Life with Chief Justice Roberts

Jane Sullivan Roberts, on roots, faith, family and her husband.

Jane’s husband John is eager for the trip as well. “He loves it. The way to his heart was through the golf. So our first trip, there was a lot of golfing, and he really enjoyed it. And last summer we didn’t get any golfing, and we hiked the Glen of Aherlow; there are many things to do there, it’s fabulous. We came to Ireland from Austria, and we did hiking there, but the hiking in Ireland is wilder; there’s hardly anybody out there, and it’s just us and the sheep. It was fabulous, great to get away.”

Hiking in the Irish mountainside, staying in a small lrish cottage, visiting with the locals and dancing at local festivals – that is the Roberts itinerary. It sounds like an idyllic trip and one that Jane was clearly looking forward to – no limousines or major receptions, just family and friends.

It is clear there are no airs and graces about Jane Roberts or her husband. When her husband was appointed by President Bush many of the profiles referred to her lack of pretentiousness, driving around in an old Volkswagen, making no effort to be noticed or with the in crowd.

There was a light moment after President Bush made his announcement on national television that John Roberts would be the next Supreme Court justice in July 2005. Their five-year-old son Jack impishly took over proceedings and commenced dancing away under klieg lights to his heart’s content. Jane Roberts confesses to being mortified at first but later laughing about her free-spirited son.

On another occasion at the White House when John Roberts as new Chief Justice was introducing his family to the president, Jane’s mother had wandered off somewhere to look at the White House treasures and kept the president waiting. Jane laughs at the memory, “Only in America,” she says.

She recalls just one occasion when she was suddenly struck with a sense of awe – at a dinner for Queen Elizabeth, when the sight of her husband sitting beside the monarch momentarily made her realize what they had accomplished together.

Perhaps she is grounded because nothing got handed easily to Jane Sullivan Roberts, a fact that becomes apparent when you speak with her. A child of Irish parents, from the Bronx, she grew up in modest circumstances.

She remembers well the rooms set aside in her apartment for the use of the greenhorns over from Ireland, of whom her mother was once one.

When she was growing up the sights and sounds of Ireland were never far from her mind. Irish dancing and music classes gave her a grounding in her heritage, and her parents’ strong Catholicism and sense of duty stayed with her all her life.

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Nster.com