Stephen C. O'Connell
Encyclopedia
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, appellate judge and university president. O'Connell was a native of Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, and earned bachelor's
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
and law degree
Law degree
A Law degree is an academic degree conferred for studies in law. Such degrees are generally preparation for legal careers; but while their curricula may be reviewed by legal authority, they do not themselves confer a license...
s before becoming a practicing attorney. He later was chosen to be a justice of the Florida Supreme Court
Florida Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the State of Florida is the highest court in the U.S. state of Florida. The Supreme Court consists of seven judges: the Chief Justice and six Justices who are appointed by the Governor to 6-year terms and remain in office if retained in a general election near the end of each...
from 1955 to 1967, and served as the sixth president of the University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
from 1967 to 1973.
Early life and education
Stephen O'Connell was born in West Palm Beach, FloridaWest Palm Beach, Florida
West Palm Beach, is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and is the most populous city in and county seat of Palm Beach County, the third most populous county in Florida with a 2010 population of 1,320,134. The city is also the oldest incorporated municipality in South Florida...
in 1916, and he attended public schools in West Palm Beach and Titusville, Florida
Titusville, Florida
Titusville is a city in Brevard County, Florida in the United States. It is the county seat of Brevard County. Nicknamed Space City, USA, Titusville is on the Indian River, west of Merritt Island and the Kennedy Space Center and south-southwest of the Canaveral National Seashore...
. After graduating from high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, he attended the University of Florida from 1934 to 1940, where he was a member, and later president, of Alpha Tau Omega
Alpha Tau Omega
Alpha Tau Omega is a secret American leadership and social fraternity.The Fraternity has more than 250 active and inactive chapters, more than 200,000 initiates, and over 7,000 active undergraduate members. The 200,000th member was initiated in early 2009...
Fraternity
Fraternities and sororities
Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
(Alpha Omega chapter). While he was an undergraduate student, he was elected president of the sophomore
Sophomore
Sophomore is a term used in the United States to describe a student in the second year of study at high school or university.The word is also used as a synonym for "second", for the second album or EP released by a musician or group, the second movie of a director, or the second season of a...
class, the student body and Florida Blue Key
Florida Blue Key
Florida Blue Key is a student honor and service society at the University of Florida. It is often written and referred to by the initialism "FBK."This organization was started at the University of Florida in 1923 under the presidency of Albert Murphree...
leadership society. He was also a star athlete and the captain
Captain (sports)
In team sports, a captain is a title given to a member of the team. The title is frequently honorary, but in some cases the captain may have significant responsibility for strategy and teamwork while the game is in progress on the field...
of the Florida Gators varsity boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
team, set the university record for fastest knock-out—twelve seconds including the count—won the Southeastern Conference
Southeastern Conference
The Southeastern Conference is an American college athletic conference that operates in the southeastern part of the United States. It is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama...
(SEC) middleweight
Middleweight
Middleweight is a division, or weight class, in boxing. Early boxing history is less than exact, but the middleweight designation seems to have begun in the 1840s. In the bare-knuckle era, the first middleweight championship fight was between Tom Chandler and Dooney Harris in 1897...
boxing championship, and was later inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Distinguished Letter Winner." O'Connell completed both his bachelor of science
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
degree
Academic degree
An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...
from the College of Business Administration and his bachelor of laws
Bachelor of Laws
The Bachelor of Laws is an undergraduate, or bachelor, degree in law originating in England and offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree...
degree from the College of Law in 1940.
War, law and politics
After briefly practicing law in Fort Lauderdale, FloridaFort Lauderdale, Florida
Fort Lauderdale is a city in the U.S. state of Florida, on the Atlantic coast. It is the county seat of Broward County. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 165,521. It is a principal city of the South Florida metropolitan area, which was home to 5,564,635 people at the 2010...
, O'Connell accepted an appointment as the civilian director of physical training for the U.S. Third Air Force
Third Air Force
The Third Air Force is a numbered air force of the United States Air Forces in Europe . It is headquartered at Ramstein Air Base, Germany....
in Tampa, Florida
Tampa, Florida
Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709....
