The University of Notre Dame Alumni Association will present two awards during Reunion 2007 ceremonies on campus Friday and Saturday (June 1 and 2).
Francis X. (Tim) Bradley Jr., who earned his bachelor’s, master’s and law degrees from Notre Dame, will receive the Rev. John Cardinal O’Hara Award during a Reunion ’07 ceremony June 1.
The O’Hara Award, named for Notre Dame’s 13th president, recognizes distinguished service to the University by a former employee.
A 1939 graduate who earned his master’s and law degrees from Notre Dame in 1949, Bradley served as an advanced flying instructor in the U.S. Army Air Corps and division operations officer at the Central African Division of the Air Transport Command. In 1945, he worked with then veterans’ chaplain Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., to help veterans adjust to life at Notre Dame. After being awarded the Sterling Fellowship at Yale Law School, Bradley taught for two years at the Creighton University Law School.
In 1957, Father Hesburgh, who then was Notre Dame’s president, asked Bradley to return to campus to establish the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. For 12 years he served as assistant dean of the Graduate School and director of the Office of Research Administration. He also was secretary/treasurer of the National Council of University Research Administrators and consulted with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation and various Department of Defense agencies.
The Rev. Edward F. Sorin, C.S.C., Award, will be presented to Sheila O’Brien, an Illinois appellate court judge and member of the advisory council for the Notre Dame Law School, at the reunion banquet June 2.
Named in honor of Notre Dame’s founder, the Sorin Award is presented annually to a graduate who has embodied “the values of Our Lady’s University” in his or her service to community.
A judge for more than 22 years, O’Brien was graduated from Notre Dame in 1977 and earned her law degree from the University in 1980. She was elected to the Illinois appellate court in 1994 and previously practiced law as an assistant public defender, trial lawyer and adjunct professor at the St. Louis University Law School. She holds law licenses from the supreme courts of Illinois and Missouri, as well as the Supreme Court of the United States.
Since graduation, O’Brien has served as secretary of her law school class and also is chair of the Alumni Schools Committee for the Notre Dame Club of Chicago. Most recently, she helped spearhead the new Notre Dame Alumnae Leadership Initiative, and was one of the first recipients of the University’s Women of Achievement award.
A volunteer with several Chicago community organizations and schools, as well as her parish, O’Brien has served on the Illinois Justice Commission and the Illinois Arts Council, still, her passion is music. She was the recipient of the Louis Sudler Scholarship for Voice as a Notre Dame undergraduate and since has sung with both the St. Louis and Chicago Symphony Choruses.
In August, O’Brien will receive her master’s degree in pastoral theology from St. Mary-of-the-Woods College in Terre Haute, Ind.
Contact: Angela Sienko, alumni editor, 574-631-7005, asienko@nd.edu
Originally published by at newsinfo.nd.edu on May 29, 2007.