Speeding up to smell the roses.

• Author: Banner, Stuart
• Position: Looking Backward, Looking Forward: The Legacy of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor - Testimonial

They say SO'C is retiring. I don't believe a word of it. Not deciding cases any more--I'll accept that. But not retiring.

This is a woman who packs more activity into her life than anyone I have ever known. My strongest memories from clerking all involve trying to keep up with her. I think it was my second day on the job when she took us whitewater rafting. Then it was the National Gallery, Harpers Ferry, the National Arboretum, a picnic by the cherry blossoms, sailing on the Eastern Shore--somewhere else every few weeks. My favorite was a behind-the-scenes tour of a U.S. Postal Service building where they were testing what were then futuristic mail-sorting machines. If you could get there from the Court within a couple of hours, SO'C got there, and she brought us along.

This wasn't quite stopping to smell the roses. It was more like speeding up to smell the roses. And learning why they smelled the way they did. And how one could become a better rose-smeller. And what steps one should take to improve the quality of roses and the breadth of their distribution. And then moving on to the next set of flowers down the road. SO'C was interested in learning about everything and everyone.

Then there were all the people who came through the office. It seemed like every day there were visiting judges from some place or another, or one of my relatives who just happened to be popping in. (It's funny how they never came to see me at any of my other jobs. Maybe they weren't really coming to see me.) SO'C had a way of making visitors believe that meeting them was the highlight of her life, that she had long admired the trial judges of Denmark or Thailand or Saginaw and was thrilled finally to meet one, that she had heard so much about how wonderful my little sister Debbie was and how pleased she was to see her in person. Such things sounded believable because I really think she believed them. She genuinely is interested in meeting people. I'm convinced that if you met her once, for five minutes, and then didn't see her again for a decade, you could run into her at the airport and she'd remember your name, your spouse's name, your kids' names, their favorite flavors of ice cream, and everything else you had told her a decade before--not because she has anything to gain from keeping track of you, but because she cares enough about all those things to remember them. I've seen something close to this happen at the law clerk reunions. After twenty-five years...