But what is she like as a person?

The tough, powerful, male leader of the Arizona House was telling the tough, powerful, female leader of the Arizona Senate how they were going to push a bill through that night in 1973, no matter how long it took. “No we aren’t,” Sandra Day O’Connor told Burton Barr, a man who doesn’t hear “no” very often.” My boys are going to camp tomorrow and I’m going home to be sure they’ve packed everything.”

When that kind of thing happened at the Arizona Legislature under its first and only female leader, Barr would muse, “Sandra is human. This brilliant thing that moves around is human.”

A lot of people were asking themselves last week if O’Connor – who had chalked up a half dozen “firsts” before President Reagan made her the first woman ever considered for the U.S. Supreme Court – was human.

Reporters from the country’s largest newspapers made frantic calls to Phoenix the day of the announcement, compiling reams on her public record, but asking in plaintive voices, “but what about O’Connor as a PERSON?” Their stories the next day showed they didn’t find much.

It’s not because there’s nothing to find.

“Sandra O’Connor once told me that people have to focus on what they want in life and go after that,” an old friend said the night of her appointment.” If you spread yourself too thin, she says, you won’t accomplish much of anything. She believes if you focus, you can have what you want. I guess she’s right.” Many feel Sandra O’Connor, a privileged Arizona cowgirl who can still ride