When Jim O’Connor’s students at St. Francis High School in La Canada, Calif., learned where the Vietnam veteran and math teacher spends his free time outside of the classroom, their respect for him multiplied exponentially.
O’Connor can be a bit of a drudge. But the 70-year-old Vietnam vet says he’s not here to entertain his students. “It drives me crazy when people say school should be fun,” he says. “I mean, it’s nice if it could be, but you can’t make school fun.”
And for years, the kids thought that’s all there was to him — until last November, when senior Pat McGoldrick learned they didn’t know the half of him.
Pat was in charge of a student blood drive and had just come to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles for a meeting. And he says it was weird: whenever he told someone he went to St. Francis High School, they all said, “Oh, you must know Jim O’Connor. Isn’t he wonderful?”
“It was disbelief, really,” Pat says. “It was almost, like, kind of finding this alter ego that he has.”
You can watch the clip, below:
- Source Links – August 29, 2020
- About Pat Warde: Eulogy Tribute by Eleanor Hughes – April 1, 2019
- Editorial Note – January 15, 2019
You must be logged in to post a comment Login