one of us had to work. And he was in school, so that was me. And I wanted to work as a lawyer. I really did. That's why I'd gone to law school. I could not get a single interview with a law firm in California ‘cause I was female. They had all these notices on the placement board at Stanford Law School . “Call us, we want to talk to you.” They didn't want to talk to me and I finally asked a young woman friend of mine from undergraduate days at Stanford whose father was a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Krutcher, headquartered in L.A. if she could get her father to get me an interview in the firm. And she asked him and he did and I went to Los Angeles and had an interview with the partner who did that and we had a pleasant little visit and not too long and he said, “Well, Ms. Day, how do you type?”

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And I said, “Well, I'm medi I'm trying to get by.” “Well, if you could type well enough, I might be able to get you on here as a legal secretary, but Ms. Day, we've never hired a woman lawyer and I don't see the day when we will.” So, I mean, that was the best I could get and I heard that the district attorney in San Mateo County , California , Redwood City , just north of Palo Alto , had once had a woman lawyer on his staff. And I thought, well if he had one, he could maybe hire another. And I went to see him and you know how politicians are, they generally tend to be very pleasant and nice and he was and, “Oh Ms. Day, I'm glad to meet you.” And, “Oh, you have a fine record. It would be wonderful to have you here in my office, but I have no funding for another deputy and I don't have an office.” He'd walked me around the office and sure enough, there wasn't any vacant space and I still thought that was my best bet and so, I went back to the Lazy B Ranch, ‘cause John and I were planning our wedding there in December and I wrote him a long letter and gave him all the reasons why I thought he should have me in his office and all the ways that I thought I could be helpful, and I said, “Now, I know you don't have any money, but I could work there for nothing for a time until you can persuade the supervisors to give you a little money and I know you don't have any space, but I met your secretary and she's wonderful and if she'd let me have a desk in her office, I'd be glad to sit there.” And he went for it!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And that's how I got in the door. And I hadn't been there very long until he was appointed judge for the county of San Mateo County. So he had to move up and out and my supervisor was made the district attorney and that opened space and money and everything was lovely. So, that was how I got a foot in the door. And when – then we married and after a time, John got drafted. It was the Korean War and we had to leave California . I mean, he was assigned. He got in the Judge Advocate General's corps and he had to go to Charlottesville to school. Well, we hadn't been married that long and I thought I should go along and I had to give up that job that I had worked so hard to get. It broke my heart to give it up, but he was sent not to Korea , but to Germany and I got a job with the Quartermaster Market Center as a lawyer in Germany . A lawyer for the federal government and that was fun. I enjoyed it. And he enjoyed his work. And when we came back to Phoenix , it was 1957. He was discharged and he went looking for work and he met Walter Craig and Mr. Fennemore in Fennemore Craig and they offered him a job and he really liked the people in that office. I don't think they had more than 12 lawyers at the time and he wanted to take that and I thought that was okay although I had lived in Arizona , I didn't know people in Phoenix . We knew two couples here. And they were classmates in law school. One named Bill Renquist and his wife, Nan .

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And the other was Fred Steiner and his wife Jackie and all four had been at Stanford, their wives and I had known all of them. Wives and husbands alike. And so, we settled here and again, none of the firms in Phoenix had women except firms where the daughter could work with her father or the sister could work with her brother. There – they were not in the firms and I couldn't get a job here so, we took the bar review course down in Tucson . It was given at the time by some, I think Chester Stanton, I don't remember. Anyway, studying for the bar, I met a young man named Tom Tobin who was coming from the east. He didn't know anybody and the two of us decided to open a little neighborhood law office and we went out to Maryvale and rented space in a shopping center and we opened our doors and we took whatever came in the door and it was landlord/tenant, it was collection work, it was domestic relations, it was, you know, write a will, not the kind of problem usually solved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
But it was okay. And we learned a lot. We took criminal appointments. That was before the days of public defenders and that's what Okay. We're out of time, aren't we? No? We have 10 minutes? Okay. Yes, back there?

