Basil O'Connor

Daniel Basil O'Connor (January 8, 1892 – March 9, 1972) was an American lawyer and nonprofit executive. In cooperation with U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt he started two foundations for the rehabilitation of polio patients and the research on polio prevention and treatment. From 1944 to 1949 he was chairman and president of the American Red Cross and from 1945 to 1950 he was chairman of the League of Red Cross Societies.

Biography

Early life Daniel Basil O'Connor was born January 8, 1892, in Taunton, Massachusetts. His father was a tinsmith. O'Connor grew up poor but scrappy — an "Irishman one generation removed from servitude", as he described himself. He became a newsboy at age 10, and organized a monopoly of the city's newspaper routes. He earned money for college by playing the fiddle in a dance orchestra. When he arrived in New York he dropped his first name after seeing the long list of D. O'Connors in the phone book. O'Connor became his legal advisor. In 1924 the two men associated in their own law firm which existed until Roosevelt's first Presidential inauguration in 1933. Beginning in 1934 O'Connor was senior partner in the law firm of O'Connor & Farber. He was also executive manager of a number of companies, among them the New England Fuel Oil Corporation in the 1920s, and the American Reserve Insurance Corporation and the West Indies Sugar Corporation in the 1940s.

Fight against polio In August 1921, while vacationing with his family at their summer home on Campobello Island, Franklin D. Roosevelt fell ill and was diagnosed with polio. FDR later sought therapy at a resort in Warm Springs, Georgia. After visiting Roosevelt there O'Connor characterized the place as "a miserable mess", and he decided to promote public support for the rehabilitation of those with polio. In 1927, he and Roosevelt and a group of friends created the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, in which O'Connor served first as treasurer and later as president. The notable fundraising campaign appealed to Americans to "send your dime to President Roosevelt at the White House" for the fight against polio. The 1938 campaign was a smashing success and revolutionized fundraising in America, with over $1,800,000 raised.

"His genius was in generating large numbers of relatively small contributions for a cause," The New York Times wrote of O'Connor. "Over the years he collected and spent more than seven billion dimes — many of them from schoolchildren — with a half-billion dollars of it going to the war on polio." On April 12, 1955 – ten years after Roosevelt's death – the National Foundation published the successful results of Salk's research on the development of a polio vaccine.

After Roosevelt's death, the foundation gradually began taking care of patients with handicaps of all kinds.

In 1974, the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation sold the property in Warm Springs to the State of Georgia for $1. The name was later changed to the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.

Brain trust O'Connor was a member of the so-called Brain trust that advised Roosevelt on political strategy during his 1932 Presidential campaign. O'Connor declined to join the Roosevelt administration on a formal basis, preferring the life of a lawyer.

After his activities for the Red Cross O'Connor devoted much of his time to the work in the two foundations which he presided over until his death. His efforts in fundraising were much more successful than those of other foundations. For example, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis succeeded in collecting $66.9 million in 1954 for 100,000 new patients, while in the case of about 10 million patients with heart diseases only $11.3 million were donated. In 1958 O'Connor received the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service of the Lasker Foundation in recognition of his efforts in the fight against polio. On January 2, 1958 the National Foundation celebrated its 20th anniversary at Warm Springs, Georgia, and Basil O'Connor was honored by having his bust inducted into the Polio Hall of Fame next to FDR and fifteen polio scientists from two centuries. The following undated quotation is attributed to Basil O'Connor: "The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies." The Tuskegee University School of Nursing is housed in Basil O’Connor Hall built in 1968. It serves as a memorial to Basil O’Connor, former member of the Tuskegee University Board of Trustees.