Conservative high court justice dies.

Byline: Richard Nangle

SHREWSBURY - Francis P. O'Connor, a Shrewsbury resident who served on the Supreme Judicial Court for 16 years, died Friday night in Worcester after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 79 years old.

A dissenting conservative who served on a primarily liberal court, Justice O'Connor was appointed in 1981 by Gov. Edward J. King.

"Justice O'Connor served our highest court with honor and distinction for many years and was widely respected and admired for his intellect, his integrity and humanity, and his commitment to the legal community and beyond," Gov. Deval L. Patrick said in a statement yesterday. "On behalf of the commonwealth, Diane and I wish to extend to the family our sympathies for his loss and our gratitude for his service."

"He is a man of the greatest integrity and humanity and a man who cared for his family very deeply," said his daughter Ellen of Shrewsbury, director of judicial education with the Massachusetts Trial Court. "He cared about each case that he touched. He worked very diligently on the court for the people of the commonwealth. He took great care with each and every decision he wrote. He came to each case with an open mind, open to being persuaded by the lawyers who argued before him and on the Supreme Judicial Court by the judges with whom he worked."

He was father to 10 children and had 30 grandchildren.

Justice O'Connor made no apology for being contrary minded. Upon his retirement he told the Telegram & Gazette, "Obviously, I feel strongly about some issues." He added that he has probably gotten "more emotionally into the writing of a dissent than I would in writing for the court."

"One does get to feel sort of passionate about a lot of the cases where you write a dissent, and you cannot persuade these folks that you're right and they're wrong," he said.

An avid camper and tennis player, Justice O'Connor was a native of Belmont who also lived in Medford and Grafton before moving to Shrewsbury in 1962. He attended the Belmont Public Schools and was a 1945 graduate of Boston College High School. He served two years in the Army in Korea following World War II, graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1950 and graduated from Boston College Law School in 1953.

He served as law clerk to the Hon. Raymond S. Wilkins, chief justice of the SJC, in 1953 and 1954 and would later serve on the SJC with his son, Herbert T. Wilkins, who would become a chief justice. From 1954 until 1976, Justice O'Connor practiced law at the Boston firm of Friedman, Atherton, Sisson & Kozol and the Worcester firms of Mason, Crotty, Dunn & O'Connor and Wolfson, Moynihan, Dodson & O'Connor. Prior to his appointment to the bench, he served as a member of the SJC Advisory Committee on the Rules of Civil Procedure and the SJC's Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee.

In 1976 Gov. Michael S. Dukakis appointed Justice O'Connor to the Massachusetts Superior Court, where he served until Mr. King appointed him to the SJC.

He was the first SJC law clerk to serve on the state's high court, which was a point of pride with him. He was also the court's first graduate of BC Law.

He served on the SJC Substance Abuse Project Task Force. He was its chairman from 1992 to 1995 and honorary chairman afterward. He received St. Thomas More awards from the St. Thomas More Society of Worcester and from the BC Law School Alumni Association. He received an honorary doctor of laws degree from both the New England and Suffolk University schools of law.

He retired from the court in 1997. Two of the high court's seven justices remain from his tenure, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall and Justice John Greaney.

In Shrewsbury, Justice O'Connor was an active member of St. Mary Parish. He served the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester in several capacities in the 1960s and '70s, including as chairman of the Family Life Apostolate within the Diocesan Council. He was a founding member of Massachusetts Citizens for Life and a noted opponent of abortion rights on the court.

He wrote many SJC dissents on abortion and was often on the losing end of abortion cases argued before the high court.

In 1997, he was on the losing side of a split SJC decision that a state law requiring pregnant minors to get the consent of both parents before having an abortion was unconstitutional. The high court said the consent of one parent or a judge was sufficient.

Justice O'Connor wrote that minors did not need the consent of either parent if they can persuade a judge to permit the abortion.

"The record shows that judicial approval is nearly a certainty," he wrote. "As the court recognizes, a significant legislative reason to provide two-parent consent as an option to easily obtained judicial authorization is to encourage dialogue between the parents and the minor so as to give a real meaning to the minor's constitutional right to choose between aborting the fetus and bringing it to term."

His daughter Ellen said he took his dissents seriously.

"If he thought the majority had not gotten it right," she said, "he felt compelled to challenge that decision, which sometimes caused the court to revisit how they had written a particular opinion."

Justice O'Connor served as chairman of the Shrewsbury Zoning Board of Appeals and Coolidge School Building Committee and was an elected Shrewsbury Town Meeting member.

His wake will be from 4 to 8 p.m. tomorrow in the Britton-Shrewsbury Funeral Home, 648 Main St., Shrewsbury. The funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Tuesday in St. Mary's Church, 640 Main St., Shrewsbury. Burial will follow in Mountain View Cemetery, Shrewsbury. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Hon. Francis P. O'Connor '53 Scholarship fund, c/o Boston College Law School, 885 Centre St., Newton, MA 02459, or to The St. Francis House, 39 Boylston St., Boston.

Contact Richard Nangle by e-mail at [e-mail].

ART: PHOTO

CUTLNE: Francis P. O'Connor