O'Malley, Thomas P. (Thomas Patrick), 1930-2009

Thomas Patrick O'Malley, SJ was born on March 1, 1930, in Milton, Massachusetts to Austin and Ann (Feeney) O'Malley. He graduated from Boston College High School in 1947, received a bachelor's degree in Classics from Boston College in 1951 and a master's degree in Classics from Fordham University in 1953. After graduating from Fordham, he entered the Society of Jesus at the Shadowbrook novitiate in Lenox, Massachusetts. He taught Latin and Greek at the College of the Holy Cross at Worcester, Massachusetts from 1956 to 1958, where he also coached debate and was a resident assistant in the dormitories. In 1958, he began studying theology in Louvain, Belgium. He was ordained to the priesthood in Brussels on August 5, 1961.

Following a doctorate in literature and theology of the early Christian period at Nijmegen University in the Netherlands, O'Malley became the chair of the Department of Classical Languages at Boston College in 1967, and in 1969 he became Chairman of the Theology Department. He was named the Dean of Boston College's College of Arts and Sciences in 1973.

In 1980, O'Malley left Boston College to become the president of John Carroll University in Ohio, where he remained for eight years. He then spent a year teaching in Nigeria and two as the rector of the Jesuit Community at Fairfield University, Connecticut. In 1991, he was appointed President of Loyola Marymount University. O'Malley returned to the teaching faculty of Boston College in 1999 as a professor in the Arts and Sciences Honors Program.

O'Malley died of a heart attack in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 4, 2009, at the age of 79.