Philip & Anne Deery O'Connor
Born on 6 Aug 1895 , Philip Joseph O’Connor was the 3rd child of Lawrence J. and Mary A. Fitzpatrick O’Connor. He lived with his family on Apricot Street in Worcester, Massachusetts and attended Gates Lane School (which is the same school his future daughter-in-law, Margaret Shea, would attend many years later). In 1917, Philip graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (which is the same school from which his son, Philip James, would also graduate).
Philip enlisted in the Armed Forces on 29 May 1918, where he served in France as a member of the 301st Water Tank Train. This division supported units by providing drinkable water for humans and animals as well as water for washing and bathing. There were mobile water purification units in France in 1917-18 and this unit would have worked with them to transport water wherever it was needed.
“A Water Tank Train or motor supply train consists of 75 men and a Captain and a Lieut. 77 all-together. A train consists of 33 trucks making 33 drivers, each driver is a corporal. 33 assistant drivers who are 1st class privates. 1 truckmaster and one head mechanic who are 1st class Sergeants. 3 assistant truckmasters and 3 assistant mechanics who are all Sergeants. The extra man I think is what is called a signal man. They drove trucks — “white trucks” — fitted with enormous water tanks.” From “The Last of the Doughboys” by Richard Rubin (Houghton Mifflin publishers).
On 23 Aug 1922, Philip married a school teacher from Worcester, Massachusetts, Anne Elizabeth Deery. Anne, the daughter of Edward Deery and Catherine Driscoll Deery, was a 1917 graduate of the Worcester State Normal School. (A “Normal” school was a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose was to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name.) She taught in a one room school house for one year in Rockville, Connecticut and, following that, taught in the Worcester City Schools until her marriage.
Philip suffered a sudden heart attack and died on 14 Feb 1955. He is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Warren, Ohio.
