U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is shown before administering the oath of office to members of the Texas Supreme Court in Austin, Texas. She died Friday at 93.

 Harry Cabluck, Associated Press

Sandra Day O’Connor, who grew up on a cattle ranch in southeastern Arizona and became the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, died Friday in Phoenix. She was 93.

O’Connor died of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness, the court said.

“Over the course of her 24 years on the court, the conservative justice became known as a moderating voice of reason,” said Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018.

O’Connor was the deciding vote on 330 high court cases that included equal rights, abortion, affirmative action and Bush v. Gore, which effectively decided the 2000 presidential election. She served on the court from Sept. 25, 1981 through Jan. 31, 2006 and was active in judicial and civic activities in her retirement.

On Oct. 23, 2018, O’Connor said in a statement that she had been diagnosed with early stages of dementia that might be Alzheimer’s disease and the condition was forcing her to withdraw from public life.

O’Connor was “a strong, tough person with high standards in everything — whether it’s being on time, pulling your weight, or being able to answer her often tough questions,” said Sally Rider, who was administrative assistant to the chief justice from August 2000 to September 2006, where Rider served as the court’s chief of staff and assisted in management of the court.

“She demanded the best of everyone around her, and if you didn’t measure up, she was not about to wait around for you,” said Rider, who served as associate dean for administration at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.

“I think one of her biggest, maybe unseen, impacts is that since I was 10 years old, I’ve had her as an example of how women can do anything and reach any pinnacle,” said Jennifer J. Burns, an attorney and consultant who represented Avra Valley for three terms in the Arizona Legislature beginning in 2003.

“Generations of Arizonans have grown up believing — and seeing — that a woman who grew up on a ranch in Arizona reached the absolute top,” said Burns, a Republican.

“Her legacy for us is that women are leaders in our communities and nation. Note I said ‘are’ leaders and not ‘can be’ leaders.”

Wrangling in a man’s field

O’Connor was born in El Paso, Texas, on March 26, 1930, and grew up on the 250-square-mile Lazy B cattle ranch near Duncan, Arizona, that straddled the rugged, windswept, high desert of southern Arizona and New Mexico.

O’Connor’s grandparents homesteaded the ranch the late 1800s, hired an overseer and moved to California. After her grandfather died, O’Connor’s father, Harry “DA” Day, was sent by estate lawyers to salvage what he could of the economically suffering Lazy B.

Harry bought some bulls to build the herd and met his future wife, Ada Mae Wilkey, in El Paso, and spent the rest of his life at the Lazy B.

O’Connor, an only child until she was 9, was raised in the four-room ranch home, called “headquarters.” The house had no running water and no electricity through much of her childhood, but there was abundant reading material — books, magazines, newspapers, and Nancy Drew mysteries. She learned to read at age 4.

The future associate justice used a cattle tank as a swimming pool and worked the ranch, driving tractors, branding cattle, shooting .22-caliber rifles, taming a pet bobcat named Bob, and riding, often on her favorite horse, “Chico,” which she mentioned in “Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest,” the 2002 memoir she co-authored with her brother H. Alan Day, almost 10 years her junior. Her sister, Ann, was eight years younger.

“Changing it (ranch life) to accommodate a female was probably my first initiation into joining an all-men’s club, something I did more than once in my life,” O’Connor wrote in “Lazy B.”

“After the cowboys understood that a girl could hold up her end, it was much easier for my sister, my niece, and the other girls and young women who followed to be accepted in that rough-and-tumble world.”

During the school year, O’Connor took the four-hour train ride to El Paso and lived with her grandmother, Mamie Scott Wilkey. After fourth grade at a public school, O’Connor attended Radford School, then an all-girls school where she dined on linen tablecloths, learned elocution and enunciation, and heard inspiring speakers, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, according to “First: Sandra Day O’Connor” by Evan Thomas.

She missed the ranch and her family, Thomas wrote in “First.” For one year she took the hour-long school bus ride into Lordsburg, New Mexico, but felt isolated at school. She returned to El Paso for high school and graduated from Stephen F. Austin High School in 1946. She skipped two grades.

“Lazy B” shares life-taught lessons in self-reliance, frugality, stamina, problem-solving and decision-making on the rugged ranch. If something was broken, it was just fixed, often from parts laying in junk piles that peppered the ranch.

