Like many others, when Bobbie Kilberg thinks of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she pictures an icon, a transformational figure who helped shape the course of both her profession and the country's history in her time.
She also remembers that the late Supreme Court justice was not a morning person.
Kilberg, the now retired president and CEO of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, recounted a moment in 2013 when she was looking for a speaker for the Herndon technology trade association’s Tech Titans breakfast series and asked her friend Ginsburg to come speak.
“She disliked mornings intensely. We asked her to please arrive at the green room at about 7:30 a.m., and she did as promptly as can be,” Kilberg said in an interview. “She looked at me and said, ‘I want you to know that I didn’t even bother to go to sleep last night.’ I said, 'What?' And she said, ‘Well, what’s the point?’ Because she stays up so late at night working and reading that the mornings were just not for her.”
The moment is reflective of what Ginsburg meant to Kilberg, her friend of several decades — a kind, curious, engaging person who was always willing to give of herself and her time because it was important to you.
“You have Ruth Ginsburg doing a fireside chat with [former U.S. Solicitor General] Ted Olson before 800 technology leaders, and your first reaction is why,” Kilberg said. “I mean what relationship does she have with technology business leaders? And the beauty of that morning was the reaction to her was spontaneous and positive and just overwhelming because of her honesty, her analytical ability and her humor. She was very funny.”
When not adjudicating some of the country's most important cases, Ginsburg made her presence known in other aspects of the business community, speaking at NVTC and Smithsonian events; guest lecturing at Georgetown University Law Center where her husband, Martin, taught; and even officiating weddings of some of the community's highest-profile business leaders, including former Kennedy Center chief Michael Kaiser. She made her love of the arts known with frequent visits to performances at the Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre and Arena Stage. Today, her mural reigns tall on a building at the corner of 15th and U streets near Flock D.C., a real estate firm whose founder and CEO, Lisa Wise, commissioned the work from local artist Rose Jaffe.
Kilberg's ties with Ginsburg, however, go far back, well before she was such a public figure. Kilberg said she first met Ruth, as she called her, in the early 1970s, when her own husband, Bill, was serving as associate solicitor for civil rights for the Nixon administration’s Department of Labor. He had struck an alliance with Ginsburg when she worked with the American Civil Liberties Union on a number of gender equality cases.
While Ginsburg would go on to argue six gender discrimination cases in front of the Supreme Court in that decade, winning five of them, an unlikely friendship developed between her and Kilberg, a former member of the Nixon and Bush 41 administrations.
“We didn’t agree with some of her decisions, but always respected her analysis, her thoughtful approach, her willingness to listen to others and wanting to have the purpose of equality for women — actually equality for all people,” Kilberg said.
Their bond grew over the next decade thanks to their shared love of New Mexico, where Kilberg and her husband have a home in Santa Fe and where Ginsburg would come to stay for several summers to take in her love of the locale’s opera and its stunning vistas.
“If we missed each other, she said, ‘Please take photos for me of my New Mexico skies,’” Kilberg said. “Those were the places she came to relax. But even if it was her vacation time, she went downtown and read books to children at the library, she spoke to the arts group and other organizations. It was all, again, because people asked her to [take her time] and be a model for young women and young girls.”
Kilberg added that the respect and magnetism that Ginsburg held transcended politics. She recalled being asked multiple times to arrange introductions with the Supreme Court justice, including a meeting with now-former New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican who was elected as the country's first Hispanic female governor.
Kilberg pointed to the moment during the meeting when Martinez gave Ginsburg “a bear hug,” bringing together two people of diverging political spectrums, but nevertheless great affection and respect for one another. It was a moment she said Martinez recently described as “the highlight of my life.”
“What struck me about that was the impact Ruth had on people and individuals because of her commitment for equality, the rule of law and kindness, her love of people, her love of life,” Kilberg said.
That legacy is one that Kilberg holds especially dear during these polarizing political times. She highlights Ginsburg's long friendship with late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia as evidence of her ability to bridge vast political divides.
“It certainly seems the verbalization of who you want for your next Supreme Court justice, it gets all caught up in this divisiveness rather than on the purposes of the Supreme Court,” Kilberg said. “I really hope that Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg’s friendship and honest, intelligent disagreements can rekindle that spirit.”
Ultimately, what will stick with her about Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an unyielding kindness and camaraderie that was imbued throughout her remarkable life.
"She had exceptional vision, strength and humility and an iron-clad grace,” Kilberg said. “I’m not sure there will be another one like her.”
