Judge lost husband to Alzheimer's

Alzheimer's robbed Sandra Day O'Connor of the husband she had known for 55 years - but she never imagined she would lose him again to another woman. Now an Oscar-tipped film highlights how their case is far from unique

When Sandra Day O'Connor, one of the most powerful women in America, stepped down as the first female justice on the US Supreme Court to care for her ailing husband two years ago, she never dreamt her life would turn out like this. For her husband, John, an Alzheimer's sufferer, has embarked on a love affair with another woman.

Yet far from being jealous, his wife of 55 years says she is "thrilled" with their romance, relieved that the 77 year-old, who had become depressed and introverted, barely recognising his own family, has found happiness in a new relationship with a fellow patient in his care home.

O'Connor's remarkable tale draws parallels with Away From Her, a new movie starring Julie Christie.

The plot centres around Christie - who last week received an Oscar nomination for her role - as an Alzheimer's patient who falls in love with a man with the same condition.

Christie, 66, who has returned to the big screen after her self-imposed exile on a Welsh farm, spoke of the comparisons in a US interview last week.

Asked if the scenario was "tragic", she replied: "Yes and no. The way Sandra Day O'Connor talks about it - and even in our movie - there's a sense of humour, a bittersweet irony.

"Sometimes things that seem tragic can be turned around. Accept life. It's the Buddhist way."

It is a sentiment with which Scott, one of O'Connor's three sons, would very much agree. He remembers how, after Justice O'Connor reluctantly moved her husband into a centre for Alzheimer's patients near their family home in Arizona, his mental condition deteriorated rapidly, until love blossomed with another resident identified only as Kay.

"He was like a teenager in love," the younger Mr O'Connor told the Phoenix television station KPNX.

"For Mom to visit when he's happy - with his girlfriend, sitting on the porch-swing holding hands - Mom was thrilled."

He also talked about the partnership his mother has lost: "They were husband and wife, lovers, best friends, you know, and that's gone."

But he emphasised her pleasure as her husband became happier and more outgoing after initially sinking into depression.

"It didn't take long to get the idea that this was his last stop. He knew this was the beginning of the end. It was basically suicide talk."

Yet John and Kay are not an isolated case. Lisa O'Toole, manager at the home, says that three romances have developed among the centre's 48 residents.

She describes the relationships as "almost childlike" as the couples hold hands, hug or simply have dinner together.

"I've seen total extremes where families just fall apart, the wife doesn't understand, and they'll cry," she continues, detailing the families' reactions.

"And then you have the other end, the opposite spectrum, that it's OK that they have somebody to make them happy."

Although Justice O'Connor has not spoken herself, her family's decision to highlight this aspect of the mind-debilitating condition mirrors her earlier decision to go public about her own breast cancer.

In an address to the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship in 1994, she spoke about discovering the cancer and undergoing a mastectomy six years earlier.

And The Sunday Telegraph has also learnt how she had previously wrestled with the dilemma of balancing her devotion to her husband as his mind faded with her commitment to a job that she believed was a duty to her country.

Mr O'Connor, previously a prominent lawyer in his own right, has suffered from the disease for 17 years, although few people were aware of his condition until recently. But by 2003 it was advancing quickly.

A Washington friend of the couple told this newspaper: "He became very agitated when she was not there. At first, he wasn't very demanding and seemed quite content to sit silently on his own in a corner of the room, so long as his wife was also in the room.

"But if he was left alone at home when she went to the Court each day - and remember, she worked 12-hour days - he would become almost uncontrollable."

Faced with his rapid decline, she began taking him with her to her offices at the Supreme Court, an imposing marble structure just one street from the US Capitol.

"Very few people knew about this," the friend continues. "It wasn't exactly a secret, but those who worked for her knew that it was a strictly confidential matter. The O'Connors would be chauffeured into the basement garage in the early morning and take a private lift directly to her office.

"Her clerks were totally devoted to her, and the young female clerks in particular would help look after John. He liked looking at pictures in magazines and books."

Justice O'Connor would bring lunch from home and they would eat together at a table in her office. He would even sit in on heavy legal discussions between the Justice and her clerks, although he never offered an opinion and didn't seem interested in what was being discussed. "By then, his memory had almost entirely gone," says the friend.

By 2005, this unusual set-up was becoming increasingly difficult as Mr O'Connor wanted to wander around the corridors. The compromise of taking him to the office was no longer working, so Justice O'Connor faced a wrenching decision - place her husband in a special care home or resign from the Court to look after him full-time for as long as that was possible.

She opted for the latter, but the resignation was an enormous personal sacrifice. By the summer of 2006 he had become too difficult for her to handle, and she reluctantly placed him in an assisted home.

The O'Connors were a high-profile and popular Washington power couple during her 24 years on the bench.

But the revelation about her husband's illness for much of that time throws fresh light on the private life of the woman who ruled on a series of extremely sensitive cases, including interpretations of the hotly disputed Roe versus Wade decision to legalise abortion.

Indeed, Justice O'Connor has unlikely roots for one of the country's foremost legal brains. She grew up on a cattle ranch in south-eastern Arizona, near the Mexican border, before studying law at Stanford.

Despite her qualifications, she found it impossible to find a job as a lawyer, so instead embarked on a career in public service, starting out as the deputy attorney for San Mateo County, California, in 1952. In the same year, aged 22, she married Mr O'Connor whom she had met at law school.

She subsequently worked her way up through Republican politics and the judiciary in her home state of Arizona. Her Western heritage and her reputation as a reliable conservative jurist impressed President Reagan, who appointed her to the Supreme Court in 1981.

But she increasingly found herself as the crucial "swing vote" on the nine-member bench, as other more conservative justices were nominated, and she made a virtue of her case-by-case approach to jurisprudence.

In December 2000, she joined with four other justices to end, by a 5-4 margin, Al Gore's legal challenge to Mr Bush's wafer-thin 2000 election victory.

When Forbes magazine assessed the most important women in the world in 2005, the year before she retired, the only Americans ranked ahead of her were Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Senator Hillary Clinton and First Lady Laura Bush.

Yet these days her life is dominated by her husband's condition and the unique love triangle in which she has found herself.

"It's a heartbreaking situation," agrees Eric Hall, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Foundation of America.

"Her husband can't remember her. It's not as though he chose to leave her; he has no memory of her. But his desire for love continues. At the same time, her willingness to sacrifice and care for him remains. We have no way of knowing how many cases there are like this - but there are many."

• 'Away From Her' will be re-released on February 15