During Thomas’ book launch in Phoenix at the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute Distinguished Speakers Series, the author shared a story about teenage O’Connor, who spent the early morning preparing a hardy lunch for the cowboys who were on the roundup, branding calves and culling some for sale.

On the way to deliver the meal, O’Connor’s truck blew a tire on the rutted, rocky road.

She secured the truck with rocks and grabbed the jack. Unable to muster the torque to remove the rusted nuts, the future justice had to jump on the lug wrench to bust the rust and remove the nuts. The tire change, which took more than an hour, made her late to deliver lunch to the hungry 10-man crew.

“You’re late,” her father said when she arrived at the rendezvous spot. She explained the flat tire.

“You should have started earlier,” was his retort. “You need to expect anything out here,” her father told her.

The unexpected was not an acceptable excuse on the Lazy B.

O’Connor’s brother went on to manage the ranch for 40 years. The family began selling the pieces of property in 1986 and the Lazy B remains an operating cattle ranch.

Leaving the Lazy B

O’Connor headed to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, at age 16. Her father had hoped to attend Stanford, but instead became a rancher.

“It was the only school she applied to,” said Alan Day, her brother.

Undated photo from the cover of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's book entitled: "Lazy B: Growing Up On A Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest."

O’Connor earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1950 and completed Stanford Law in 1952. She was on the Stanford Law Review and graduated third in her class of 102 students, behind future Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, her classmate with whom she shared class notes and dated.

After they split as a couple, O’Connor and Rehnquist maintained their study-buddy relationship and competed in moot-court together, finishing second, NPR’s “Morning Edition” reported in 2018.

Author Thomas, who had access to personal journals and documents and interviewed friends, colleagues and 94 of O’Connor’s 108 law clerks in researching “First,” discovered letters that Rehnquist wrote to O’Connor when he was working in Washington as a law clerk to Justice Robert H. Jackson.

In one letter, he asked her to marry him. After taking some time to think about her decision, O’Connor declined.

She had started dating another Stanford Law student, John Jay O’Connor, whom she had met working on the Law Review. When the two started dating, they went out 40 nights in a row. They were married Dec. 20, 1952, in front of the fireplace in the living room of the Lazy B.

O’Connor couldn’t find a job after law school. She was near the top of her class, but Los Angeles or San Francisco firms were not hiring women in the early 1950s. After a partner with California firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher asked about her typing skills, she was offered a secretarial slot.

She said no — that wasn’t the job she wanted.

Instead, O’Connor went to work as an unpaid attorney for the San Mateo county attorney. When she proved her worth and ability, she became a deputy county attorney with a paycheck.

John O’Connor received his law degree from Stanford in 1953 and was shipped to Frankfurt, West Germany to serve in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corp, from 1954 until 1956. In Europe, Sandra Day O’Connor worked as a civilian lawyer in the Quartermaster Corps, specializing in contracts, and volunteered with German refugees left homeless from the war, said Thomas in “First.”

When John O’Connor was released from the service, the couple spent several months traveling and skiing in Europe.

The O’Connors settled in the Phoenix area in 1957 when they returned to the United States. The couple apparently picked Phoenix because there was potential to become involved in the community and it was a reasonable travel distance from the Lazy B.

Sandra Day O'Connor, left, and her husband, John J. O'Connor III, in 1981. 

Rehnquist and his wife, Nan, had also settled in the Phoenix area.

John O’Connor joined the law firm of Fennemore, Craig, von Ammon, McClennen & Udall. Sandra Day O’Connor hung her private-practice shingle with a partner Thomas F. Tobin in a strip mall in Maryville and became involved in volunteer and social activities, including Republican campaigns and the Phoenix Junior League, of which she was eventually president.

The O’Connors built a 1,700-square-foot house on a 1.5-acre lot on Denton Lane in Paradise Valley, which became a setting for collaboration, compromise and chalupa-fed conversation.

The couple “scraped joints, painted walls and sealed the walls with skim milk (which has a protein that prevents dust motes from flaking off),” O’Connor said in a 2009 speech.

The O’Connors raised their sons — Scott, Brian and Jay — and greeted guests such as U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater and President Richard M. Nixon in the house.

She was in the house when she received the phone call from President Ronald Reagan, saying he’d like to announce her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The O’Connors lived in the house from 1958 to 1981, leaving after her appointment to the high court.

