1,000 Fill Sanders To Remember ‘Legend’ of Local Activist O’Connor

More than 1,000 local residents and friends crowded Sanders Theatre yesterday to honor long-time community activist John O’Connor in a memorial service that included singing, dancing and saxophone-playing.

O’Connor, 46, died last Friday after suffering a heart attack while playing basketball at the Cambridge YMCA.

“John was about love and justice,” close friend Jimmy Trimble said at yesterday’s memorial.

O’Connor gained nationwide recognition for his social and environmental activism.

As a well-known figure in Cambridge, O’Connor had frequent contact with Harvard, said Mary H. Power, senior director of community relations for the University.

“I was impressed with how he was always interested in finding mutually beneficial solutions to our problems,” she said.

As the chair of Cambridge asset management company Gravestar Inc., O’Connor used his wealth to finance his concern for the environment.

In 1983, O’Connor founded the National Toxics Campaign, which was was instrumental in passing the $8 billion Superfund federal environmental cleanup act.

He also founded Greenworks, a corporation that incubates environmental start-up companies and the Health Action Alliance, which fought for universal health care in Massachusetts.

Two years ago, Gravestar funded a $13 million clean-up and overhaul of Porter Square.

“Remembering John is remembering the people who were affected by his work—the least, the lost and the left out,” said his friend, Pastor Hunt.

In 1997, he helped raise funds for the Irish Famine Memorial on Cambridge Common, the first such memorial in the United States.

A year later he ran for Congress, but was defeated in the primaries by the eventual winner, Rep. Michael G. Capuano (D-Mass.).

“John was an ordinary human being,” his wife Carolyn Mugar O’Connor said at yesterday’s service. “But it’s ordinary people who change the world. John changed the world.”

One man attended the memorial service sporting a t-shirt that read, “Johnny O...The Man, The Myth, The Legend.”

But the majority of the speakers at the two-hour memorial described O’Connor as a friend.

“John was the friend you dreamed about having when you were a child,” said Ellen Kurz, a friend from Clark University.

The memorial closed on a joyful note. “Johnny told me, ‘You have to make the people dance,’” said Charlie Rhodes, O’Connor’s closest friend. “So I want the house lights on and I want to hear Martha and the Vandellas, ‘Dancing in the Street.’”

The mourners rose out of their seats and danced.