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In Revealing New Memoir, a Friend Remembers Rehnquist
The National Law Journal
September 08, 2009
A soon-to-be-published memoir by a friend of the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist offers a revealing personal glimpse of the justice's later years, including his handling of the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999, the Bush v. Gore case of 2000 and Rehnquist's own unsuccessful battle with cancer in 2004 and 2005.
The author is former newspaper publisher Herman Obermayer, who lived with his wife near Rehnquist in Arlington, Va., and either played tennis, dined or watched a movie with Rehnquist nearly every weekend in the years after Rehnquist's wife died in 1991.
"He was quite a unique man. People didn't know him," said Obermayer in an interview last week. "He was very funny, in a sophisticated way; he would have enjoyed a dinner party with Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward, but not Jay Leno."
The book, published by Simon & Schuster, is called "Rehnquist: A Personal Portrait of the Distinguished Chief Justice of the United States." Obermayer is 84, born 12 days earlier than Rehnquist, who died in September 2005.
Rehnquist comes across in the book as a frugal and unassuming man of simple pleasures who strived to maintain a life outside work. He enjoyed watching football and movies of all kinds, betting small amounts on elections and drinking a single domestic beer at dinner. Obermayer tells of calling Rehnquist at home the day before Bush v. Gore was being argued in December 2000. He apologized to Rehnquist for interrupting what he thought would be a busy day of reading briefs. "I'm on my second football game," Rehnquist told his friend. "The only thing you're interrupting is Dick Enberg's trivia."
Just weeks earlier, before the Florida election dispute got to the Supreme Court, Rehnquist, Obermayer and Obermayer's wife bet on the outcome of the election. But on Nov. 21, Obermayer got a faxed letter from Rehnquist. Because "it now appears remotely possible" that the election dispute could reach his court, Rehnquist said he felt obliged to "cancel all my election bets in any way dependent on the Florida vote."
Obermayer reveals that, in 1997, Rehnquist dated Marilyn Bollinger, an Arizona divorcee he had known years earlier. She occasionally joined Rehnquist and the Obermayers on their regular movie outings, but he did not know and did not inquire how serious the relationship was. She died of cancer in 2001.
The book also offers the first public account of Rehnquist's bout with thyroid cancer and suggests that, until late July 2005, he fervently believed he would survive and be able to remain on the Court. "He really loved the Court. It was part of his desire to fight the illness, and his belief that he would get well," said Obermayer.
That narrative casts Rehnquist in a more favorable light than some Court historians who have suggested that, in June 2005, he knew how bad his cancer was but still tried to persuade his colleague and longtime friend O'Connor to retire first by implying he would stay on the Court another term. Both wanted to avoid leaving the Court at the same time.
As it turned out, O'Connor announced on July 1 that she would retire, and then Rehnquist's thyroid cancer worsened and he died on Sept. 3.
"I absolutely believe he thought he would beat the cancer" until a negative report came from his doctor on July 30, said Obermayer. "Why would he con me or Justice O'Connor?"