Arizona politics

O’Connor “was a Republican, but not partisan; tough but full of graciousness,” Thomas said at the book launch.

She paused on her career after her second son was born in 1960 and, after the third was born two years later, focused on raising the three young boys. She re-entered the workplace in 1965 as a full-time assistant attorney general for Arizona.

In 1969, she was appointed to the Arizona Senate by Republican Gov. Jack Williams and was subsequently elected and reelected to the seat.

She was the first woman majority leader for the state Senate — the first woman in the country to hold this leadership position for any state legislature, according to the O’Connor Institute.

O’Connor was smart and firm, very firm, and she was personable and likable, said former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl.

“She cared about other people,” Kyl said. “She never talked about herself. You felt you were the center of attention.

“I don’t know of anyone more adept at turning the conversation to you,” Kyl said.

As a young attorney, Kyl was working on a ballot proposition to set a state spending limit, with Republican state Sen. Ray Rottas and others. The group working on the measure would meet at the O’Connor home, sip iced tea and coffee, and have thorough, deep, intelligent conversations on the law and the politics of the measure. “It was a heady time,” Kyl said.

“Sandra was a master at compromise,” said Alan Day. She was strong, but did not demean and was not mean spirited.

During her tenure in the Arizona Legislature, she would invite the state Senate for dinner and would cook Mexican food. “Something simple, like chalupas,” she said in 2009.

On her patio, Republicans and Democrats would eat, have a beer and talk.

“Political parties didn’t matter,” O’Connor said in 2009. The neutral setting and the food created a casual situation where the senators could enjoy one another’s company and get to know one another as people, not partisans.

“She understood the value of relationships and the trust that crossed party lines,” said Rider.

The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute keeps the relationship-building dinner tradition. It gathers Arizona Legislature freshmen members and leadership for bipartisan “Chats & Chalupas” and discusses O’Connor’s work across the aisle and her desire for civil discourse and a collegial environment.

O’Connor was known for her strong, disciplined work ethic. As a testament to that working, Kyl pointed to Burton Barr, former Republican majority leader in the Arizona House, who told reporters when O’Connor was nominated to the high court:

“With Sandy, there was no Miller Time.”

“Never in her life did she step on someone for gain,” her brother said.

Her own brand

One of her clerks called her a “non-feminist feminist,” Thomas said in The Arizona Republic. “She was careful not to alienate men. ... She saw herself as a kind of bridge between generations.”

In the Legislature, she had a private list of state laws that discriminated against women at which she sought to chip away, pushed state laws that helped women, supported the Equal Rights Amendment, and was able to be friends with conservative Barry Goldwater, an opponent of the ERA, according to “First.”

Sandra Day O’Connor, of Arizona, sits with Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., speaking before senate hearing on her nomination to U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Sept. 9, 1981. 

One of the first bills that O’Connor sponsored was to repeal a 1913 law that prohibited women from working more than eight hours a day, which O’Connor viewed as paternalism, not protection, according to Jeffrey Toobin’s book “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.”

She usually wore dresses and distanced herself from some feminism symbols, assuring one audience in the 1970s, “I come to you tonight wearing my bra and my wedding band,” Texas Monthly reported in 1998.

O’Connor disappointed feminists by allowing the state Senate to delay voting on the ERA, mostly because she thought it would fail, according to “First.” She predicted future court cases could settle matters of equal rights.

In the state Senate in 1972, she co-sponsored a bill to help take politics out of the court: merit selection of judges. At the time, judges were elected. The bill would have put judges on the bench based on merit: judges appointed by the governor after a vetting process. The bill failed and it failed again in 1973.

However, in 1975 — the year O’Connor ran for Maricopa County Superior Court judge and won — voters approved a ballot measure that instituted merit selection of judges in Arizona’s largest counties.

Arizona judge

O’Connor had a reputation for being firm in the courtroom; outside the courtroom she remained involved in Republican politics.

As a judge, “her reputation was, if you’re going before Judge O’Connor, you’ve got to be prepared,” Ruth McGregor, a former Arizona Supreme Court justice who was O’Connor’s first clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court, said in The Arizona Republic in 2018.

Gov. Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat, appointed O’Connor to the Arizona Court of Appeals in 1979.

“Back in 1979 when she applied for a vacancy on the Arizona Court of Appeals, I was not aware of her party affiliation. I appointed her because she was, by any measure, the outstanding candidate,” Babbitt said when O’Connor retired from the U.S. Supreme Court.

