Nominee Rose from Rangeland Roots

Woman in a Hurry Juggled Career and Home Life

WASHINGTON . Professionally, Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman ever nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, is a paragon of the modern woman, juggling a successful legislative and judicial career with a home, a family and an active role as a civic leader. “You get the feeling when you’re talking to her that she’s always between trams,” said GeraId M. Caplan, a former Arizona State University law professor who has worked with her. Her roots, however, hem a far different world. She grew up in a turn-of-the-century adobe house near Duncan, Ariz. on the 250-square-mile Lazy B cattle ranch that her grandfather started 100 years ago. The ranch, in the southeastern corner of the state near the New Mexico border, is a world of empty rangeland, dry creekbeds and distant mountains, where the biggest events art:’ the spring and fall roundups. The closest neighbor and nearest post office are 20 miles away. ‘l’he nearest dependable water is often 800 feet or More straight down. There are miles and miles of unpopulated territory,” said June Lackey, the wife of Duncan’s mayor. “We’re big country-with few people.” The isolation of the Lazy B, where O’Connor’s parents still live, is one reason Harry Day sent his eldest daughter away to a girls’ school in El Paso, Tex., when she was a child. She lived there with a maternal grandmother during the school months, but spent her summers and vacations on the ranch. “She had a very good mind and we wanted