Katie Couric Instagram – Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the nation’s highest court and a crucial swing vote during her twenty-five year tenure, died on Friday. She was 93. A key figure in landmark Supreme Court cases dealing with abortion, affirmative action and civil rights, O’Connor retired from the high court in 2006 and announced in 2018 that she had been diagnosed with dementia and would withdraw from public life. The Supreme Court announced her death in a statement, saying the cause was complications of dementia. O’Connor was President Ronald Reagan’s first nominee to the Supreme Court, joining the court in 1981 after an already notable career that included serving as the majority leader in Arizona’s state Senate – the first woman to hold that title in the nation. Fifty-one years old at the time of her SCOTUS nomination, she served for 24 years, retiring in January 2006 to care for her ailing husband. Her husband, John Jay O’Connor III, whom she met when they were both students at Stanford Law School and married shortly after her graduation in 1952, died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2009. Justice O’Connor spent an active retirement, sitting as a visiting judge on federal appeals courts around the country and speaking and writing widely in support of two causes, judicial independence and civics education. She also catered to her six grandchildren, taking them on trips and writing two children’s books based on her own colorful childhood on a remote Arizona ranch. 📸: @gettyimages