Basil O'Connor

Basil O'Connor, President of NFIP and March of Dimes

Source: David Rose/Archives October 2001

Basil O’Connor (1892-1972) was the first president of The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, serving from its founding in 1938 to 1972. He was born Daniel Basil O’Connor on January 8, 1892 in Taunton, Massachusetts, but later dropped the name “Daniel.” His friends knew him as “Doc.” He received a B.A. (1912) from Dartmouth College and LL.B. (1915) from Harvard Law School. His career as a lawyer led to a law partnership with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1925-1933) with whom he led the fight to conquer polio, first as president of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation and subsequently through The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, founded by President Roosevelt in 1938. In the 1930s, Mr. O’Connor was a member of FDR’s inner circle of personal advisors known as the “Brains Trust.” On November 16, 1944 Roosevelt also appointed him President of the American National Red Cross, a post he retained until October 1, 1949.

Mr. O’Connor’s distinctions and honors are many, but his foremost achievement as president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis was the leadership of a public crusade – popularly known as the March of Dimes – based on the philanthropy of common people. The NFIP March of Dimes campaigns financed the medical and rehabilitative care of polio patients and the massive medical research effort that led to the approval and licensing of the Salk polio vaccine in 1955. As president of The National Foundation his vision of a large-scale organization to defeat polio culminated not only in the swift abatement of the polio epidemics in the late 1950s but also an initiative to transform this success into the larger mission of prevention of birth defects, announced in the foundation’s Expanded Program of 1958.

Among many distinctions, Basil O’Connor was the recipient of honorary degrees from Emory University, the National University of Ireland, and the Baylor University College of Medicine. He served as president of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, International Polio Congress, National Health Council, the Harry S. Truman Library, and International Medical Congress. He also served as director or trustee of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Tuskegee Institute, and National Citizens’ Committee for the World Health Organization. In 1958, Mr. O’Connor received the Albert Lasker Public Service Award for his role in the eradication of polio. He was the first layman Gold Medal Member of the New York Academy of Sciences and received decorations from several foreign governments. A life member of the American Bar Association and New York State Bar Association, Mr. O’Connor died shortly after his 80^th birthday on March 9, 1972.

Note: Basil O'Connor passed away due to a heart ailment complicated by pneumonia. O'Connor was attending a March of Dimes grant meeting in Phoenix, Arizona when he passed.

Expanded Reading Opportunity: Click here to read about the friendship and partnership between Basil O'Connor and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Video: "An Uncommon Man" Film written by Jonas Salk after O'Connor's passing.

Video: "A Message from Basil O'Connor" A prophetic message from the first March of Dimes President, predicting that the organization would do great things in the future, with regards to improving the health of all.

Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award

The March of Dimes created the Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award in 1973 as a living memorial to Basil O’Connor, first president of the Foundation from its inception in 1938 to his death in March 1972. This grant award program was designed specifically to support promising research of young scientific investigators holding recent faculty appointments and just beginning their own independent laboratory careers, who are typically less able to obtain funding for innovative research than more senior colleagues. The purpose and design of the program have remained fundamentally unchanged in its forty-year history. There have been 1624 individual grant awards during this time, from 1973 to 2012.

The Basil O’Connor Starter Research Advisory Committee was created to evaluate the existing and proposed research of young scientists deserving of independent support and whose careers demonstrate true promise and leadership in birth defects research. The committee meets annually to evaluate applications and was first chaired by Wallace W. McCrory, MD of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Early committee members included Kurt Benirschke, Sidney Gellis, Mitchell Golbus (himself a BOC Award grantee), William Oh, Ralph Wedgwood, and Myron Winick, among many other distinguished physicians. In its first year, the Basil O’Connor Starter Research Awards totaled $1,050,000 to 58 scientists. The total amount awarded from 1984 to 2012 is $131,997,612. In 2011 and 2012, there were 40 awards totaling $6 million in each year.

In 1976 and 1979, the March of Dimes sponsored two colloquia (Basil O’Connor Starter Research Grant Colloquium) that brought together many Basil O’Connor research grantees and other leaders in medicine to present their accomplishments and to explore trends and future directions in birth defects prevention. Over the years, grants in this program have covered research in the fields of pediatrics, obstetrics, neurobiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, biology, and genetics. Francis Collins, current head of the National Institutes of Health and former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute has spoken publically of how the Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award helped to jump-start his career in these words: “The Basil O’Connor award was a crucial milestone for me, getting me started on a research track that has been intensely gratifying.”

Sources: March of Dimes annual reports; current data, Research and Grants Administration; Science News Release Records and Bioethics Advisory Committee Records, March of Dimes Archives.