High court

President Ronald Reagan fulfilled a 1980 campaign promise when he nominated O’Connor, 51, to replace retiring justice Potter Stewart.

The U.S. attorney general in the Reagan administration, William French Smith, had been a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher — the firm that asked about O’Connor’s typing skills.

When Smith called O’Connor about coming to Washington to be interviewed for a “federal position,” she quipped, “I assumed you’re calling about secretarial work,” Thomas said in “First.”

Attorney general aides Jonathan Rose and Kenneth Starr, then a 35-year-old attorney who became independent counsel during President Bill Clinton’s administration, met with O’Connor in her Denton Lane home on June 25, 1981.

O’Connor took a break from the conversational vetting to prepare lunch — salmon mousse — for her guests, according to “First.”

She had the support of Sen. Goldwater and Arizona’s Democratic U.S. senator, Dennis DeConcini, whom she knew through her work in the state attorney general’s office. Former beau and study buddy Rehnquist, an associate justice who became chief justice in 1986, was also in her corner.

O’Connor’s confirmation hearings were the first to be broadcast live on cable TV, a new player on the media field in the early 1980s.

A proponent of judicial restraint, at her confirmation hearings she said, “Judges are not only not authorized to engage in executive or legislative functions, they are also ill-equipped to do so,” according to CNN.

O’Connor told Reagan that she found abortion “personally abhorrent,” according to UPI archives, and during her confirmation hearings, she said she opposed abortion as a personal matter, as “birth control or otherwise.”

However, her nomination had some opposition from groups and individuals who objected to several votes in the Arizona Legislature that did not curb or restrict abortion.

The Senate voted 99-0 to endorse O’Connor’s nomination.

She was sworn in as the 102nd justice — the first woman justice in the court’s 191-year history — by Chief Justice Warren Burger on Sept. 25, 1981. She remained the only woman of nine justices until Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined the court in 1993.

She brought a bit of Arizona to her chambers, decorating in the hues and themes of the desert and Native American and Southwestern art pieces.

She retained the frugalness she learned on the Lazy B, and wore the same robes that she had worn in the Arizona Appeals Court in the U.S. Supreme Court, Thomas reported.

She also brought her sense of the necessity of conversation and collegiality to the court, encouraging the justices to lunch together, discussing anything but cases and getting to know one another as people, according to “First.”

O’Connor was known for asking demanding, challenging questions in court, often beginning with the word “why?”

Members of the U.S. Supreme Court pose for a formal group portrait in Washington, Nov. 12, 1986. Front row, from left are: Thurgood Marshall; William Brennan, Jr.; Chief Justice William Rehnquist; Byron White; and Harry Blackmun. From left in back row: Sandra Day O'Connor; Lewis Powell, Jr.; John Paul Stevens; and Antonin Scalia.

“I think she was pragmatic, not ideological,” Rider said. She brought the wealth of her life experience to judging — including her experiences as a woman who had a hard time finding a job after law school even though she graduated near the top of her class; her experience growing up on a ranch and her experience as a legislator.

Being a lawmaker gave her insights others lacked, Rider said. “If you haven’t seen how laws are made, you lack a certain context that can help interpret them.”

O’Connor was considered a steady, balancing factor in the center of the court, who applied pragmatism, equality under the law, states’ rights and individual rights to privacy to cases, and what she believed best fit the intentions of the U.S. Constitution and not political ideology or advocacy. She challenged lawyers who were arguing cases to tell her the real-world effect of a ruling, The Arizona Republic reported in 2005.

She cast the deciding or “swing vote” in important, often controversial cases 330 times, Thomas said.

O’Connor disliked the term “swing vote.”

“It suggests something that’s not thoughtful,” said McGregor in The Arizona Republic in 2019. “… She didn’t like the frivolous sound of (swing vote).”

Work hard, play hard

She had high expectations and was demanding, Rider said. “If you weren’t early, you were late.”

O’Connor did not give gratuitous praise and modeled a balanced life that included care of self and other people, Thomas said.

“I learned from her to make a decision and move on,” Rider said. “One of the qualities I admired about her was the ability to make a decision and not perseverate or question herself.

“She made a decision, closes the door and never looks back — she is on to the next thing,” Rider said. And there was always a next thing.