, and thereafter entered active duty service with U.S. Army Air Corps when the United States entered World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
. During the war, he served with the U.S. Fifth Air Force
Fifth Air Force
The Fifth Air Force is a numbered air force of the United States Air Force Pacific Air Forces . It is headquartered at Yokota Air Base, Japan....
in Brisbane, Australia and as executive officer
Executive officer
An executive officer is generally a person responsible for running an organization, although the exact nature of the role varies depending on the organization.-Administrative law:...
of the 312th Bombardment Group in the western Pacific, and completed his war-time service as a major
Major
Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...
.
O'Connell married Rita McTigue after he returned from the war, and restarted his Fort Lauderdale law practice in 1946. He also became an active member of the Broward County Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
, and participated in the gubernatorial
Governor
A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...
and senatorial
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
campaign organizations of Dan McCarty, George Smathers
George Smathers
George Armistead Smathers was an American lawyer and politician who represented the state of Florida in the United States Senate for eighteen years, from 1951 until 1969, as a member of the Democratic Party.-Early life:...
and LeRoy Collins
LeRoy Collins
Thomas LeRoy Collins was the 33rd Governor of Florida.-Early life:Collins was born and raised in Tallahassee, Florida, where he attended Leon High School. He went on to attend the Eastman Business College in New York and then went on to the Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama to...
.
In appreciation of his loyal work on behalf of the Democratic Party, Florida Governor LeRoy Collins appointed O'Connell as a justice
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
the Florida Supreme Court in 1955. His time on the state supreme court followed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
in 1954, and O'Connell's judicial philosophy was characterized by conservatism and gradualist
Gradualism
Gradualism is the belief in or the policy of advancing toward a goal by gradual, often slow stages.-Politics and society:In politics, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be brought about in small, discrete increments rather than in abrupt strokes such as...
integration
Racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...
. His fellow justices elected him chief justice
Chief Justice
The Chief Justice in many countries is the name for the presiding member of a Supreme Court in Commonwealth or other countries with an Anglo-Saxon justice system based on English common law, such as the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the Court of Final Appeal of...
of the court in 1967, in which position he would serve only briefly. O'Connell served on the court until the Florida Board of Regents
Florida Board of Regents
The Florida Board of Regents was from 1965 to 2001 the governing body for the State University System of Florida, which includes all public universities in the state of Florida, United States. It was created to replace a predecessor body called the Florida Board of Control, which had existed from...
selected him to be the president of the University of Florida later in 1967.
University president
O'Connell was the sixth president of the University of Florida in Gainesville, FloridaGainesville, Florida
Gainesville is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Alachua County, Florida, United States as well as the principal city of the Gainesville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area . The preliminary 2010 Census population count for Gainesville is 124,354. Gainesville is home to the sixth...
, and the first alumnus
Alumnus
An alumnus , according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is "a graduate of a school, college, or university." An alumnus can also be a former member, employee, contributor or inmate as well as a former student. In addition, an alumna is "a female graduate or former student of a school, college,...
of the university to be appointed as its president. When O'Connell assumed the presidency of the university in 1967, the student protest movement was peaking nation-wide, and numerous demonstration
Demonstration (people)
A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...
s, both peaceful and militant, were held on the Florida campus during his six-year term. Faculty
Faculty (university)
A faculty is a division within a university comprising one subject area, or a number of related subject areas...
-administration relations were also strained, because many professors were sympathetic to the student protesters and their various social and political goals.
Kent State shootings
The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre—occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970...
, and declared a day of mourning. It was the first time classes had been canceled at the University of Florida during his administration.
The University of Florida had integrated racially
Racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...
in 1958 without violence and with little protest. By the 1967 fall term, however, only sixty-one black students were enrolled, and many black students were actually foreign exchange students. The Black Student Union organized a sit-in protest inside the university president's office suite on April 15, 1971; the students were demanding a black cultural center. The occupation ended with the peaceful arrest of sixty-six students, after O'Connell had threatened them with expulsion. In the aftermath of the sit-in, O'Connell refused to grant complete amnesty to the student demonstrators who had participated, and 125 of the university's black students and several black faculty members left the university in protest.
