Former Framingham athletic director Jim O'Connor oversaw merger, Salute dinner
A meeting with Jim O’Connor meant the office door — and the outside world — were closed off.
Phones rang unanswered; no checking email.
Many of his former protégés recalled the same scenario.
“When you went into Jim’s office, you were the only sport, you were the only coach,” said Paul Spear.
“He had a way of making you feel as if you were the most important person in the world,” said Mike Tarlin.
“He made you feel that you were his number one priority,” added Gene Zanella.
All four have one thing in common: each began their varsity coaching careers when O’Connor was Framingham High’s athletic director from 1992-2002.
O’Connor was known to many in the state as the first head coach at Catholic Memorial, where he won two Super Bowls and founded the Shriners Football Classic. But at Framingham, his tenure started with a monumental task: the 1991 consolidation of North and South high schools into one building.
“In a lot of ways — the merger of North and South — it took an outsider to bring the town together,” said Zanella, a Framingham South graduate who was Framingham High’s boys lacrosse coach from 1992-2005.
O’Connor, who died on Saturday at his Norwood home at age 87, was also the creator of the recently-defunct Salute to Framingham dinner, which honored local supporters of youth sports and helped offset costs for athletes at Framingham High. It was held at the Sheraton Tara for nearly 30 years.
'He would drop everything'
O’Connor hired Spear and Tarlin for their first varsity jobs in 1999. Spear took over for the legendary Bruce Parker — who was later inducted into Halls of Fame in New Hampshire and New Jersey — as Framingham’s boys hockey coach, a position he held for 17 years.
Tarlin coached Framingham’s boys basketball team for 12 years and recalled his first interview with O’Connor, who drove him to John Harvard’s Brew House at Shoppers World. They took a circuitous route, doubling what was a usual 10-minute drive.
“He just wanted to get to know me as a person,” said Tarlin, currently the Unified basketball coach at FHS and an assistant varsity boys basketball coach at Wellesley High.
Spear, now Framingham’s athletic director, recalled that the school had 26 teams, but O’Connor “would be focused on you. I think that was his best quality.
“If you asked him for something, he wouldn’t say, ‘oh, okay, call me at the end of the week.’ He would pick up the phone at that moment and just get things done for you immediately. And that doesn’t happen everywhere you go.”
Framingham’s co-ed sailing team was started in the late 1990s and lasted six years. Sailing never became a varsity sport, but the Flyers competed against varsity programs in Boston.
Will Cook was the team’s coach and said O’Connor was quick to lend a hand to help the program initially shove off.
“He would drop everything in order to listen to you and help in any way he could,” Cook said. “Jim loved that we were able to teach many boys and girls to sail who had never tried it before.”
O’Connor arrived at Framingham after spending 20 years as athletic director at Catholic Memorial, including 19 as the school’s football coach. He was on a committee that put together the state’s first Super Bowl and founded the Shriners Football Classic, which held its 44th game last June and included more than 100 seniors from Eastern Mass.
Tarlin knew of O’Connor’s accolades and admitted to feeling some pressure to produce winning results. Tarlin’s first season at FHS ended with a 6-14 record and he expected his new AD to come down hard on him with an ultimatum of “win or else.”
“But he was the exact opposite. The only thing he got mad at me for was I lost about 10 basketballs the first year,” Tarlin said with a laugh. “He had a real special way about him. I’ve never seen anybody who was as old-school and tough, but so caring and empathetic. You just didn’t find anyone that didn’t hold him in great respect. That’s rare.”
'A class act' — and Tootsie Rolls
The person O’Connor worked closest to at Framingham High was not a coach.
His secretary, Sally Smith, recalled him as a “wonderful caring, class act. He put his moral fiber into his dealings with everyone. He used his unassuming character to pull together, unify students, coaches and the Town of Framingham.”
One of O’Connor’s first tasks, Smith said, was to establish the inaugural Salute to Framingham. She was hired in December of 1992. O’Connor wanted the first Salute to be held the following March and Smith wasn’t the only one skeptical regarding the timing.
Zanella said he was in the meeting when O’Connor first pitched the idea.
“A lot of people thought, ‘this won’t work,'” Zanella said. “But he got a few people who believed in him — spokes in the wheel, he called it. He put everybody out to do a job and he just kept bringing it together and it turned into something incredible.”
“We would never have been able to do it without the tremendous support from the school, various town departments, town officials, politicians, interested parents and businesses in town,” Smith said. “From that first year it grew in scope and continued to be a success, an event looked forward to by the town.”
The athletes at Framingham High were the main beneficiaries of the Salute, and to this day, are still not required to pay a fee to play sports.
“When they were talking about user fees, there was no bigger opponent than Jim O’Connor,” Spear said. “He was fundamentally opposed to them in every way.”
Smith also remembered how O’Connor connected with students, standing outside his office and engaging with them as they walked by. He also stashed a container of Tootsie Rolls just inside Smith’s office door.
“Students quickly found it and would come in,” Smith said. “This gave him, well both of us, a chance to get to know them. He would say ‘hi’ and ask them ‘what’s up?’ (and) ‘how’s it going?’ and engage them in conversation, showing he truly cared.
"Boy, did we buy a lot of Tootsie Rolls.”
O'Connor a 'mentor and a friend'
O’Connor is a member of the Catholic Memorial, Curry College and Massachusetts High School Football Coaches Association halls of fame. The football field at CM is named after him. But “he never spoke about himself,” Tarlin said.
Many will speak of his selflessness during visiting hours at Robert J. Lawler and Crosby Funeral Home (1803 Center St., West Roxbury) on Thursday from 3-7 p.m. A funeral mass will be held Friday at 11 a.m. at St. Theresa of Avila Catholic Church in West Roxbury.
Rich Rebecchi, who taught and coached in Framingham from 1972-2007, said O’Connor was a key cog in the transformation to a single public high school.
“You needed a mentor,” said Rebecchi, a 1966 South High grad who coached soccer and baseball at both schools before the merger, “but that’s how me and hundreds of other people feel about Jim. He was a mentor and a friend.”
Rebecchi, who currently lives south of St. Louis, recalled the days of approaching O’Connor and instantly feeling at ease.
“He never pulled rank on anybody. It was really pleasurable to walk in his office and say, ‘hey, you got a minute?’ And he always had it.
“He can’t be replaced. There will be people similar to him, but there was only one Jim O’Connor.”
Tim Dumas is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. He can be reached at tdumas@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @TimDumas.
This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Remembering Jim O'Connor, legend at Framingham High, Catholic Memorial
