Edward P. O’Brien

January 8, 1932 - June 18, 2022

Edward Patrick O’Brien passed away on Saturday, June 18 surrounded by family. Born in 1932 in the Mission District of San Francisco to Irish immigrant parents, as a toddler Ed and family moved south to the Peninsula for better weather to help his older brother recover from illness. They settled in San Mateo where Ed would live - with a few exceptions - for the next 87 years.

Growing up poor during the Depression and Second World War had a significant impact on forming Ed’s world view. He never took anything for granted. His family loved to hear tales from that period like when Ed and his friends would walk through town with their wagons collecting scrap metal for the war effort, or the sense of injustice he felt even as a little kid when he saw bricks thrown through the windows of a nearby Japanese laundry after Pearl Harbor.

At 12 years old, tragedy struck when a drunk driver ran down his parents as they were walking to mass, killing his father and landing his mother in the hospital for months. His older sister Marie stepped into the breach to care for Ed, Tim and Jack during their mother’s long period of convalescence.

He attended St. Matthew Catholic School in San Mateo then Serra and Bellarmine high schools, before going on to Santa Clara University, becoming the first person in his family to attend college. He had lifelong friends from each of those schools who were regular visitors to the family home. At Santa Clara he and his friends formed an anti-fraternity they called Delta Omicron Gamma and for the next 25 years the DOGs and their families got together annually at an always much anticipated DOG Reunion. It was a source of pride for Ed that one of his grandsons currently attends Santa Clara.

In part to help financially with the cost of college, Ed enrolled in the ROTC program in the middle of the Korean War. By the time he graduated, the cease fire had been implemented and he spent his two years overseas as a forward observer artillery officer, eying the Chinese and North Koreans across the DMZ.

Upon return from Korea he enrolled at USF law school. Around this time, mutual friends set him up on a blind date with a young, beautiful Italian-American woman. A bit of an introvert by nature, Ed latched on to Mary Mondo and rode her exuberance and vitality for the next 60+ years, in love with her every day of his life until her passing last year. He missed her every day.

In 1959 he was hired at the State of California Attorney General’s Office, a job he proudly held for the next 60 years. That is not a typo. He rose to become Chief Deputy, heading up the office’s Criminal Division, and argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. For 50 years he also lead the Attorney General’s Research Advisory Panel, a body of physicians, pharmacists and scientists charged with evaluating proposals for scientific research into controlled substances. Ed’s inherent humility often left his family at the mercy of their neighbors to tell them when he was on television discussing various legal topics including Patty Hearst.

Between 1974-1994 Ed served on the Board of Directors at Mills Hospital (where teenage Ed worked as an orderly) and as its longtime Chairman, oversaw the merger with Peninsula Hospital and the construction of its new facility.

But the bastion of meaning for Ed was always his family. He and Mary raised four children and he seemed to take quiet comfort in the fact that his kids had a carefree childhood devoid of the many struggles he and his siblings had growing up. Epic camping adventures and other family road trips instilled in his kids a love of California and the outdoors. But home was always at the center of things for Ed and Mary, and weekends frequently had family friends and uncles passing through for a meal, often after legendary tennis matches at Aragon High School.

In the mid-70s, he and Mary built a cabin in Twain Harte in the foothills of the Sierra which, for the next 40 years, became the family’s home away from home with Ed and Mary spending more and more time there as they got older. That is, when they weren’t gallivanting around the world on one of Mary’s exquisitely planned trips. Twain Harte was the perfect place for Da (the Irish moniker for father that the grandkids adopted) to spend quality time with his children, daughters-inlaw, and his beloved five grandchildren free from the distractions of everyday life. Da’s steadfast rule of no television at the cabin offered time for games, conversation, walks, BBQing, and reading. Ed enjoyed a lifelong love of reading.

Ed sought not only to teach his children to do the right thing, but to stand up for the right thing. He was treasured for his many outstanding qualities.

Ed was honest, patient, caring, constant, selfless, open-minded, intelligent, and easygoing, or as the grandkids would say: chill. He embodied tenacity, resilience, and dependability.

One would be hard pressed to find a person in any walk of life who came into contact with Ed who had a negative thing to say about him. But what will be most missed is the unconditional love and support he quietly and unfailingly showered on those closest to him. He was the rock of his family and will be sorely missed.

Ed is survived by his four children Anne, Pat, Tim and Matt and his five grandchildren Yasmeen, William, Safiya, Luke and Samir.

Memorial service will be Friday July 8th at 11 a.m. at St. Bartholomew Church in San Mateo.