Interview on PBS NewsHour

February 1, 2002

ITEM DETAILS

Type: Interview, TV appearance

Interviewer: Gwen Ifill

Source: PBS

Physical location/Show name: PBS NewsHour

Date is approximate: No

View on Pbs.org

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Transcript

GWEN IFILL:

The book is Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest. The author is Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Justice O'Connor, of course, was the first woman appointed to sit on the Supreme Court. But long before she got to Washington, she lived a life we read about only in westerns. In Lazy B, she joins her brother, Alan, in recalling their memories of those times. Welcome, Justice O'Connor.

SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR, Author, Lazy B:

Thank you. Well, it is a joint effort with my brother, Alan. And Alan ended up running the ranch for most of his adult years. And so he had lots of institutional memories of that amazing place.

GWEN IFILL:

Well, tell us about the ranch, for those of us easterners or those of us who aren't native to the Arizona-New Mexico border.

SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR:

Well, it's… It's in the semi-arid high desert plateau region on the New Mexico-Arizona border, along the Gila River. And it gets very little rainfall a year, about ten inches a year — about 5,000 feet in elevation, other than the higher mountains to the South. And it's just… It has a subtle beauty that the desert can have. But it's maybe difficult for someone in the Northeast who's used to seeing greenery all the time to appreciate that desert scene.

GWEN IFILL:

What was unique about growing up on a ranch like that?

SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR:

We were isolated. We had no neighbors, really. It was 35 miles to town. We would go to town once a week to get the

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