She was old enough to be my mother, though seven years younger than my own, Martha Harley Connor, who died at 31 of complications from rheumatic fever. Thereafter, I became my father’s apprentice and often heard him speak of a mythical woman he referred to as “a great broad” — with admiration in his gravelly voice and a twinkle in his green, Irish eyes. “A great broad” was my father’s highest compliment. I didn’t know what one looked like, and wasn’t even sure what one was, but I kept a wary eye out in case one happened by.
I knew I wanted to be a great broad, thus securing permanence in my father’s good graces, but how? From whom would I learn this mysterious art? Surely not from my four stepmothers, all of whom were unique and special to me in different ways. They were, in chronological order, a pretty interior designer, an athletic horsewoman, a hilarious Chicagoan and a, well, a faithful companion. But none seemed to me a great broad. They weren’t unusual for their day, when few women had careers beyond the home.
The rarity was someone such as O’Connor or Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who followed O’Connor onto the court 12 years later), both of whom proved equal to men, to say the least, and neither of whom could get a job out of law school.
When O’Connor was selected to replace Potter Stewart, the Earth seemed to shift a bit on its axis. I recognized this square-jawed woman from Arizona immediately as a great broad, which I finally had defined, more or less, as a woman who is both tough and soft, serious and fun, smart and humble, dignified and feminine. She knows her way around men and likes them, even though they’re a hindrance at times. O’Connor, having grown up nine miles from a paved road, would have appreciated the differences between men and women — Mother Nature has her ways — while also recognizing that she was anyone’s equal intellectually.
It was fitting and proper that O’Connor should break down the highest barrier to women in the judiciary. Taking her seat alongside Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a Stanford University law colleague and a former beau who once asked her to marry him, seemed poetic. She declined his marriage offer but, as a moderate conservative, she voted with Rehnquist more than 80 percent of the time.
Where she differed with her fellow conservative justices was on abortion and affirmative action. At the time, this didn’t make her a liberal so much as a moderate conservative. Though she found abortion personally abhorrent, she was able to separate her own beliefs from what she understood to be the preference of most Americans. This tilt toward the American people made O’Connor controversial if not anathema to many conservatives. But her willingness to survey the middle ground and seek compromise makes her a hero in my book. She was often the swing vote on social issues in part because she found it difficult to align herself with Justice Clarence Thomas, who remains one of the most conservative justices. When he authored an opinion, she often would write her own.
O’Connor always was her own woman. During her confirmation hearings, Joe Biden, then chairman of the all-male Judiciary Committee, pressed her to say she’d use her position to push for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. She said that would be “inappropriate.” She was, of course, right.
Life interfered with my plans to become another O’Connor. And I never did get a chance to discuss her judicial performance with my father, who was also a lawyer. But I suspect he approved. During our many kitchen talks while preparing dinner through the years, he often said that “an unnecessary law is always a bad law.” He thought that the ERA was unnecessary and, therefore, bad. Thus far, no one has proved him wrong.
He was right about most things, except, perhaps, his obvious delusion that my mother could be replaced. He raised this daughter to believe she could do anything, and he would be pleased that my search for great broads had proved fruitful. He might not be surprised that more women than men graduate law school these days and that four women now sit on the Supreme Court.
O’Connor, the first, has earned our gratitude for not just shattering a glass ceiling but also for showing girls and women everywhere how to be the best kind of woman — a great broad.
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