She held morning exercise classes in the court’s gym before arriving at her chambers, requiring clerks join. When Rider joined the court staff, O’Connor told her she was expected at the early morning exercise class, despite Rider having a young family.

The justice also played golf and frequently played tennis with Barbara Bush, President George H.W. Bush’s wife. She loved to ski and fly fish, and led her clerks on rigorous hikes and outings such as seeing the cherry blossoms even during inclement weather.

The O’Connors had a busy social schedule. A high-profile, popular power couple, they were “A-list” party guests, socializing with Washington elite like Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post. John O’Connor, who worked as an attorney at a Washington law firm, was quick with a joke or a funny story and the couple was accomplished and elegant on the dance floor.

O’Connor was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988, at age 58, and had a mastectomy and follow-up chemotherapy.

“I’m a survivor,” O’Connor said, discussing her cancer publicly for the first time in a 1994 speech to the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. Cancer initially left her weak and emotional, she said, but it also “fostered a desire in me to make each and every day a good day.”

This combination photo shows retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor accepting the Minerva Award during the Women's Conference in Long Beach, Calif. on Oct. 26, 2010, left, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Georgetown University Law Center campus in Washington on Sept. 20, 2017. 

In 1998 when Ginsburg was diagnosed with cancer, O’Connor suggested having chemotherapy on Fridays, as she had done. This enabled the justices to relieve the chemotherapy-induced nausea over the weekend, in time for oral arguments, as well as the exercise class on Monday.

In 1996, O’Connor broke her shoulder in a skiing accident and discovered she had developed bone weakening osteoporosis, most likely a side effect of the chemotherapy, according to “First.”

O’Connor used a wheelchair in the later part of her life, her brother said.

Busy retirement

On July 1, 2005, O’Connor announced her retirement from the court to take effect upon confirmation of her successor.

While her resignation letter to President George W. Bush did not indicate a reason for her departure, a court spokeswoman said the main reason O’Connor had stepped down was to spend time with and care for her husband.

John O’Connor was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1989, according to The Arizona Republic. Sandra Day O’Connor cared for her husband from early signs — failing to remember cards when playing bridge and not remembering the punch line of jokes — taking him to her office every day where he snoozed on the couch or looked at books and newspapers, often held upside down, “First” said.

President Bush nominated John Roberts to succeed O’Connor. When Rehnquist died on Sept. 3, 2005, Bush yanked Roberts as nominee for her seat and appointed him to fill the vacant chief justice slot.

After an aborted nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers, Bush appointed Samuel Alito to replace O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court.

After O’Connor retired Jan. 31, 2006, a springtime cruise off the Turkish coast with her husband and friends was described as a “disaster” by Scott O’Connor in “First.” Late night wandering and the inability to be consoled by his wife were among the things that indicated John O’Connor was no longer able to be cared for at home. In July, the justice’s husband of 54 years was placed in a care facility for Alzheimer’s patients.

While in the facility, John O’Connor’s mental abilities diminished. He developed a mistaken attachment condition and became romantically involved with another patient, Thomas explained at the book launch. Sandra Day O’Connor was reportedly pleased that her husband, who had become depressed, had found some happiness and that his spirit was revived.

On one of the justice’s visits, John O’Connor was sitting holding his new companion’s hand. Sandra Day O’Connor sat on the other side of him and held his other hand, Thomas said. John O’Connor died Nov. 11, 2009.

As a retired justice, O’Connor had an office and a small staff at the court and maintained a rigorous travel and speaking schedule, as she had while on the bench. As a visiting appeals court judge, she participated in more than 175 cases on appeals courts nationwide, PBS News Hour reported in 2018.

“She was busier after retirement than as a (Supreme Court) judge,” Burns said.

She crisscrossed the U.S. championing an issue she initiated in Arizona — trying to persuade states that judges should be appointed, not elected, to render a more qualified and less tainted judiciary. She traveled to fledgling democracies around the world helping to build judicial systems; served on the Iraq Study Group, a 10-person panel chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, called to assess the war in Iraq; and urged becoming politically engaged, emphasizing problem-solving and collegiality.

O’Connor was dedicated to civics and civility, said Tim Bee, former Arizona Senate president who invited her to address the opening of the 2007 state Legislature. “You can disagree without being disagreeable” was O’Connor’s belief, Bee said.

