#Sandra day o connor family professional#

It was there, according to the 'Lazy B' book, where he learned the manager was stealing from him, placing his own brand on some of the cattle.ĭay brought his family to the ranch and lived there for the next decade, trying to correct the ranch's operations. Harry Day, the father of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, during a calf round-up in the late 1940s.ĭay hired a manager to oversee the cattle ranch and then took his wife and son on a six-month European trip. He bought a herd of cattle from Mexico that already were branded with the letter B lying down flat, leading to the name Lazy B. Fate would intervene.ĭay sold lumber in Kansas and decided to start a ranch out west in 1880, taking advantage of the chance to start a ranch in the newly acquired New Mexico Territory. Day, started the ranch, but never intended to live there. He quoted his sister: 'My memory of the ranch was hating it and the happiest day of my life was leaving it.' How the ranch came to the Day family 'She asked Ann to participate in writing the book and she said, 'Oh, no,'' Alan Day said. When O'Connor had the idea of writing the 'Lazy B' memoir, she approached her brother, Alan, who signed on, and her sister, Ann, who did not. The life was not for everyone, not even everyone in O'Connor's family. 'It was no country for sissies,' she wrote in the book, 'then or now.'

And she told plainly how the working ranch hands would disappear into Duncan, the nearest town, to spend their paychecks on the comforts of liquor and women. She was unsparing in describing the scent given off from branding the Lazy B logo on calves - not to mention the castration.

How animals like horses and cows were not pets so much as modes of transit and income. How dried yucca stalks could be excellent substitutes for swords in games, for example.īut much of it included the starkness of ranch life, belying any romantic notions of raising cattle in the harsh environs. The book provided some quaint anecdotes and memories of O'Connor's childhood. 'She made big decisions here from the time she was young.'

#Sandra day o connor family professional#

'It doesn't surprise me that she took this professional experience as a ranch cowgirl out here in the country and was able to make it work in a different environment,' he said. 'I think he connected with that image,' Brian O'Connor said.Ĭurry Reynolds, the current general manager of the ranch, said during an interview that the ranchland upbringing served O'Connor well. Reagan had a vacation home on a ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains in California. Ranch was 'no country for sissies'īrian O'Connor, the justice's middle son, said he thought that the ranch upbringing helped convince President Ronald Reagan to nominate his mother for the Supreme Court.

O'Connor's family began selling the property in 1986, but it continues operating as a cattle ranch, even retaining the Lazy B name. But she also learned that there was a role for government in ensuring that ranchers grazing cattle on public lands be good stewards of that land. Her family bucked government intrusion on their affairs on the ranch. She also saw how decisions made about the ranch, often to answer short-term economic challenges, could have long-lasting ramifications. A young O'Connor learned, or observed, how problems could be solved, often because there was little opportunity for outside help. Growing up on the Lazy B brought quick lessons in self-reliance, determination and decision-making.