A Search for Order, an Answer in the Law

"When the first baby came, I said, 'Sam, our children are going to be the smartest children in Hamilton Township,' " Rose Alito, now 91, recalled in an interview at the two-story, red-brick home in the Trenton suburb where she and Samuel Alito Sr. raised a Supreme Court nominee.

From the beginning, she said, the boy took after his father, a scholarly and reserved man who directed New Jersey's nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services. Perennially pipe-puffing, with thick white hair that gave him a look of distinction, the elder Alito spoke reverentially of the importance of exhaustive, bias-free research in the making of law.

"It was never about what he felt; it was what the law was," recalled former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean (R).

The father ingrained exacting standards in his children. "My father would assist us in learning how to write well," said Rosemary Alito, the nominee's sister. "He'd say, 'No, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. Go write it again.' And I'd go write it again. And he'd look at it again. And he'd review it and give me corrections until he'd find it to be perfect."

The elder Alito was tight-lipped about his own leanings. Some published reports have said he was a Republican; others, a Democrat. Co-workers said he joked that he was "a political eunuch." Asked for the real story, Rose Alito -- a Republican who was a Democrat until 1987 -- and Rosemary Alito, a Republican and a leading employment lawyer, looked blankly at each other, answering with shrugs.

Alito Senior, whose death in 1987 left his son too distraught to deliver a eulogy, had always vacuumed up knowledge. Before working for the legislature, he taught ancient history, physics, math and English at Trenton Central High and had scored so high on an Army aptitude test it raised suspicions of cheating. Similarly, the younger Alito was so far ahead of peers at Hamilton-East Steinert High School that he skewed the grade curve. And, like his father, he kept a lot to himself.

"He was always listening to students' comments, my comments -- analyzing, evaluating, but silently. Kind of inscrutable at times," said Elaine Tarr, his 10th-grade English teacher.

Classmates still speak of his unusual blend of braininess, modesty and quietly hilarious wit. He played baseball, was a star debater, edited the school paper and was elected student council president with an uncharacteristically wacky campaign using posters of women having their hair colored and the slogan "I'll just DYE if Sam isn't elected. Alito for President."

Behind the gentle demeanor was a boy bent on winning. "Oh yes, very competitive!" said his mother. His rivalry with a champion debater at Trenton Central High named Jeffrey Laurenti was so fierce that Alito would not say his opponent's full name -- a relationship highlighted by the caption beside Alito's yearbook photograph: "Jeffrey Who?"

Friends and family members say Alito embraced the respect for authority that was ubiquitous in the 1950s from home to school to Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church. Asked if he ever rebelled, Rosemary Alito exclaimed, "Oh my goodness, he never did anything rebellious at all!"

His middle school Latin teacher, Grace Bolge, said she saw in his passion for that language a love of order and rules. "He liked structure and rigidity," she said. "I think that's why he liked debate. It was timed, it was regulated, there were rules for when you could speak and how you spoke."

The order that defined Alito's early years began to give way in the 1960s. Rose Alito does not remember her reaction as the Second Vatican Council loosened the top-down authority of the Roman Catholic Church. But she made clear her displeasure at another change in religious practice: the 1963 Supreme Court decision banning public school Bible reading and prayer, which began Alito's school days through sixth grade.