Michael J. O’Connor; 95; Led Catholic Parish for 30 Years

Msgr. Michael J. O’Connor, a pastor who turned a decaying walnut grove into one of the largest Catholic parishes in the San Fernando Valley, has died. He was 95.

O’Connor, who was pastor of St. Mel Catholic Church in Woodland Hills from its founding in 1955 until 1985, died June 26 after suffering a heart attack, according to Eileen Leonard, a friend. O’Connor died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. In recent years, he was a resident at the St. John of God Retirement and Care Center in Los Angeles.

Born July 26, 1909, in Annascaul, Ireland, near Killarney, O’Connor came from a family of 12 children. One sister became a nun and remained in Ireland, and two of his brothers became priests, one serving as a pastor in Long Beach and the other as president of Carroll College in Helena, Mont.

O’Connor studied theology at St. Patrick’s College in his native country and, following his ordination, went to New York. With a promise of work in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, he came west in 1934, one of many Irish priests tapped to serve a growing Catholic population in Southern California.

O’Connor served as an assistant pastor at several Los Angeles-area parishes. During World War II, he was a Navy chaplain in Philadelphia and on Catalina Island.

He got his first chance to serve as pastor when he founded a parish in Lakewood in 1951.

Four years later, he was asked to establish a parish in the West San Fernando Valley, which then had only 400 Catholic families.

“He was certainly one of the pioneer pastors of the San Fernando Valley,” Msgr. Gerald E. Wilkerson, an archdiocese official, told The Times several years ago. “He helped to build the Catholic community and put St. Mel’s on the map. He made it a parish that was alive and vital.”

Why O’Connor chose the name St. Mel remains a mystery. One of the biggest parishes in Chicago, as well as a college in his homeland, shared the same name.

“He used to say it was easy for the parishioners to write ‘St. Mel’s’ on a check,” said Msgr. John Naughton, who succeeded O’Connor as pastor.

The parish, which started with four acres of land, now has 3,000 families and has grown to about 10 acres, including a convent, rectory, auditorium, computer lab, library, school for 800 students in preschool through the eighth grade and the Msgr. Michael J. O’Connor Activity Center, a multipurpose facility completed in 1998.

An avid golfer who took up the sport after he moved to the United States, O’Connor was known for his sense of humor and his cigar smoking, which he eventually gave up cold turkey.

“I tell the children that cigar smoke keeps away elephants and rhinoceroses and flies,” he once said with a warm smile.

After his retirement, O’Connor lived in the church rectory until he suffered a stroke in the late 1990s during an out-of-town golfing trip with parishioners. He is survived by a number of nieces and nephews in Boston and Ireland.