How Sandra Day O'Connor met her destiny on a houseboat at Lake Powell

On Dec. 10, 2014, Justice Sandra O’Connor visited my father, John Driggs, at his home just hours before he passed away.

It was an amazing visit between two old, dear friends. They talked about how they met at Stanford University, raised their kids together, went on family trips together and how they, as Justice O’Connor said, “stuck together for the rest of our lives.”

While they were talking, my dad told Sandra, “It was destiny!” He was referring to Sandra serving on the Supreme Court.

In her book, "The Majesty of the Law," Sandra wrote how Justice Lewis Powell once said that being appointed to the court was a little like being struck by lightning in both the suddenness and the improbability of the event.

My father coined the phrase “consequential circumstantial providence” to describe how Sandra Day O’Connor was in the right place at the right time. She was prepared through her life’s work to meet the opportunity head on when lightning struck.

How do you entertain a chief justice?

One of the family trips Justice O’Connor and my father recalled was a Lake Powell trip we took together in the summer of 1979, which I was lucky enough to have witnessed. I was 14.

Early that summer, my father had called Mark Cannon, who was U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger’s administrative assistant. My father knew Cannon because his brother Bryant was married to my father’s sister Lois.

Cannon told my father that Chief Justice Burger was going to be in Flagstaff the first week of August for a judicial conference for the chief justices from all 50 states and was looking for ideas of things to do in Arizona after the conference.

Our family had discovered the magic of Lake Powell a year earlier and had already planned a trip there during that week, so my father asked if Burger might be interested in joining us for a few days on a houseboat on Lake Powell.

Cannon spoke to Burger about the invitation and Burger thought it sounded great.

It's simple. Invite the O'Connors

My parents had met Burger a few times before, but the thought of hosting the chief justice became a bit intimidating. They wondered what we would talk about for three days with the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

They decided it would be a good idea to invite some attorney friends to keep the conversation flowing.

They immediately thought of John and Sandra O’Connor, who were close family friends with whom we had frequently vacationed. John was a partner at the law firm Fennemore Craig, and Sandra was a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.

My father called John O’Connor and asked if they would be interested in joining us on the three-day trip with Burger.

John O’Connor emphatically answered without hesitation, “Would we ever!”

What Sandra Day O'Connor knew: That America forgot

Immediately, my mother Gail and Sandra, who were both excellent cooks, began to plan the meals for the trip. My parents secured the use of Mickey and Lorana Whiting’s houseboat, The Lady K, in addition to our family’s 24-foot Sea Ray cuddy cabin boat. The Whiting’s son Bruce, who had graduated from law school a few years earlier, joined us on the trip.

Burger and Cannon, along with Cannon’s daughter Kristen, flew from Flagstaff at the conclusion of the judicial conference to Page, Ariz., in the Whiting’s plane.

Never a dull moment on that trip

We started the trip from Wahweap Marina, motored up the lake and camped in one of our favorite spots in Padre Bay. We used The Lady K houseboat as our home base and used our boat to explore the lake and go fishing.

Justice Burger told us that he liked to be referred to simply as “chief,” and he enjoyed telling many stories from his life, the court and Washington, D.C., as we cruised around the scenic lake.

He really loved to tell stories.

As we approached Glen Canyon Dam he recounted a story about a dramatic hearing concerning whether or not Glen Canyon Dam should be built.

He told us that an opponent of the dam placed a piece of sandstone purportedly from Glen Canyon into a pitcher of water and it dissolved during his testimony. A supporter of the dam later did the same thing during his testimony, but then drank the water.

John O’Connor had an engaging personality and a quick wit, and kept the conversation and laughter going on the houseboat.

My parents were right. With the O’Connors on the trip, there was never a lull in the conversation. Even as a 14-year-old, I was entertained as I listened in on their conversations.

Sandra and the chief talked all night

Sandra and the chief really hit it off, as they would stay up well past midnight each night talking about the law and other topics of the day.

During the day, my brothers and I would go out in the smaller boat and water ski and cliff dive. I remember that when we would return to the base camp, my parents would tell me I could not play or swim around the houseboat because the chief was taking a nap (probably because he had stayed up so late talking with Sandra).

One day we cruised all the way to Rainbow Bridge and afterward drove around the corner to a picturesque alcove for lunch. Up to that point in the trip, Burger had been afraid to get in the water because his doctor had recently drowned while swimming in a lake.

While we all enjoyed a swim during lunch, the chief decided he would like to get in the water to join us, but there was one problem: we did not have a life preserver his size. We quickly improvised and connected two life jackets together, which did the trick.

Burger also enjoyed sitting in an inner tube and floating in the water. I sensed my parents were always worried whenever the chief got in the water.

The next day we went fishing and both Sandra and the chief caught quite a few fish.  That evening we cooked the fish they caught for our dinner and made homemade chocolate ice cream for dessert.

She left a lasting impression on Burger

On the last day of the trip, we headed back to Wahweap Marina into some pretty strong winds. We encountered rough water in Wahweap Bay, causing the boat to bounce around in the swells. My brother Tom was piloting the Sea Ray. The chief asked if he could take over the steering wheel for a while, and he had quite a blast piloting the boat on our bumpy return.

Justice O’Connor later spoke about the trip with Burger in an interview.

“We just had a fabulous time. Sometimes we would sit in inner tubes and float in the lake, and sometimes we’d fish, and sometimes we’d just sit on the houseboat as we went along. It was a great trip.”

It was a great trip indeed! Sandra had left a lasting impression on the chief, which was clearly demonstrated when he invited her to join him and a delegation of judges from the United States at a legal conference in London a few months after the trip.

Less than four months after the trip, on Dec. 4, 1979, Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in as a member of the Arizona Court of Appeals — a crucial appointment that positioned her to be ready when lighting struck on July 7, 1981, as President Ronald Reagan announced he would appoint her to replace the retiring Potter Stewart on the United States Supreme Court.

She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate with a vote of 99-0 and was sworn in as the first woman Supreme Court justice by Chief Justice Warren Burger on Sept. 25, 1981.

'I sized Sandra up' on that trip

A few years after her appointment to the Supreme Court, my parents were visiting the O’Connors in Washington, D.C., and attended oral arguments at the court as her guest.

The chief, seeing them in the gallery, sent a note asking them to visit his chambers after the arguments.

While they talked, the chief told my father what a positive difference Justice O’Connor had made to the court, and then he added, “It was on the Lake Powell trip that I sized Sandra up, and knew she would make a great Supreme Court Justice.”

Getting back to their last visit together on my father’s last day, it was touching for me to witness two old friends as they brought up so many great memories together.

After they reminisced about some of the highlights of each of their lives, Justice O’Connor grabbed my father’s hand and said, “We did OK!”

Adam Driggs is a Maricopa County Superior Court judge and former Arizona state senator, representing the same district that O’Connor served decades earlier. His father, John Driggs, was mayor of Phoenix from 1970-74, was the founding chairman of Feeding America and a historic preservationist.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sandra Day O'Connor met her destiny on a Lake Powell houseboat