Question:
What are your thoughts on______ your first day of retirement?

O'Connor:
What? What are my thoughts

Question:
What are your personal thoughts?

O'Connor:
Well, it's a very strange feeling.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
I've been a lawyer for 52 years. I've served as a judge for more than 35 and it is a very peculiar feeling to know that I don't have any briefs to read. I don't have any petitions to read and responses. And I don't know how that's going to play out.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
I'll see a year or so from now.

[laughter]

Yes?

Question:
How large was the Lazy B and what's the current status of the ranch?

O'Connor:
In the days that we had it, it was close to 300 square miles. Now, most of that was federally owned land. In 19 early 1930's Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act and that was an Act that was designed to solve the problem of multiple uses of these federal lands in places in the west where there were all these lands and, you know, anybody could run cattle on them. Well, you bet, that can't continue so, the federal government realized they had to devise some way of dividing it up and letting the users of certain lands pay the government what amounted to rent. It was so much per head of cattle or horses that you'd pay the government for the use of it and they had to develop boards of people to figure out how equitably to divide it up among the then users and most of the allotments went on the basis of developed water and if someone had been using it and had drilled wells and had developed water and put in improvements, then they would be given priority in getting the grazing permit and my father was one of the people who served as a member of one of these boards to try to figure out who got what and it all got sorted out in time pretty effectively, actually. And the land that we owned outright and the federal land and some state land in New Mexico , some state land in Arizona , all totalled about 300 square miles. It was big. But, of course, you need it a lot because there was not heavy grass on much of it. It tended to be sparse as it is in the desert area. And so, you needed a little more to have enough for the cattle to eat. And after my parents died, my brother was running the ranch and there were increasing pressures from all sides. Increase the grazing fees, do all this and he thought the place should be sold. None of the grandchildren seemed to want to stay and plan to run it in time, so, unhappily from my perspective, it was sold and it had to be sold off in chunks because it was so large. Nobody wanted anything that big. But the core of it was eventually acquired by a wonderful couple from Salt Lake City and they had some independent means, it's awfully hard to make a living on places like that and they don't have to and so they run it hoping to break even anyway and they use it as a place for their children and grandchildren to go and they're doing a very fine job of maintaining that core of the Lazy B, I'm happy to say. Yes?

Question:
Yes, my question has two parts. Do you see any _________ to the inordinate amount of time it takes to approve or confirm judges on the federal level? And secondly, _____________ to your _________________ do you have any plans for _______________?

O'Connor:
The confirmation process works very efficiently when you have a President of one political party and control in the Senate of the same political party. We have that situation now so in effect, the President's nominee can be confirmed in all likelihood, barring some unusual thing and for most federal judicial appointments at the District Court level or even at the Appellate Court level, there isn't a lot of attention paid to it. Although when it approaches an election year, maybe that increases the pressure a little on the opposition to raise a ruckus, but for a Supreme Court vacancy, there is more general interest than for the other courts and that has proven to be, over the years, a place where there is considerable focus and on that, at present, the judiciary committee in the Senate has opted to allow at least three rounds of questioning by each member of a very large committee and that stretches on as you may have noticed in the last six months.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
I wonder, you know, maybe if the committee members were forced to watch a television rerun

[laughter]

O'Connor:
They'd decide they could shorten it a little, I don't know. [laughs] But that's the process. Thank you. Yes?

Question:
This is political okay, knowing what you know today, would you vote the same way on the Bush/Gore

O'Connor:
Oh heavens! How am I going to answer that? I'm not going to answer that. You know, my theory as a judge and as a justice was to do the very best I could with each case as it came and do what I could, read what I could, weigh the pros and cons, figure out what the governing principles were and try to apply them and then not look back. And if I looked back and tried to second guess myself on cases, even that one, I wouldn't be a very happy person, probably.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And I don't think that's a good way to be a judge.

