Difference-Maker: The Man Who Lifted a City

Some years ago, John Connors Jr. was touring an inner-city Boston school that he had helped fund out of his own pocket. Connors was long legendary for his relentless, titanic philanthropy, always on 24/7 alert for ways to do as much good in as many ways for as many people as possible.

He'd created a major summer camp for underprivileged kids, donating tens of millions of his own dollars and working his one-of-a-kind Rolodex to persuade others who would do anything Jack asked to provide many tens of millions more. He funded women's health centers, treatment programs, and social service initiatives of every shape and variety, always with a tenacity that called dogs chewing bones to mind.

The son of modest working-class parents who raised him in a modest working-class home in a modest working-class neighborhood, Jack Connors was blessed with a prodigious work ethic, a devout Catholic faith and world-class empathy. He paid his way through school driving cabs and doing odd jobs, and borrowed a few thousand dollars from his repairman father to buy into an advertising company that he would make iconic, and which would earn him the fortune that he spent decades giving away.

During his tour of the school, Jack overheard someone saying that the janitor was having heart problems and couldn't find a doctor. He asked for the man's name. A few days later he called the school to have the fellow call a prestigious cardiologist at Boston's premier hospital. Connors had arranged to have the cardiologist treat the guy for as long as it took. "A good day for Jack," recalls his longtime friend and protege Jim Brett, "was a day he could do something for someone who could not repay him."

Connors' death last week at 82 drilled a hole in Boston's heart. A savvy power broker in a city where politics and business ain't for the faint-hearted, Connors said "I love you" an awful lot, and an awful lot of people loved him right back. "For many of us, he might as well have been the mayor," says Seth Klarman, the investment genius who founded Boston's largest hedge fund and to whom Connors frequently turned as a partner-in-good-deeds. "He may have been an extraordinary businessman, but to me he was in the business of serving others. When I had one of my many lunches with Jack, he made me feel like it was his privilege rather than mine to be getting together. And when he gently nudged me to support one of his ever-expanding lists of causes, it always felt like an honor to be included in his efforts."

Jack Connors saw himself in every underdog he met or heard about. He attended Mass daily, took Christ's teachings personally and taught them to thousands of others until, by the end of his magnificent life, God alone knew the number of people whose lives he touched, whether or not they knew it. Those included patients at Boston's preeminent hospital system, whose Board he chaired for 16 years, students at Boston College, whose Board he also chaired, and Boston's Archdiocese, which he supported so lovingly.

Those underdogs included candidates for public office in whom Connors saw something of himself. There was Pete Buttigieg, the first serious LGBTQ candidate for president, whom Connors endorsed in 2020. There was Barack Obama, who unsuccessfully tried to persuade Jack to be his ambassador to Ireland, only to be told by Jack that he would miss his grandchildren too much. And there was Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, the 30-something daughter of Taiwanese immigrants who confounded many in being elected in 2022. "Jack's core blend of generosity, kindness and humility was magic," Wu said recently.

A whole lot of people stopped what they were doing and drew a breath when news of Jack Connors' death hit last week. Every lifetime or so you get someone like that.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.