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 May 14, 2008 Wednesday
CHASE EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 2A

LENGTH: 565 words

BYLINE: Joan Biskupic

BODY: 

WASHINGTON -- Retired justice Sandra Day O'Connor today will speak publicly for the first time about the difficulty of her husband's Alzheimer's and how it forced her to retire from the Supreme Court.

In her prepared remarks, O'Connor sheds much of the formality she exuded as a justice and reveals the personal anguish that one of the nation's most powerful women felt as she watched her spouse fade away.

"I submit to you that until you have actually stared Alzheimer's in the face ... you cannot truly understand the deep sense of frustration, fear, helplessness and grief that accompany it," O'Connor says in a statement for the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

She says her husband, John, was diagnosed in 1990 -- just two years after her own battle with breast cancer, and while he was still practicing law.

As he deteriorated, "I often took him to the court with me because he could not be left alone," she says.

O'Connor, 78, retired in 2006 "to find a care center for John in Phoenix," where they had raised their three sons and where two still live.

"Many caregivers make similarly difficult decisions each and every day," O'Connor says in the prepared testimony. "Sadly, these life-changing decisions are simply part of caring for someone with Alzheimer's."

The Special Committee on Aging, led by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., will hear from experts on the challenges of Alzheimer's disease, which affects about 5.2million Americans.

"She's a witness" to the disease, says Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who also is scheduled to testify today. He and O'Connor are members of the Alzheimer's Study Group, a task force of national leaders developing a plan to address the hardships, costs and medical outlook of the brain disease, which affects memory and behavior.

Gingrich says that O'Connor's presence heightens the visibility of the effort and that she has been a tough and effective member of the Alzheimer's Study Group.

"She is relentless with the physicians" to bring medical terms down to earth, he said in an interview.

O'Connor, named the first woman to the Supreme Court in 1981, had become its most influential member. A moderate who ensured that the court never tipped too far right or left, she was the key vote on the scope of abortion rights, on affirmative action and on ensuring competent counsel in death penalty cases. Since her departure, the court has become more conservative on many social issues, including abortion rights and racial policies.

O'Connor does not express public regret about leaving the bench and has long been known for refusing to look backward. She serves on numerous commissions and keeps a busy speaking schedule. When she is not on the road, she splits her time between Washington and Phoenix, where John, 78, is in a care center.

Though today's hearing marks her first public discussion of John's disease, she let a local television station last November include John in a story about Alzheimer's patients who forget their spouses and fall in love with other patients.

When she announced her intention to resign in 2005, she did not explain John's situation or even use the word Alzheimer's. In addressing it today, she says, "Alzheimer's disease is a family disease. It may directly attack only one member of the family. But every member of that family feels the effects. Every member loses something."

LOAD-DATE: May 14, 2008