"It seemed like it turned back the clock 10 years on his life," observed Stephen F. Smith, a former Thomas law clerk.
After meeting Thomas and Mark in Florida, Dixon wanted to help. "I don't know what the justice's salary is, but I know how expensive schooling is and I have the means and I really wanted to see a young man like Marky succeed," he said.
Clarence Thomas, with first lady Barbara Bush, President George H.W. Bush, wife Ginni and Justice Byron White, is sworn in as a justice.
(AP)
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_____Style of a Justice_____
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Photo Gallery: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has a low profile by Washington standards, but is far more engaged than he lets on.
_____Record of a Justice_____
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Interactive Chart: An analysis of Thomas's record compared to other Supreme Court justices.
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A Justice's Private File
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Excerpts: Thomas's Legal Writings
_____More From The Post_____
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Jurist Embraces Image As a Hard-Line Holdout (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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Jurist Mum Come Oral Arguments (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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Culling the Reputable, Reliable, Right-Leaning (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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In Sharp Divide on Judicial Partisanship, Thomas Is Exhibit A (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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Thomas's Across-the-Aisle Aid Puzzles Even the Beneficiaries (The Washington Post, Oct 10, 2004)
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Yale Law Lacks Portrait -- And Thomas's Goodwill (The Washington Post, Oct 10, 2004)
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Thomas v. Blackmun (The Washington Post, Oct 10, 2004)
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About This Series
This series of articles about Justice Clarence Thomas is the result of more than two years of reporting by Washington Post staff writers Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher. The two reporters published a Post magazine article about Thomas in August 2002. Their book on Thomas is scheduled to be published next year by Doubleday.
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Associate justices make $194,300 annually, but Thomas never has been among the wealthiest of his colleagues. In fact, he said he still had outstanding student loans when he took his seat on the court in 1991. At first, Thomas was worried about the propriety of the $5,000 donation, Dixon recalls, but he agreed to accept the contribution if it was deposited directly into a special trust for Mark.
The justice wrote Dixon a long thank-you note.
Thomas seems to have an unquenchable thirst for conversation, a need to unburden himself. No meeting with him is short. Visitors are ushered into his chambers' carpeted inner office and seated on his leather sofa. On the walls hang framed photos of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass and Winston Churchill. Resting atop a bookcase is a bronze bust of his grandpa, the most influential person in Thomas's life.
A planned 15-minute drop-by invariably turns into an hour, then two, sometimes three, maybe even four, according to interviews with at least a dozen people who have visited with Thomas in his chambers. James C. Duff, former administrative assistant to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, brought his parents to Thomas's chambers for a quick introduction, and nearly three hours later they were still there, the justice engrossed in their yarns about growing up in a poor county in rural Kentucky. "I wish I could've recorded it," Duff said. "Time just flew by. We were so grateful."
Not everyone gets the Duff treatment. Thomas retains a special animus for certain civil rights activists and liberal interest groups such as People for the American Way, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Alliance for Justice. He blames them, in large part, for the damage done to his reputation. "These people are mad because I'm in Thurgood Marshall's seat," he told one visitor.
A Thomas friend who talks frequently with the justice said Thomas keeps a list in his head of who was for and against him during his confirmation hearings. "It hurt him a lot, I'll tell you," said this friend, who would speak only if not named to preserve his relationship. "And he's still bitter."
The sessions in Thomas's chambers often surprise those not anticipating such candor from a justice. Washington lawyer Tom Goldstein, whose firm devotes itself primarily to Supreme Court litigation, has met all the justices and has declared Thomas "the most real person" of them all.
In July 1997, Goldstein stopped by to visit a friend who was clerking for the justice and ended up having a two-hour conservation with Thomas. They talked about education. And talked about the importance of raising children to have exemplary character. And talked about Thomas's judicial philosophy.
"The public image of him and the sense you come away with in a one-on-one conversation couldn't be more different," Goldstein said. "And this is from someone who is not a fan of his ideology or jurisprudence. But I am a fan of him personally."
A Schoolboy Unbroken
Thomas's presentation of his life often includes his high school yearbook, old family photos and, perhaps most significant, a faded yellow statuette of St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes. "That's what they called me," Thomas has said in public speeches, "a lost cause."
Thomas won the statuette nearly 40 years ago in a Latin bee at St. John Vianney Minor Seminary, the high school run by the Diocese of Savannah for young men considering the priesthood.
He loves to tell visitors his St. Jude story: Someone among his white fellow seminarians broke the head off his statuette in the open dormitory, leaving the head next to the body on his bureau. (That wasn't the only incident. Once, a fellow student shouted after the lights went out: "Smile, Clarence, so we can see you." The worst part, Thomas has said, is that no one told the guy to shut up.) The broken statuette he glued back together. And when they broke it again, he used thicker glue. They got the message -- he, Clarence Thomas, could not be broken.
