Tales from the Morgue

Hometown stars - Sandra Day O'Connor

July 2, 2005

El Pasoans remember O'Connor as brilliant

Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times

EL PASO ‹ After Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement, El Pasoans who knew her as a teenager described her as brilliant, quiet and studious.

The outgoing Supreme Court justice was born in El Paso and attended Radford School. She was 16 when she transferred to Austin High School, where she graduated sixth in her class of 156 in 1946. She visited El Paso a few times after she became a Supreme Court justice and attended her high school's 50th reunion celebration.

In her later years, after having served as a state senator and court of appeals judge in Arizona and as a Supreme Court justice, she was described as "unassuming," "fun-loving," and "a superb dancer."

"She was so thrilled to be back here and to see everybody at the reunion," said Cecil Bear, a contemporary of O'Connor's during their high school years. "She said she looked forward to seeing the (Austin High) ŒA' letter on the mountain. She danced quite a bit at the reunion. When I mentioned that I could take her to the airport, she said, ŒI can ride the shuttle, that's no big deal.' That's how unassuming she was."

Elizabeth "Hondy" Hill McAlmon, an Austin High classmate and friend of O'Connor, said "we saw each other in the summers. I would stay at her family's ranch, and she would stay with me in El Paso. She was brilliant. She grasped ideas easily, and whatever she did, she did it perfectly, whether it was riding a horse or cooking. We played a lot of games, such as checkers and monopoly, and she always won."

"She was the voice of common sense on the Supreme Court," said Nancy Hamilton, another former schoolmate of O'Connor. Both belonged to the National Honor Society and Kalevala writing club during high school.

Hamilton said O'Connor's book, "The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice," does "a very good job of describing how the court works." The Supreme Court justice also wrote about life on her family ranch in the 2003 book "Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest."

"Because of her prestigious career and connection to Austin High, student council president Robert Corral wrote her a letter asking her if she would be willing to lend her name to the district's new magnet school," said Larry Monarrez, spokesman for the El Paso Independent School District. "She replied that she would be honored and even promised to visit the (campus) when time permitted."

The magnet school will be called the Sandra Day O'Connor Criminal Justice/Public Service Academy, and is a collaboration between agencies that include the FBI, U.S. Border Patrol, El Paso County Sheriff's Department, El Paso Police Department and Fort Bliss.

Young Sandra Day divided her childhood in the 1930s and 1940s between El Paso and her family's Lazy B Ranch near Lordsburg.

Betty Jo Farnsworth of Lordsburg was a frequent visitor at the Day family's Lazy B Ranch when her daughter, Sue, was married to Sandra Day O'Connor's brother, Alan. She got to see a side of the first woman Supreme Court justice that was very different from her public visage.

"She's such an ordinary person when you meet her at the ranch, when she can just be herself," Farnsworth said. "She can be prim and proper when she has to be, but she can be lots of fun."

H. Vern Payne, a former chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, first met O'Connor when he was 6 years old and rode the school bus in Lordsburg with the future Supreme Court justice, who was then in junior high. Their paths crossed again at judicial training sessions in the 1970s, when O'Connor was an Arizona appellate judge and he was a New Mexico judge.

"She had a terrific reputation," Payne said.

In 1981, Payne thought he'd do a little lobbying for his former busmate when a vacancy opened on the U.S. Supreme Court. His opportunity came at a dinner in Washington, when he got into a discussion with an aide to Chief Justice Warren Burger.

"I said to him, ŒThey ought to get Sandra Day O'Connor.' The assistant's head whipped around and he said, ŒWhat do you know about that?' I said, ŒI know she grew up on a ranch out in southern New Mexico and Arizona.'"

Much later, Payne said, the assistant told him, "When you said her name, I thought someone had leaked her name. The president (Ronald Reagan) had mentioned her name as a possibility."

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who will help to confirm a new justice, was a friend of O'Connor's. "She has been a wonderful role model for young women in America and around the world," she said. "Her tenure on the bench has set a new standard of jurisprudence."

"When Justice O'Connor was named to the Supreme Court, there was a lot of anticipation and excitement about her and what she would bring to the court," said U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. "I believe she certainly met and exceeded a lot of expectations. She brought a new insight and outlook to the court, and her pragmatic Southwest sensibilities are reflected in her opinions. She has served the court and the nation well."

Jeanne La Marca of the Lordsburg Liberal contributed to this story.

Day family photo album

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Hometown stars - F. Murray Abraham

Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham was raised in El Paso, attended Vilas Grammar School, graduated from El Paso High School in 1958 and attended UTEP on an acting scholarship.

He has more than 60 film credits, including “All the President’s Men,” “Scarface” and “Star Trek: Insurrection.” In 1985, Abraham won the best actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Antonio Salieri in “Amadeus.”

