Sandra Day O'Connor is forefront in current news, as being the pivitol/key vote at
the Supreme Court, regarding the two Affirmative Action cases.

Below is an article describing how Louis B. Dematteis, an Italian American District Attorney in San Mateo, CA (25 miles south of San Francisco) saved Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor from certain oblivion.

However, don't get me started on the double whammy effect of Affirmative Action on Italian Americans. (1) That of No Recognition of Discrimination or Amelioration, AND (2) being Castigated and "Short Changed" by being considered as part of the "European Oppressors".
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Thanks to  Elaine Molinari

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
The Swing Vote/Sandra Day O'Connor's first job

San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, June 22, 2003

By Lou Dematteis

  On a table in my mother's living room sits a framed portrait of a smiling,
   dignified, robed woman standing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court
building in Washington, D.C. On the picture is written, "For Lillian
Dematteis, whose husband gave me my first job as a lawyer." It is signed
"Sandra Day O'Connor, 10/99."

   As soon as tomorrow, Justice O'Connor will be the pivotal vote in the most
important test of affirmative action in recent history. It is a case that
charges the University of Michigan with violating the Constitution with
its admission policies. O'Connor took an active role questioning in the
courtroom last month. As she ponders the case out of the public eye in the
weeks to come,

   I wonder how her own experience resonates. I know she had her own face-off
with discrimination, and got a helping hand when it was needed.

   Born in 1930, Sandra Day left her family's Lazy B ranch where she grew up
on the Arizona-New Mexico border and went to Stanford University as a
16-year- old. Even though she graduated third in her class at Stanford Law
School, the future Supreme Court Justice could not easily find a job --
not as a lawyer, anyway.

   It was 1952, and men outnumbered women in the law school 30 to 1. Few if
any law firms would hire a woman then, O'Connor remarked during a visit in
1999 to the San Mateo County courthouse in Redwood City. In an interview
with one firm, she said she was told, "We've never hired a woman and,
frankly, I don't think we ever will."

   Then O'Connor heard that the district attorney in San Mateo County had
hired a female lawyer. That district attorney was my father, Louis B.
Dematteis.

   Louis Bartholomew Dematteis, Louie to his friends, was born the first son
of Italian immigrant parents who had come to California to escape the
poverty of their small rural villages in northern Italy. Born and raised
in Redwood City, Louis knew what it was to overcome adversity -- and
discrimination.

   Italian was his first language. His father, Francesco, didn't really want
young Louie to go to school, at least not for too long; he wanted him to
work. So my dad did both. Like Sandra Day, he graduated from high school
at age 16. Then he took courses at night and passed the California Bar
Exam in 1932, seven days after his 21st birthday. He was the youngest
lawyer in the state.

   It was 20 years later that a somewhat frustrated Sandra Day sent Louis
Dematteis a job application and four-page cover letter. She offered to
work for free, since she had not yet received the results of the bar exam.
My dad gave her the job, and she even got paid.

   In an interview with Charlie Rose after the publication of her
autobiography "Lazy B," Justice O'Connor said of those days: "I asked the
district attorney of San Mateo County if he would consider me for a job.
And he was a wonderful man. He was Louis Dematteis and he'd been elected
as district attorney in San Mateo County . . . there was this beautiful
old courthouse with a fabulous dome on it with stained glass, it was just
wonderful, it still stands today, and his offices were in that building,
and he had once had a woman on his staff, a lawyer, and I thought, well,
if he could have one, he could have another."

   It wasn't an accident that my dad gave Sandra Day the job. He was an
Italian American who grew up in the local Little Italy at a time when
Italians were not easily accepted into good schools, good careers, and
could be the butt of jokes. He had experienced the prejudice of his time.
Along the way, he had learned not to judge someone on whether they were
from this or that ethnic or racial group, male or female, rich or poor,
but to judge them on who they were or could be deep inside.

   He also knew that life often wasn't fair, and that sometimes people needed
a helping hand, a little boost, a break to get them going down the road to
what they could become.

   So, Sandra Day O'Connor was on her way. She didn't stay long at the
district attorney's office, resigning in 1954 to accompany her husband on
military assignment in Germany. The rest, pretty much, is history.

   Dad never left home. He became a Superior Court judge and stayed on the
bench until retirement, turning down offers of state jobs in Sacramento
and the urging of friends and supporters to run for U.S. Congress. He died
of natural causes in 1995 at his home with his family around him, a little
over a mile away from the house he was born in. He is gone, but I'd like
to think his vision lives on.

   As we await the June decision of the full court on the Michigan case, I
wonder if the experience of being extended a helping hand from an Italian
American in this small town will cross Justice O'Connor's mind.

   Lou Dematteis is a photographer whose most recent book is "A Portrait of
Vietnam" (Norton Books, 1996).

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION / The Swing Vote / Sandra Day O'Conner's first job
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