One of her focuses was to educate Americans about the opportunity and obligation to participate in their own government, said Bee. The Arizona Legislature established a state commission on civic education and civic engagement in 2006, a measure on which O’Connor, Bee and Burns worked.

O’Connor saw a need to educate the next generation about democracy, government, the Constitution, and the importance of civic engagement. As civics was no longer routinely taught in schools, she launched iCivics, an online, interactive education venture aimed at middle school students.

The iCivics’ 19 games were played by 5 million students, by nearly 200,000 teachers in all 50 states, according to the iCivics website.

O’Connor had called civics education “the most important work I’ve ever done,” PBS News Hour reported in 2018.

Home of civility

The O’Connors sold their adobe home in 1981. When the house was resold in 2005, the new owner wanted to raze the house and build another home on the prime Paradise Valley property.

Recognizing the historical significance of the house, O’Connor friends Barbara Barrett, former U.S. ambassador to Finland, and philanthropist Gay F. Wray helped form a group that raised money to save the house and create a center of communication and consensus building. The home’s new owner agreed to delay construction plans until the house could be moved.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor shows her 1958 adobe home that was moved and restored at the Arizona Historical Society Museum in Tempe, Ariz. on Monday, March 1, 2010.

Rio Salado Foundation led the fundraising efforts — a $3.2 million capital campaign.

The house was dismantled brick by brick; each of the 2,093 bricks was numbered and labeled. The home was reassembled and now sits next to the Arizona Historical Society Museum on a plot donated by the city of Tempe, nestled in Papago Park.

The house is a cornerstone of the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute, founded by the retired justice in 2009. The institute’s programs, for adults and children, are aimed at advancing civil discourse, civic engagement, civics education, and problem solving.

Among O’Connor’s numerous honors and accolades, several buildings and schools bear her name, including the Arizona State University law school and the federal courthouse in Phoenix; high schools in the Deer Valley Unified School District in Phoenix and in Helotes, Texas, in the San Antonio metro area; and the Sandra Day O’Connor Criminal Justice/Public Service Academy at Stephen F. Austin High School in El Paso.

President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

“Sandra Day O’Connor is like the pilgrim in the poem she sometime quotes who has forged a new trail and built a bridge behind her for all young women to follow,” Obama said when he presented the honor in 2009.

President Barack Obama presents the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom to Sandra Day O'Connor, Aug. 12, 2009, in Washington.

In addition to “Lazy B,” written in 2002 with her brother, O’Connor wrote “The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice” (2007) and “Out of Order: Stories from the History of the Supreme Court” (2013).

She wrote children’s books: “Chico” (2005), about her favorite horse, a rattlesnake and learning to take care of the horse and herself, and “Finding Susie” (2009) about her dog.

Lazy B legacy

Having grown up on a ranch, O’Connor had an independent and Western spirit, Rider said. “She was never daunted by anything.”

That “pioneer spirit” was part of her DNA, Bee said. It made her strong, confident, and gracious without arrogance.

Ranch life may have also added a softer, romantic side to her life, too.

During a luncheon at the Arizona Biltmore focused on inspiring and uplifting girls, Kyl recalled, she gave a poetic speech when she discussed rainstorms on the desert and their importance.

Her words and evocative descriptions, rich with details like the smells after the rain, were literary and emotional, Kyl said.

O’Connor is survived brother H. Alan Day, an author and University of Arizona graduate who lives in Oro Valley.

O’Connor’s three sons spent a month each summer at the Lazy B under Day’s tutelage.

Day said that his sister told him it was a Navajo tradition for the mother’s brother to be the disciplinarian.

She had three sons, Scott, Brian and Jay.

O’Connor’s sister Ann Day graduated from Arizona State University, served 10 years in the state Senate and 12 years on the Pima County Board of Supervisors, representing District 1 in the northwest area of Tucson. She died in a car crash in 2016, at 77.

Her father, Harry “DA” Day, died in 1984 after a stroke and her mother, Ada Mae Wiley Day, who had Alzheimer’s, died in 1989. O’Connor’s mother’s ashes are next to Harry Day at the top of Round Mountain on the Lazy B, according to “First.”

Author Thomas wrote in “First” that when the end came, she said, “This is where I want to be.”

“If you were around Sandra for any length of time the bar was raised — you wanted to be better, you wanted to make her proud,” said Alan Day.

Become a #ThisIsTucson member! Your contribution helps our team bring you stories that keep you connected to the community. Become a member today.