RANCHER VALUES
O’Connor gained work ethic wrangling cattle in childhood
Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of an 11-part series.
Technically speaking, she was born in Texas. And raised on a ranch that jutted into New Mexico.
But Sandra Day O’Connor’s home was in Arizona. And that was where she spent much of her childhood and started her political and judicial lives.
She also came to embody what it meant to be from the Grand Canyon State. It was something of a novelty that a U.S. Supreme Court justice would come from a dusty, remote outpost. And it played into a romanticizing of what, in reality, was a rough and rugged upbringing.
“It teaches you self-reliance,” her brother, Alan Day, said of life on the ranch. “It teaches you: If you have a problem, you need to fix it.”
Many threads of O’Connor’s life can be traced back to her upbringing on the ranch called the Lazy B, most of which was located in southeast Arizona.
Her independence: That came from being raised in a spot where one was largely left to their own devices.
Her judicial temperament: That came from — in an independent landscape — making decisions that charted one’s own course, or the ranch’s course, and learning to live with those consequences.
Her strides for women: That came from riding in round-ups with cowboys and earning equal treatment by showing she could get the job done.
Her strength: That came from seeing her father manage the 150,000-acre ranch without hand-wringing or second-guessing himself.
Her grace: That came from seeing her mother find a way to remain ladylike while surrounded by such rough-hewn men.
“She is a combination of the grace and dignity of my mother and the strength of my father,” Alan Day said of his sister.
Almost New Mexico’s favorite daughter
O’Connor was an Arizonan by happenstance of geography.
The ranch where she was raised spans the border of Arizona and New Mexico. The turnoff to the ranch, off of U.S. 70, is in New Mexico. Somewhere along the eight miles of rough dirt ranch road that leads west to the headquarters is the unmarked border of Arizona.
The home where O’Connor was raised was built where it was, according to her brother, Alan Day, because there just happened to be a large stretch of flat land there. Had there been such a piece of land a few miles east, O’Connor would rightly be claimed as New Mexico’s daughter.
She attended school under her grandmother’s care in El Paso, save for one year in Lordsburg, New Mexico, an experiment O’Connor made in an attempt to remain on the ranch during the school year.
After her high school graduation in El Paso, she enrolled in Stanford University, fulfilling the ambition of her father, who had yearned to attend that university before becoming tied to his California family’s investment at the Lazy B.
She met her future husband at Stanford. The couple debated whether to live in Phoenix or San Francisco. Sandra Day O’Connor initially lobbied for San Francisco, but her husband’s argument that the couple would make a bigger splash in Arizona won out.
O’Connor worked at the state Attorney General’s Office, taking a job housed in the state’s mental institution, beginning her life of public service.
She was appointed to a seat in the state Legislature and quickly earned the respect of her colleagues, who elected her the Republican party’s leader in the state Senate.
She became a Maricopa County judge and was appointed to the state Court of Appeals in 1979.
As a candidate in the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan promised to appoint a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court if elected. Reagan made good on his promise eight months after he was elected.
He nominated O’Connor, the Stanford-educated attorney, judge, lawmaker and Arizona ranch girl, to the court in 1981.
O’Connor would serve on the highest court for nearly 25 years, marking a judicial path known for its independence more than rigid ideology. She retired in
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The Arizona Republic The Arizona Republic. 2006 and spent her remaining years urging her fellow citizens to become engaged in a politics that emphasized problem-solving rather than constant contention.
Though she was celebrated, feted, and had institutes and law schools named after her, O’Connor’s life goals, as summed up by her brother, remained simple, forged by the ideals she learned on the ranch — a plot of land that meant so much to her she chose it as her final resting place.
“She didn’t do it for legacy, she didn’t do it for heroism,” said her brother Alan Day.
“She wasn’t who she was because she had an end in sight. She was who she was because she wanted to be a good person and do good things.”