On balance, O'Connell's administration did much to further integrate African-Americans into the mainstream of the University of Florida's academic life. When he assumed the presidency in 1967, there were sixty-one black students and no black professors; when O'Connell retired in 1973, 642 black students were enrolled, a ten-fold increase, and the faculty included nineteen black professors.
O'Connell's critics accused him of racial and political animus in his sometimes hard-line decisions, but his administration kept the university open, and classes, exams and commencements were held without serious interruption in the aftermath of the Kent State shootings, when many American universities were forced to close and send their students home. During the August 1973 commencement proceedings, the assembled graduating students twice rose to their feet spontaneously to pay tribute to the man who guided the university through its most difficult era.
O'Connell's greatest long-term impact may have been the reorganization of the University of Florida Alumni Association and the creation of an Office of Development staffed by professional fundraisers. The reorganization of the alumni association and advancement program led to the rapid growth of the university's endowment
Financial endowment
A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution. The total value of an institution's investments is often referred to as the institution's endowment and is typically organized as a public charity, private foundation, or trust....
over the years following his presidency. O'Connell began a reversal of policy and attitudes among many state legislators and academics who had previously opposed large-scale private fund-raising and endowment of the Florida's public universities.
Return to private life
O'Connell announced his resignation on June 28, 1973. He did not provide a specific reason, but it was known that his wife was ill with diabetes. After retiring as university president, he returned to his home in Tallahassee, restarted his law practice, remained active in university affairs, and engaged in cattle ranching. O'Connell later became the chairman and chief executive officerChief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
of Lewis State Bank, then the oldest bank in Florida, and held that position until 1983. Thereafter, he returned to the active practice of law in Tallahassee in partnership with a Tampa-based firm.
When its construction was completed in 1980, the Stephen C. O'Connell Center was named for O'Connell in recognition of his service to his alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...
. The multi-purpose athletic arena and entertainment venue is located on the Gainesville campus of the University of Florida, and is known to students as the "O'Dome."
O'Connell died on his cattle ranch near Tallahassee, on April 13, 2001, at the age of 85. O'Connell was preceded in death by his first wife, Rita McTigue O'Connell, and his son, Martin O'Connell. He was survived by his second wife, Cynthia Bowlin O'Connell, three children, and eight grandchildren. Cynthia O'Connell serves on the University of Florida Board of Trustees.
See also
- Florida GatorsFlorida GatorsThe Florida Gators are the intercollegiate sports teams that represent the University of Florida located in Gainesville, Florida. The "Lady Gators" is an alternative nickname sometimes used by the Gators women's teams...
- History of FloridaHistory of FloridaThe history of Florida can be traced back to when the first Native Americans began to inhabit the peninsula as early as 14,000 years ago. Recorded history begins with the arrival of Europeans to Florida, beginning with the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, who explored the area in 1513...
- History of the University of FloridaHistory of the University of FloridaThe history of the University of Florida is firmly tied to the history of public education in the state of Florida. The University of Florida, colloquially known as "Florida" or "UF," originated as several distinct institutions that were merged to create a single state-supported university by the...
- List of Alpha Tau Omega brothers
- List of Levin College of Law graduates
- List of Presidents of the University of Florida
- List of University of Florida alumni
- List of University of Florida honorary degree recipients
- State University System of FloridaState University System of FloridaThe State University System of Florida is a system of eleven public universities in the U.S. state of Florida. As of 2011, over 320,000 students were enrolled in Florida's state universities...
External links
- Florida Supreme Court – Official website of the Florida Supreme Court.
- University of Florida – Official website of the University of Florida.
- University of Florida Alumni Association – Official website of the University of Florida Alumni Association.
- University of Florida College of Law – Official website of the Levin College of Law.