By RADINA GIGOVA
Observer Staff
Nov. 8, 2007

Images courtesy of The Painting Group, New York City.
Additional images by Radina Gigova.
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Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, put away her seriousness along with her justice robe, and showed a different side of her personality — her sense of humor.

The 75-year-old moderate conservative crafted the standards for the ruling on some of the highest-profile cases. She has been the decisive fifth vote on major rulings since President Reagan appointed her in 1981.

O’Connor has often been called a swing vote. She re-affirmed abortion rights. At the same time she supported limits on affirmative action and she was the vote that granted Bush’s victory in the 2000 presidential election.

In a conversation at the National Portrait Gallery on Oct. 29, she shared some of her experiences. Her words were accompanied by loud applause and genuine laughter from the audience.

“Being a trial judge is like sitting in a soap opera all day. You hear things that make you wanna cry and you don’t cry in a court room [. . .] You hear things you don’t want to hear. And you hear other things that make you wanna go to sleep. So, it’s quite an experience,” said O’Connor about her work.

O’Connor remembered the phone call by President Reagan and the interview in the Oval Office before she was appointed Supreme Justice.

“We spent most of the time talking about ranches, and horses and fences [. . .] I suspected that more than anything he was interested in my ranch background,” said O’Connor.

She talked about how she started working as an assistant attorney general in Arizona at the beginning of her career.

“I was the only woman on the staff. I was thrilled to be in a public law office like that, but they didn’t know what to do with me.”

She was sent to solve a legal issue at the Arizona State Hospital for the Mentally Ill. She prepared a legal package, which was a great success. Because of the medications the plan provided, the patients could go back to their normal lives.

“At the end of the day I think a great deal was accomplished and the attorney general said I got to come back downtown,” she said.

As a senator and a majority leader in Arizona, O’Connor often had to face tough choices and debates. But she agreed to give up one of her secrets on how she managed such a difficult task.

“One thing that I would do was to cook dinner for everybody of both parties [. . .] a time or two a year to make sure we were all friends across the aisle.”

O’Connor announced her retirement on July 1, 2005. She is now taking care of her husband of five decades who is battling Alzheimer’s. Over the years, her priority was her family and not her career. She raised three sons and she was always home for dinner.

She vigorously defended women’s rights, but wasn’t a typical feminist. She used to say “I like to wear dresses; they are more feminine than pants.”

O’Connor was also a member of the Iraq Study group.

She currently serves as Chancellor of the College of William and Mary and on the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation.

She is on the executive board of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative, the advisory board of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and dozens of other organizations.

“I really have a lot of years in the legislature, but enough’s enough,” she said.

The conversation was part of the “Living Self-Portrait” series — talks with individuals who have shaped American history.

The National Gallery displayed 25 portraits of O’Connor. They were made by The Painting Group — New-York based artists led by master David Levine. The portraits represented the idea that each artist and each viewer could see the same face in a different way.

O’Connor revealed her down-to-earth and witty personality, and the public clearly loved her.