In Memoriam: Alumnus, benefactor John M. (Jack) Connors Jr. ’63, H’07
The Boston College community mourns the passing of one of its most successful, loyal, and committed alumni, John M. (Jack) Connors Jr. ’63, H’07, who died on July 23. He was 82.
Connors, a founding partner and chairman of the national marketing communications company Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc., was a highly influential figure in Boston’s business, political, educational, and philanthropic domains—and known for bringing them together to support various causes and projects, particularly those that improved lives of the less fortunate. He was credited with helping bring about the partnership between Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospital, and chaired the board for Partners HealthCare, the entity formed by the two hospitals (now known as Mass General Brigham). He also chaired the Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare and Harvard CancerCare boards.
Over the years, the Boston native donated and raised tens of millions of dollars to reduce poverty, support education, and provide opportunities for young people to realize their potential. Among his most effective ventures was Camp Harbor View, a summer camp on Boston Harbor’s Long Island that also provides at-home programs for inner-city youth and their families.
Among the institutions that benefited from his generosity and service was Boston College, where he studied in the School for Business Administration. Connors, the first in his family to attend college, served as a University trustee—twice as board chair—from 1979 to 2018; he became a trustee associate in 2018. He also co-chaired two of BC’s capital campaigns, including “Ever to Excel,” which raised $441 million from 1997 to 2003.
“Jack was a warm, engaging, positive individual who was a bridge builder and mediator in all that he did. He provided vision, inspiration, and challenge to BC throughout all of his years of service. He was always a force for good and will be greatly missed by all of us in the Boston College community.”
A visible example of Connors’ support for his alma mater is the Connors Learning Center in O’Neill Library, which opened in 1991 thanks to a gift from Connors and his wife, Eileen ’66, M.S.W. ’95. The center offers tutoring, runs faculty workshops on ways to improve student learning at BC, and helps train graduate students to become effective teachers.
In 2005, the couple made a major gift to establish the Connors Family Retreat and Conference Center in Dover, which hosts retreats, events, and meetings for Boston College students, faculty, and staff, and the broader community.
Two years later, BC showed its appreciation for Connors by awarding him an honorary Doctor of Business Administration degree, and also inviting him to address the Class of 2007.
“You have been given many gifts,” he told the graduates. “You have been given the gift of life, the gift of health, the gift of love and the gift of a great education. The question for you is: Over the course of your lives, what gifts will you give? The world is broken, but it is our only world. We need to make it better through thoughtfulness, mutual respect, sacrifice, and charity.”
Connors, an avid supporter of Boston sports teams, used a baseball analogy to remind graduates of the need to overcome adversity: The fact that Red Sox legend Ted Williams, he noted, once compiled a .406 season batting average meant that the famous slugger was wrong more times than he was right. What defines people is their ability to persevere in the face of setbacks, said Connors.
“I’ve probably been rejected or had more phone calls unreturned or more requests for appointments denied or lost more new business pitches than anyone in the history of advertising. But you know what? I won, and I won more than I lost because I kept getting up to bat.”
"You have been given many gifts," Jack Connors told the BC Class of 2007 in his Commencement address. "The question for you is: Over the course of your lives, what gifts will you give?" (Gary Wayne Gilbert)
The citation for Connors’ honorary degree called him “a civic leader nonpareil” and “a man for others” who represented “an apt model for today’s graduates.”
“Jack Connors,” the citation read, “truly reflects the Ignatian principle that deeds, not words, are the measure of a person.”
Connors showed his loyalty to BC in other, more personalized ways. In 1990, while he was still with Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc., he helped teach a course in marketing to Carroll School of Management undergraduates. In addition to sharing anecdotes and insights covering subjects such as the Nike-Reebok footwear war and the success of the Massachusetts State Lottery (a Hill Holliday account), Connors brought in agency personnel and even clients to give their own perspectives. He also assigned and helped evaluate a special project in which students were split into several groups and asked to create a marketing strategy for a fictional new line of bottled water.
To thrive in the industry, Connors told the students, it is necessary to pay constant attention to what goes on in the world and to recognize the significance of events elsewhere besides the United States. He encouraged students to devote at least five minutes a day to reading The Wall Street Journal and the business sections of The New York Times and their local paper, and to watching at least the first two minutes of a network newscast a day.
“If you’re comfortable with and excited about change, you win,” Connors said. “If you don’t care to attract change, or live outside the shell of your own existence, this is not the business for you. There is no point in going into advertising or anything else, for that matter, unless you understand you are part of something much bigger than you as an individual.”
On another occasion, Connors came to campus to take part in a career fair held in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons. He stood for at least two hours, chatting one by one with students standing in a line that stretched across the room.
University President William P. Leahy, S.J., said, “Jack was a warm, engaging, positive individual who was a bridge builder and mediator in all that he did. He provided vision, inspiration, and challenge to BC throughout all of his years of service. He was always a force for good and will be greatly missed by all of us in the Boston College community.”
Connors’ devotion for BC also was a reflection of his deep Catholic faith, and in the value of Catholic education. Remarking on Connors’ death, Boston Archbishop Cardinal Seán O’Malley, OFM, Cap., praised his role as founder and continuing inspiration of the Archdiocese of Boston’s Campaign for Catholic Schools, which in its 15 years has raised $130 million and helped consolidate struggling elementary schools into vibrant regional schools.
“Jack drew a broad range of talented women and men together in the service of providing quality education for children of all faiths and from all social strata of our civil society,” said Cardinal O’Malley. “We have lost a great friend and leader of our common life in Greater Boston.”
In addition to his wife, Connors leaves his daughter, Susanne Joyce; his sons, John III, Tim, and Kevin; his sister, Margaret Hanks; and 13 grandchildren.