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| Personal Data |
| Name: Basil O'Connor |
| Date and Place of Birth: 1892, Taunton, MA |
| Date of Death: 1972 |
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| Red Cross Service: |
| Dates of Service and Type |
| Volunteer - 1944 through 1949 |
| Job Title(s) |
| 1. National Chairman |
| 2. President and CEO |
| Service Location: National Sector Office |
| Service: National Headquarters |
| War Service: World War II |
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| Career Highlights: |
| A graduate of Harvard Law School, O'Connor practiced law in Boston for several years before moving to New York to become an associate of Franklin Roosevelt's in the practice of corporate law. Though asked to join the Roosevelt administration in 1932, he chose to remain in private practice and to work with the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, a private center for polio victims that he and Roosevelt founded when the president contracted the disease in 1921. World War II was at its peak when Roosevelt asked O'Connor, then also the head of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, to assume the Chairmanship of the Red Cross. O'Connor took over the administration of a worldwide program of service to the armed forces involving millions of volunteers and thousands of workers overseas. After the war, he oversaw the inauguration of the civilian National Blood Program and the major restructuring of the American Red Cross that resulted in the replacement of the Central Committee by a Board of Govenors. Following his Red Cross service, the vital but sometimes abrasive O'Connor continued to promote public health, most significantly by supporting the development of polio vaccines by Drs. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. |
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