From the Lazy-B to the Arizona Bench

WASHINGTON – Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, is a modern paragon, 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 trains,” said Gerald ,Caplan, a former Arizona State University law professor who has worked with her. Her roots, however, are in a far different world. She grew up in a turn-of-the-century adobe house on the 250.square-mile Lazy-B cattle ranch that her grandfather started 100 years ago near Duncan, Ariz. The ranch, in the southeastern corner of the state near the New Mexico border, is a world of empty rangeland, dry creek beds and distant mountains, where the biggest events are the spring and fall roundups. The closest neighbor and nearest Post office are 20 miles away. The nearest dependable water is often 800 feet or more straight down. The isolation of the Lazy-B, where her parents still live, is one reason Harry Day sent his daughter away to a girts school in El Paso, Texas, when she was just a child. During the schoQl months, she lived there with a maternal grandmother, but spent her summers and vacations on the ranch. Sandra Day O’Connor’s exposure to city life and its educational OPPortunities reaped its eventual rewards: She was graduated from Stanford University in 1950 and, two years later, was graduated with great distinction, third in her class, from its law school. Along