[applause]

O'Connor:
Yeah. What am I gonna do now that I'm retired? Well, I think one of my projects ought to be, have you noticed, as you get older and as you get arthritis in your hands, that the packaging on things is impossible to open!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
You buy aspirin and you can't get the container open. You get a bottle of water and I have to have help to get the thing open. It's ridiculous. Okay, yes?

Question:
To get off of politics, could you tell us one of your favorite stories about some of the cowboys that worked on your ranch?

O'Connor:
Oh, there's so many!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
Well, since this is a Focus on the Law, I'll tell you one about Bug Quinn. Now, Bug Quinn, his real name was Ralph, but somehow, you know, he was normal size from hip to top of his head, but his legs were short. Really short! So he was a short little guy and he was hired in his youth, at the ranch, to do something or other. And the round up foreman thought that he was running around on these little short legs everywhere and like a lighting bug and he called him Bug. And that stuck. So, he became Bug Quinn and Bug ended up working most of the time for 60 years at the Lazy B. And he did about everything. Eventually, I mean, he was a pretty good cowboy, but but eventually he became the round up cook and he was a dandy cook. He really was and the problem with Bug was that he did like alcohol.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
Now, we didn't have any stores at the Lazy B or anywhere near and it was a little hard to have liquor out there, so every few weeks, he decided he needed to go into town. Well, then it was quite a while before he could come back to work. And he did have his problems in that regard and finally, you know, he got thrown into the jail in Duncan a few times for being drunk and disorderly. And at one point in his life, Bug Quinn decided he would run for Justice of the Peace down in Duncan . A judicial office, we still have them in Arizona . Justice of the Peace. And he said, now if I'm elected, then I can just check myself in and out of the jail

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And he was elected!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
The voters will do anything sometimes.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And there was – but he said he knew the Constitution. He said he would never perform a wedding ceremony although as Justice of the Peace, he was authorized to do so, because he knew that the 8 th Amendment prohibited cruel and unusual punishment.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
He was terrific. He was just wonderful. And we had another fabulous cowboy who spent his entire life, he came to the ranch at age 7. He died in his mid 70's and he was at the ranch all those years. His name was Rafael Estrada. And he had been born to a couple who lived on the outskirts of Silver City , New Mexico and his father died when he was very young. His mother remarried and Rafael Estrada did not like his step-father at all and he ran away when he was 7 and he went down from Silver City the 45 miles or so to Lordsburg and he asked people there where he could get a job and somebody said, “Well, you ought to go out to the Lazy B. They'll probably hire you to be a chore boy or something.” And sure enough, somebody was in town from the Lazy B and took him out to the ranch and he never left! He was fabulous. He was the nicest person. He was just – you would have liked him so much. He was great. He taught me how to play poker.

[laughter]

O'Connor:
And we'd sit in the bunkhouse and we'd use those long kitchen matches for poker chips and he didn't have a lot of money, so the cards, we'd use those old Bicycle playing cards, a deck, and he'd play with them until it was like shuffling Kleenex!

[laughter]

O'Connor:
But we'd play and he never learned to read or write, but he could read sign. He could look around, look at the ground, he could tell you what animals had been there. If it was a horse track, he could tell you if the horse had a rider or not. He could tell you whether the track was made one day ago, or three days ago.

[break in tape!]

O'Connor:
family, and so after a cooling off period, my father went into Duncan to try to talk him into returning and in time he did and he stayed the rest of his days at the Lazy B and we children used to like to ride with him, but we had to be careful because he had long days on horseback and we liked to go with him when they weren't so long because he had very good horses with a fast gait and our horses tended to not have such a good gait and to keep up was real work. So, we'd go with him on shorter days that he had, but he was just fabulous and he knew everything about the ranch and the cattle and horses. He was quite a guy and he finally got sick and passed on. All right. I'm being told it's time to quit.

[laughter]

[applause]

Question:
Thank you very much. Are you going to be available to sign a few books outside?

O'Connor:
Not too many. I can stay for a few minutes, let's say about 20 minutes.