Ken Del Rossi

The news arrived on a Saturday morning, July 2, as I walked sandaled and sleepy from my driveway to the front door, unfolding the New York Times. A banner headline shouted “O’Connor to retire.”

Suddenly I had a stomachache.

Two weeks earlier, we had shipped to the printer our July/August issue with a cover story on Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who many believed would retire when the Supreme Court adjourned at the end of June. The scenario we anticipated had Rehnquist, ’48, MA ’48, JD ’52, stepping down within days of our magazine arriving in readers’ mailboxes. Weren’t we clever? Such timeliness is rare for a bimonthly publica