Early Life and Education
John O'Connor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the fourth of five children of Thomas J. and Dorothy Magdalene (née Gomple) O'Connor. He attended public schools until his junior year of high school, when he enrolled in West Catholic High. After graduating from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, he was ordained a priest on December 15, 1945. He was initially assigned to St. James High School in Chester, Pennsylvania. He obtained a master's degree in advanced ethics from Villanova University and a doctorate in political science from Georgetown University in 1970, where he took classes at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and wrote his dissertation under future United Nations ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. He joined the United States Navy in 1952 as a Korean War chaplain, often entering combat zones in order to say Mass and administer last rites to soldiers. He rose through the ranks to become a rear admiral and Chief of Chaplains of the Navy.
Read more about this topic: John Joseph O'Connor
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“Pray be always in motion. Early in the morning go and see things; and the rest of the day go and see people. If you stay but a week at a place, and that an insignificant one, see, however, all that is to be seen there; know as many people, and get into as many houses as ever you can.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o’-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor firefly has shown me the causeway to it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)