My mother grew up in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn as RBG and like many of the young Jewish girls in that middle class community of first and second generation immigrants to America, they both attended the same summer sleep away camp, Camp Che-Na-Wah. In 1993, when President Bill Clinton nominated RBG to the Supreme Court, the New York Times published a long profile of her and mentioned the camp by name. I was then a relatively young lawyer and on reading that article, called my mother and asked her if she was proud. My mother responded, “Of course I am, but I’d expect no less of a Che-Na-Wah girl.”
My mother was 8 years older than RBG and didn’t remember meeting her, but thought they may have been at the camp at the same time when my mother returned as a counselor; she also thought that RBG probably overlapped at the camp with my mother’s younger sister, for whom I am named.
I never met RBG but I did go to hear her speak twice— once as a law student in 1984 when she was a circuit court judge, and 20 years later when she was a Supreme Court justice and I was a government lawyer. I was struck both times by how funny she was, and how she appeared to be both endearingly shy yet also quietly completely confident and warm and wise.
Message Thread | This response ↓
« Back to index