O'Connor, Mike 1946–

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O'Connor, Mike 1946–

PERSONAL:

Born 1946, in Germany; moved to the United States, 1946; married Tracy Wilkinson; children: Gabe (son).

ADDRESSES:

Home—Italy.

CAREER:

Journalist. Correspondent for CBS news, New York Times, and National Public Radio.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Overseas Press Club award for reporting from Haiti.

WRITINGS:

Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe: A Memoir of Life on the Run, Random House (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Journalist Mike O'Connor, who covered stories of refugees in the Balkans and the Middle East as a reporter for television and National Public Radio, had experienced exile firsthand because he had grown up as a fugitive. His parents moved from Massachusetts to Texas to Mexico, and then to various locations in the southwest; the children never knew when they would have to abandon everything—even their pet dog—and flee to a new location. Though his parents never explained these moves, and described them to the children as adventures vaguely associated with the father's business, O'Connor knew as early as age four that some terrible danger threatened his parents. Not until after his mother's death, however, did he find the documents that made it possible for him to uncover his parents' secrets. His memoir, Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe: A Memoir of Life on the Run, details this fugitive existence and reveals the reasons behind it.

O'Connor writes that his American father and British mother met in 1944 on a ship bringing U.S. military personnel to Allied-occupied Rome. His mother had joined the British Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), an organization like the United Service Organizations (USO), and his father had enlisted in the military to escape an unhappy marriage. O'Connor was born in Germany, in a refugee camp where his father was posted as an administrator; soon afterward the family returned to the United States. Furious that her son had abandoned his first wife and children for another woman, O'Connor's paternal grandmother in Boston alerted government authorities to the fact that O'Connor's mother lacked proper immigration status. The grandmother hoped that O'Connor's mother would be deported, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) did not take action. A bigger threat was the fact that the FBI was also interested: O'Connor's mother had attended meetings at a Boston church that, in the view of the FBI, was a front for the communist movement. Though O'Connor's parents never spoke to him about their reasons for going underground, O'Connor told National Public Radio interviewer Robin Young that the anticommunist hysteria of the time was so strong that his parents probably felt that they stood no chance against the government. O'Connor later noted that some paranoia on the part of his parents may have caused them to exaggerate their fear of prosecution. Yet once they began running, circumstances made it impossible for them to change direction.

Critics found Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe a fascinating story that sometimes suffered because its chronological narrative subverted some of its dramatic impact. San Francisco Chronicle contributor Jonathan Kelly, for example, felt that the book's ‘rigidly chronological account’ deprived the first half of the book of context and ‘narrative drive.’ However, Kelly added that O'Connor ‘redeems himself when investigating the events that brought his parents underground in 1949.’ While a reviewer for Publishers Weekly judged that the memoir ‘lacks the emotional wallop’ that readers might expect from such a story, a contributor to Kirkus Reviews found the book ‘riveting,’ and Dorris Douglass, writing in Library Journal, observed that the memoir ‘reads like the best kind of mystery novel."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Entertainment Weekly, August 24, 2007, Jennifer Reese, review of Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe: A Memoir of Life on the Run, p. 137.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2007, review of Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe.

Library Journal, July 1, 2007, Dorris Douglass, review of Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe, p. 99.

Publishers Weekly, June 18, 2007, review of Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe, p. 48.

San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 2007, review of Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe.

Washington Post Book World, August 26, 2007, ‘Lives Uprooted and Families Restored,’ p. 7.