Yahoo Lifestyle 'They Were Kindred Spirits': Conan O'Brien Reflects On Parents After They Died Days Apart
Conan O’Brien reflected on memories of his parents, Dr. Thomas O’Brien and Ruth Reardon O’Brien, after they died three days apart from each other last week.
The former late night host, in a Tuesday piece by The Boston Globe, spoke about growing up in his hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts, as he remarked on how his parents “complemented each other very well.”
Conan O’Brien’s father, who’d been an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and was known for his work in antimicrobial drug resistance, died at age 95 on Dec. 9 after “his health had been failing” him, the Globe noted in an obituary.
O’Brien’s mother, a lawyer and the second woman to make partner at the Boston-founded Ropes & Gray law firm, died “peacefully” at age 92 on Dec. 12, per an obituary shared by Bell O’Dea Funeral Home of Brookline.
“I think what my mother and father saw in each other was that they were kindred spirits,” O’Brien told the Globe.
“They were incredibly hard-working and disciplined.”
The two shared six children, as well as nine grandchildren, and were married for 66 years.
The causes of their deaths have yet to be disclosed to the public.
O’Brien’s father was a “student of humor” and a fan of late night talk shows, who made sure that his children “knew comedy’s classics” from the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Jack Benny and the Marx Brothers, the Globe wrote in its obituary.
“The loudest I’ve ever heard anybody laugh was sitting next to him in a theater watching Peter Sellers in a ‘Pink Panther’ movie,” O’Brien said of his father, describing him as “often the funniest guy in the room.”
O’Brien — who has served as the host of travel show “Conan Without Borders” and a follow-up series called “Conan O’Brien Must Go” — praised his father for putting “the travel bug” in him at an early age.
“He took me on a trip through South America when I was, I think, in seventh grade,” recalled the former late night host.
“He thought, ‘You’re going to learn more traveling through these various neighborhoods and cities in South America for a week and a half than you will in public school in Brookline.’”
He described his father as a “dreamer” — someone who’d head off to Peru with a change of clothes in a briefcase in hopes of launching a hospital’s website “high in the mountains.”
O’Brien noted that his mother was a “realist,” who “really saw to it” that her young children were fed, had clothes prepared for them and attended their medical appointments.
“She’s doing all this mom stuff ... and when that was done, rushing into a phone booth and becoming Ruth O’Brien, second woman partner at Ropes & Gray,” he said of his “heroic” mother.
He added that the “beauty” of his father’s legacy is the compassion he had for others, while his mother’s “bottomless generosity” included her care of those in her neighborhood.
Conan O’Brien is set to host the Academy Awards in March.
Read more on the comedian and his parents at The Boston Globe.