'A true leader': Sandra Day O'Connor's funeral to draw leaders, evoke memories

Sandra Day O’Connor, the gritty ranch girl who became the first woman on the Supreme Court, will receive one final honor in Washington in the setting where presidents, luminaries and another Arizona legend received tributes for their lives.

President Joe Biden was scheduled to speak at O’Connor’s funeral Tuesday at Washington National Cathedral, underscoring her historic importance and the broad appreciation of the country she served for decades.

O’Connor died at 93 on Dec. 1 in Phoenix of complications related to dementia and a respiratory illness. She served on the court from 1981 until 2006.

Hundreds paid their respects to O’Connor Monday as she lay in repose at the court with dozens of her former staffers and current members of the court on hand.

The service Tuesday, beginning at 11 a.m. in Washington, brings O’Connor back to the church she attended for years as a Supreme Court justice and to the same place where the nation also honored the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., after his death in 2018.

Sandra Day O'Connor: Arizona ranch girl, American legend

Biden’s words likely will reverberate, but others have deeply personal connections to the woman they called a friend and mentor.

Barbara Barrett, an Arizona resident who headed the Air Force and was ambassador to Finland, met O’Connor as an intern at the Arizona Senate, where O’Connor served as majority leader for the Republicans in 1972 in another historic breakthrough for women.

“The biggest privilege was watching her in action. It wasn’t the pay. It wasn’t the credit hours. It wasn’t learning the civics of the Legislature,” Barrett said.

“It was watching a true leader get the work done, and as she said, work worth doing. I got to see a woman do these things that women just weren’t doing and weren’t expected to do.”

Caroline Brown, a Washington lawyer who clerked for O’Connor during the 1991-92 term, was similarly awestruck. She said it’s easy today to forget what a role model O’Connor was.

“It’s hard to describe as a young woman in the ’80s how limited women seemed to be in public life and how Justice O’Connor was not limited,” Brown said. “She was fully herself in that position and such a role model for women of my generation. She was not just doing her job, she was very publicly a mother, very publicly a wife, very publicly a social person, an athlete.

“When she had breast cancer, she said the word breast in public. That was all very fresh and quite remarkable and hard to describe how new that was at that time.”

Brown’s year with the court included O’Connor’s landmark ruling that affirmed federal abortion rights. It was a splintered decision that remained secret until near the end, she said.

The current court erased that ruling last year and this effectively undid another pillar of O’Connor’s opinions in a case involving affirmative action.

“I’m not sure that her legacy is as fully appreciated as it should be,” Brown said. “It’s hard.” In her later years, O’Connor ensured the children of her former clerks received “grandclerk” shirts.

Brown said the twin columns of her clerks stretching from the top of the court’s marble stairs to the plaza near the street on Monday was an impressive and emotional reminder of the power and durability of her bond with her staff.

Gary Francione, a Rutgers University law professor, clerked for O’Connor during the 1982-83 term. He fondly remembers the afternoon meetings where staff discussed what had gone on that day and noted that O’Connor tolerated his occasional dissenting views with the justice he served.

Daniel Bussel, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who clerked for O’Connor during the 1986-87 term, said her historic role may have led some to overlook her talent as a justice.

“A big part of her legacy is being the first female justice; everybody knows that,” he said. “But she was a great judge. … She cared about the cases. She understood what the implication of the cases were and how that affected people’s lives. She was deeply committed to getting it right under the law.”

In Arizona, O’Connor combed through the shelf-sized volumes of the state’s statutes and revised them to make them gender-neutral, Barrett said. She did the same for the federal rules of civil and criminal procedure after arriving at the Supreme Court.

Many of her clerks and biographers tout her background as a state lawmaker and a state appellate judge as helping bring to the highest court a more nuanced understanding of the law and its public fallout.

Her nephew, Tucson resident Alan Day Jr., remembers O’Connor as the person who hosted elaborate dinner parties in Arizona that brought together key leaders and forged productive relations.

“She made everyone feel special and maybe aspire a little higher,” Day said. “She made you feel like it made her day to have you visit. I don’t know how she pulled it off and could take time out and do all the stuff that she did.”

He attended oral arguments at the court, and she summoned him to her chambers for lunch. “I could call her up and have a conversation. She was always interested in my life, but it wasn’t just people in the family. It could be just a friend on a trip to Washington. She would make them feel very special.”

Marshall Trimble, an Arizona teacher and historian, knew O’Connor since noticing her horse-riding skills at the annual Parada Del Sol in Scottsdale when she was in the state Senate.

“I rode over to her and had never met her before,” he said. “I said, ‘You sit that horse like you’ve ridden all your life.’ And she smiled and said, ‘As a matter of fact, I have. I was raised on a ranch over in eastern Arizona.’ We became friends from that day on.”

In 1980, she invited him to the centennial celebration of the Lazy B Ranch, where she grew up, and arranged for him to fly in on its dusty airstrip. A year later, she joined the Supreme Court.

Trimble saw her occasionally after that, but he said time and national fame did not remake her.

“She didn’t change,” Trimble said. “She was an Arizona ranch girl. I didn’t see any difference.”

O’Connor remained close to Barrett long after her internship ended. Barrett began her career in the federal government as vice chair of the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board during the Reagan administration.

O’Connor offered to swear her in, Barrett said. “That was going to be the highlight of my career. At the last minute — that day — I was going to be sworn in in her chambers at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

“That morning, I got a call from the White House saying the president saw you’re going to be sworn in by Sandra O’Connor and he wanted you to have that ceremony in the East Wing of the White House instead.”

The ceremony wound up including President Ronald Reagan, Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole and O’Connor.

“That was not for Barbara Barrett. That was for Sandra Day O’Connor because the president so enjoyed her company,” Barrett said.

The women fished and hunted and once met in Finland, where O’Connor evangelized about a favorite subject of hers: the rule of law.

When Barrett attended a county fair with O’Connor, the justice sized up the award-winning cattle.

“Ever the judge, she thought maybe the blue ribbon was on the wrong calf. She thought the calf that got the red ribbon had the straighter back. She was second-guessing the judges.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sandra Day O'Connor's funeral in Washington D.C.: honors and memories