Brick by Brick
Longtime friend quietly helps build the campus For a man who never attended Rice University, Ralph O’Connor, 87, knows the campus as if he drew the blueprints and stacked the bricks himself. Driving what he calls his “beat up” Acura along the university’s Inner Loop, he pointed to the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center and talked about how the facility’s heated outdoor pool keeps competitive swimmers lithe and limber in the winter. Then, on a second pass around the loop, he pulled his car to the curb and walked to Martel College. Peering through the large windows of the commons, he looked upward and admired the vaulted ceilings. “Old English style,” he said. After more exploration, he walked toward Brochstein Pavilion where a large, bronze owl sculpture stood in an attractive garden — a gift to the university from him and his wife, Becky. The owl is just one of many gifts O’Connor has given to Rice over the decades. One of the primary individual donors to Rice University’s Centennial Campaign, O’Connor is as modest discussing his contributions as his roots. Originally from the Long Island village of Plandome — “so small even the Good Humor man wouldn’t drive through it” — O’Connor dug ditches and serviced oil wells before running a successful oil and gas company and eventually starting an investment firm, Ralph S. O’Connor & Associates, in Houston in 1987. His recent contributions to Rice funded the majority of the George R. Brown Tennis Complex, which broke ground in May. He also supported the Anderson-Clarke Center (formally, the D. Kent and Linda C. Anderson and Robert L. and Jean T. Clarke Center), which will be the new home of the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, and the Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, which was built in 2009 to accommodate Rice’s increasing undergraduate and graduate enrollment. Over the years, O’Connor has contributed to Rice regularly by giving to the Shepherd School of Music, Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, and numerous endowments and scholarships. Though O’Connor’s generosity is made tangible in these and other contributions, he prefers to stay behind the scenes when it comes to public recognition. “He’s not one to slap his name on everything,” said Susie Morris Glasscock ’62, co-chair of the Centennial Campaign, a former Rice trustee and another dedicated Rice donor. “All of it he does very quietly.” In fact, the house that serves as the headquarters of the Office of Alumni Affairs and University
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Events and the Center for Career Development was once named after O’Connor, but he requested that it carry the name of a prominent Rice alumnus. In 2009, the house was renamed to honor donors Peter ’59 and Nancy Huff, who had made a gift to the Centennial Campaign for renovations to the house. “He’s given a lot of money to Rice, but more importantly, he’s given his time and his interest,” Glasscock said. A 1951 graduate of Johns Hopkins University, O’Connor’s path to Rice is rather serendipitous. In the late 1940s, after an unsuccessful attempt to find a summer job in the Kansas wheat fields, O’Connor and a college friend drove their shared Model A Ford to Houston, where O’Connor had an uncle. At the private Bayou Club, they met a lifeguard who attended Rice. “I knew Rice was very similar to Johns Hopkins. I gravitated to it even that summer,” O’Connor recalled, explaining that he liked its small size and prestige. “In the east, if you were a young person, people would ask who your dad was. People in Houston would ask where you went to school,” he said. “Rice” was always an impressive answer. That same summer, he met the daughter of George R. Brown, an executive of Brown & Root, Inc., and one of Houston’s most prominent entrepreneurs and philanthropists — although he was not aware of Brown’s status at the time. O’Connor and Maconda Brown married, and O’Connor moved to Houston after graduation. The couple raised four children. (Ralph and Maconda divorced in 1993.) O’Connor worked his way through the ranks at Herman Brown and George R. Brown Oil and Gas and Highland Oil, where he became president in 1964. Not much time passed before his father-inlaw — who served on the Rice Board of Trustees, including as chairman from 1943 to 1968 — began to subtly impress upon O’Connor the spirit of giving, especially to Rice. While George Brown graduated from the Colorado School of Mines, his attraction to Rice no doubt rubbed off on his son-in-law. O’Connor served on the board from 1976 to 1988 and often made suggestions to George Brown for raising money. “I used to kid him a lot about the stuff Rice was doing,” he said. “They didn’t charge tuition for many years. I said, ‘If you ask any psychiatrist they would say if you don’t pay for something, you don’t think it’s worth anything.’” O’Connor also thought Rice should hold regular fundraising campaigns, as his alma mater did. The Brown Foundation, a charitable organization established in 1951 by George and Alice Pratt Brown and Herman and Margarett Root