F. Murray Abraham photo gallery

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Hometown stars - Debbie Reynolds

This is an AP photo from 1997.

Actress Debbie Reynolds, shown with her daughter Carrie Fisher in this1997 file photo. (AP Photo/Rene Macura)

April 26, 1981

Film and Broadway actress Debbie Reynolds always attributes her tomboy roots to El Paso, where she, as Mary Frances Reynolds, spent the first eight years of her life, playing and competing with her brother and four young uncles.

Her father, who worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad, was transferred to Burbank, Calif., in 1940.

Winning a Burbank beauty contest in 1948 lead to a movie contract and a suggested name change from Frannie to the more pixieish Debbie.

Soon she was a sought-after ingénue in a string of movies.

She married crooner Eddie Fisher in 1955, divorcing him when he left her and their two small children for Elizabeth Taylor three years later.

The divorce caused a minor scandal and fueled gossip magazines for months. Fisher’s career started a downhill slide, but the public was on Ms. Reynolds’s side.

She married multimillionaire shoe magnate Harry Karl in 1960, divorcing him in 1974 after he was earmarked as a major victim in a gambling and cheating scandal at a Los Angles Club.

Just before her second divorce, Ms. Reynolds started reviving a lagging career with her Broadway hit “Irene.”

An attempt to continue her Broadway success with one-woman show in 1977 flopped.

Since then, the singer-actress-comedienne-dancer has been doing dinner shows and performing at nightclubs.

But recently, admitting she had become a “has-been,” she launched another series, “Aloha Paradise.” Whether the critics – and more importantly, the television viewers – like the combination “Love Boat” – “Fantasy Island” remains to be seen.

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Hometown stars - Phil Ochs

April 26, 1981

Jeannie Kever
Times staff writer

Folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs has even more tenuous ties – once again via Uncle Sam – to the city listed as his birthplace.Ochs, who became one of the most popular folk singers and protest song writers of the 1960s, was born in El Paso in 1940 while his father was stationed with the Army at Columbus, N.M.

He was born in El Paso because his mother didn’t consider any hospitals in New Mexico to be acceptable, according to a biography by Marc Elliot.

The family moved to San Antonio, and then to the Midwest, soon after.

By the mid-1960s, Ochs had three successful albums and was considered, behind Bob Dylan, the most promising and authentic American folk singer of this time.

Then years later, his voice lost in a strange accident in Africa, his marriage failed, his political interest killed with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 and his writing stalled, Ochs hanged himself.

Hometown stars - Vikki Carr

September 29, 1966

She’s Vikki to Millions, Florencia to E.P. Kin

Loretta Overton
El Paso Times

Her fans know her as singing star Vikki Carr, but her El Paso relatives know her as Florencia Bisenta de Casillas Martinez Cardona.

“We never miss watching her when we know she is going to be on television,” says Luis Martinez Casillas at 9201 Alameda street. He is a cousin of Vikki Carr; his mother, Mrs. Rosa Casillas is her aunt. “We haven't seen Florencia (her family name) for many years, but she was born here in El Paso,” Mr. Casillas said. “Then the family went to California where they have lived since.”

Her father is former El Pasoan Carlos Cardona, and Vikki, proud of her Mexican-American heritage, was recently honored as “Outstanding Entertainer of the Year” by the Mexican-American Council of California.

Her television appearances have been on Danny Kaye Show, Red Skeleton, Jimmy Dean and Jerry Lewis Shows, Hollywood Palace, and with Garry Moore, Steve Allen and Johnny Carson. She also made her dramatic debut on the Bing Crosby Show. British television featured her in two BBC-TV Vikki Carr Show specials in England.

Vikki is five feet, two inches tall and has auburn hair and chestnut brown eyes. She weighs 112 pounds. She grew up in Rosemead, Calif., where she played football and baseball with her brothers, Charles, Frank and Tommy. When not engaged as a sandlot “tomboy” she loved to sing and entertain family and friends. She made her public debut when only four years old singing “Adestele Fideles” and “Silent Night” in Latin at a Christmas program.

While in high school, she won leading roles in Rosemead High’s productions of Girl Crazy, Anything Goes and Connecticut Yankee. She sangs with local bands during the weekends and then received the opportunity to audition for the soloists spotlight with the Pepe Callahan Mexican-Irish band. Her father encouraged her to take a chance. She made her debut with Callahan as “Carlita” in Palm Springs.

In the months that followed she traveled with the Mexican-Irish band to Reno, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Hawaii. Then filling in for another act at the Holiday Hotel in Reno, she took the name of Vikki Carr. She was later signed by Liberty Records. Her record albums include “Color Her Great”, “Discovery (two volumes)” and “Anatomy of Love.” What do her El Paso relatives think of her success? “We’re very proud of her,” Mr. Casillas said. “She is muy bonita,” Mrs. Casillas said.

Vikki Carr photos

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