Judge relied on legal talents to vault into politics, national spotlight

Early years I I 1 Judge O’Connor was born March 26, 1930, at the El Paso, Texas, home of her maternal grandmother, Ada Mae Wilkey. She was the Bride and barrister first of three children in the pioneer Arizona I ranching family of Harry A. and Ada Mae Wilkey Day. 1 An old newspaper account says the Day 1 family’s 162,000-acre Lazy-B Ranch was “the first in southeastern Arizona.” She went to school in El Paso, where she 1 lived with her grandmother, because there were no suitable schools near the ranch. She attended the Radford School for girls and graduated from Austin High School, which she attended for her senior year. ‘ She has a sister, Ann, now 43 and married to former state Sen. Scott Alexander, and a brother, Alan, 41, who manages the ranch. ‘ Matriculation to marriage • : After high school, she enrolled at Stanford : University, majoring in economics and grad1 uated “with great distinction.” Admitted to Stanford Law School, she had a distinguished classmate in Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. An early report that they graduated third and first, respectively, has been discounted. But Judge O’Connor does have substantial academic credentials. She was a member of the Order of the Coif – a national honor society restricted to law students in the top 10 percent of their classes. It was at Stanford that she met her husband, John J. O’Connor III, another law student and Stanford Law Review staffer. “We were assigned to work together _ (editing a Review article) one