Basil O'Connor

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.[1]

Basil O'Connor did his undergraduate work at Dartmouth College and graduated from Harvard Law School, then was admitted to the bar to practice law in 1915. For one year he worked in New York for the law firm of Cravath & Henderson, and for the next three years for Streeter & Holmes in Boston. In 1919 he founded his own law firm in New York.

In 1920 O'Connor met Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running for Vice President on the Democratic ticket.[1] 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.

O'Connor (left) looks on as FDR is presented with a $1 million check, the proceeds of the first national President's Birthday Ball (1934)

FDR's secretary Missy LeHand with the 30,000 letters containing ten-cent contributions to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis that arrived at the White House that morning in the inaugural March of Dimes campaign (January 28, 1938)

Roosevelt with O'Connor (1944)

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.[2][3]^:236 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.[1]

More than $1 million was raised for the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation by the first nationwide President's Birthday Ball on January 30, 1934. The foundation was reconstituted as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis,[1] founded by Roosevelt on January 3, 1938. The nationwide President's Birthday Ball of 1938 was dubbed "the March of Dimes" by radio star Eddie Cantor, and in time it became the foundation's official name.[4] 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."[1]

Publisher Gerard Piel credited O'Connor with a "unique social invention: a permanently self-sustaining source of funds for the support of research — the voluntary health organization." With a centralized administration, state and local chapters and a large corps of volunteers, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis became the prototype for dozens of similar foundations.[1]

The organization initially focused on the rehabilitation of victims of paralytic polio, and supported the work of Jonas Salk and others that led to the development of polio vaccines.[5] 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.

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.[1]

Roosevelt appointed O'Connor to the American Red Cross, of which he served as chairman (1944–47) and president (1947–49).[1] In this capacity he also chaired the League of Red Cross Societies from 1945 to 1950.

O'Connor declined payment for his leadership of the Red Cross. "For 20 years I have gladly given over a large part of my time to charitable work, particularly to the fight against infantile paralysis sponsored by President Roosevelt," O'Connor said. "I have never accepted or received any compansation for that work. It therefore goes without saying that I shall accept no salary as chairman of the American National Red Cross."[1]