Narrowly Defined Image Belies Jurist's Quiet Clout

Thomas met Earl Dixon as the justice was getting his RV serviced at a Marathon Coach facility in April 2001 in San Antonio, Fla. Dixon was there holding a meeting as president of the Marathon Coach Club, a group of RV enthusiasts. The men exchanged phone numbers. Thomas called weeks later to say he was returning to north-central Florida in his RV.

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Dixon, owner of a pest-control company and a former Florida state legislator, invited Thomas to park his coach at the Big River RV park in Welaka. That night they grilled catfish, swapped stories of "growing up hard" in the South, as Dixon puts it, and watched the NBA Playoffs. And that's how a chance encounter blossomed into a close friendship. Now, Dixon said, they talk "pretty frequently," and Thomas even hosted a dinner for Dixon's Marathon Coach club at the Supreme Court.

According to Thomas's 2002 financial disclosure report, Dixon and his wife, Louise, made a $5,000 "education gift" to Mark Martin, Thomas's 13-year-old great-nephew, whom he and his wife, Ginni, have been raising as a son. Thomas assumed custody of the boy a little more than a year before Mark's father -- the son of Thomas's sister -- was sentenced in 1999 to 30 years in prison for trafficking in crack cocaine.

By taking over Mark's upbringing, Thomas replicated what his late grandfather Myers Anderson did for him. The experience also invigorated him.

"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.

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."