Biographical note

John Thomas Lenahan O'Connell, known to family and friends as "Lenahan," was born in 1913 to Joseph F. and Marisita Lenahan O'Connell. He graduated from Boston College in 1934, Boston University Law School in 1938 and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1938. He was employed in his father's law firm in Boston, the Law Offices of Joseph F. O'Connell. He enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private in 1936 and graduated from the Massachusetts Military Academy the same year with a promotion to second lieutenant, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1965. Lenahan served during World War II in camps around the United States and in Dutch New Guinea (from July 1944) and in the National Guard and Reserves until his retirement. On September 7, 1942, he married Priscilla Halloran. They had three children: Lenahan Louis O’Connell, Donn O’Connell, and Brendan H. O’Connell. With the assistance of Dennis P. Ryan and James W. Ryan, Lenahan wrote a history of the O’Connell family of Massachusetts and the Lenahan family of Pennsylvania, titled Able, Active and Aggressive: the O’Connell family of Massachusetts. Lenahan died on January 5, 2014, at over 100 years old.

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