James Anthony O’Brien

James Anthony O’Brien died in his sleep of heart failure in the early morning hours of Thursday, November 4. He was a month shy of his 73rd birthday.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 7, 1948, he was pre-deceased by his mother and father, James Anthony O’Brien and Nora Irene Casey O’Brien.
Surviving to treasure his memory are his wife and best friend of 37 years, Sherry Frances Brabham, and his three children: Rory James McIntyre O’Brien and wife Ann Marie Kelly O’Brien of Letterkenny, Ireland; and John Louis Brabham O’Brien and Elizabeth Gerald Brabham O’Brien of Glen Ridge, NJ. In addition, he is survived by three grandchildren, Charlie James O’Brien, Evie May O’Brien, and Finn Samuel O’Brien of Letterkenny, Ireland; his siblings, Coleen O’Brien Farrell and husband, John (Jack); John (Jack) O’Brien and wife, Maureen; and Timothy (Tim) O’Brien and wife, Liane; as well as two brothers-in-law, Gerald (Gerry) Brabham and Anthony (Tony) Brabham. In addition, Jim has ten nieces and nephews and sixteen grand nieces and nephews. Pamela McIntyre O’Brien, Rory’s mother, also survives him.
Jim graduated from Bishop Loughlin High School in Fort Greene, Brooklyn at the height of the Vietnam War. Having only modest success at Kingsborough Community College, he enlisted in the US Navy in 1968, passing all qualifying exams to become a submariner. He served from 1968 until 1972 on the USS Halibut, which played a significant role in the espionage missions of the 1970s cold war politics, remaining submerged for weeks at a time and secretly anchoring off the coast of the Soviet Union. Jim’s memories of his days on the Halibut, where he served as a torpedoman at a time that the vessel and crew were recipients of a Presidential Unit Citation, have been fondly sustained by his bi-annual Halibut reunions and life-long friendships with former shipmates.
After his honorable discharge from active service, Jim continued his service to his country in the Navy Reserves until 1974.
Jim’s long and varied career started in high school, working in a Brooklyn butcher shop, cleaning-up and delivering meat on his bicycle throughout the neighborhood. He also worked on the loading dock at Macy’s on 34th Street for a brief period. After the military, his first work was sorting checks in the transit department until he graduated to the position of truck driver, delivering beer through-out Union, Hudson, and Essex counties in New Jersey. Soon thereafter, he became a part-time rural-route letter-carrier for the United States Postal Service in Sussex county. In 1974, he became a full-time firefighter in the Belleville, NJ fire department, where he served for eleven years, narrowly escaping injury on more than one occasion. In fact, his firefighter hat sustained a permanent dent from a falling beam during one near-miss incident.
After working as a firefighter for five years, Jim decided to change the course of his life. He stopped drinking alcohol and began to find ways to be of service to other alcoholics and addicts. With the sponsorship of the Firemen’s Mutual Benevolent Association (FMBA), he started the Alcohol Referral and Information Department (ARID), providing services to help firefighters throughout the State of New Jersey quit alcohol and drugs.
In 1985, after feeling led to a life of greater service, Jim determined to join Habitat for Humanity, building houses for the homeless. This leading was tested and confirmed by a clearness committee of Montclair Friends (Quaker) Meeting, where he had become a committed member and where he had also met his future wife.
One opportunity that Jim embraced through his association with Friends was his active participation in New York Yearly Meetings Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) where volunteers were trained to work with inmates in New York prisons, teaching them through didactic sessions, group discussions, and role playing to identify and choose alternatives to some of the violent responses that had led to their incarceration. Jim spent dozens of weekends at New York garden spots such as Sing Sing, Bedford Hills, Clinton, among others.
In May of 1985, Jim left the firehouse, gave away most of his belongings, and made the trip to Americus, Georgia for a summer of Bible study, management training, and back-breaking work as a Habitat volunteer. Living on poverty wages, he and his colleagues learned to trim damaged spots from fruit and vegetables that were to have been thrown out by area grocers and ate simple meals of chicken and milk gravy. In Americus, he was offered an assignment to Haiti and began to learn Haitian Creole.
Jim returned to New Jersey at the end of July to attend the annual meeting of Quakers from New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, where he hoped to raise funds to secure financial support for his mission to Haiti. The fund-raising effort was only modestly successful; however, the bond with Sherry (his future wife) was greatly strengthened and he began to seek opportunities to work for Habitat in New York or New Jersey. That opportunity opened at Habitat’s first multiunit building site on the lower east side of Manhattan. Jim became a community organizer and addiction counselor for $3.15 per hour, plus commuting costs. When former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter came to New York to help finish the work on the Habitat building, Jim and Sherry walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with the Carters, the new homeowners, and hundreds of volunteers to cut the ribbons on the new homes. A year later, Jim and Sherry travelled to Puno, Peru to help construct homes, high in the Andes.
With his work with Habitat completed, Jim continued his work as an addiction counselor in New Jersey. Over the coming years, he completed both his bachelor’s degree and his Masters of Social Work and advanced his certifications as an addiction counselor. Over 31 years, he worked at several important treatment centers across New Jersey, including Saint Clare’s Medical Detox; Turning Point, where he became Executive Director; Maryville, where he also served as Executive Director, and Integrity House, where he worked at both the beginning and end of his career. At each agency, Jim was an agent of change, expanding the availability of beds to those desperate for treatment; leading formerly unaccredited agencies through the labyrinth of the accrediting processes, standards, and team visits; ensuring that quality food was served to clients in in-patient facilities; working with the criminal justice system to create drug courts, giving inmates options for treatment in lieu of continued incarceration; ensuring counselors had private offices to meet with clients; introducing best practices in therapeutic programs and ensuring accurate content in didactic and family sessions – the list goes on. At Maryville, he laid out and installed a labyrinth for clients for meditation practices.
Perhaps Jim’s greatest impact was his service as the Director of a non-profit, Associated Treatment Providers (ATP), where, in partnership with the Division of Addiction Services, he administered grants earmarked for counselor training and ADA accommodations at treatment facilities across the State. Countless individuals and programs benefited from the professional programming and effective grant distribution of ATP under Jim’s leadership.
Jim retired from his last position at Integrity, Secaucus in 2016 – and immediately immersed himself in new endeavors. He began to take pre-requisite courses in theology and biblical studies in order to be admitted to the Doctor of Ministry Program at Lancaster Theological Seminary. Simultaneously, he was sponsored by the Glen Ridge Congregational Church and placed under care of the New Jersey Association in pursuit of ministerial ordination. He had great success on this path, until his illnesses forced him to reconsider and step away.
Jim furthered his volunteer work with prisoners, participating with his friends Judge Joseph Connolly and John Flippin with Kenosis Prison Ministry, which brought visitation, witness, and prayer services to New Jersey inmates.
Jim also began to write, taking courses on-line and joining a creative non-fiction writing group. He proudly had one of his stories published by the New York Times in the Metro Diary.
And Jim began to study Irish, enrolling in on-line courses offered by the Irish Center at the University of Montana.
Throughout his life, Jim’s service to his Church and to the United Church of Christ, nationally, has been extensive. Ordained as a Commissioned Minister, he has offered programs, worship opportunities, and sermons educating adults and young people on the risks of addiction and the importance of a Higher Power in a path to serenity and health. For more than a year he held a weekly service of prayer in the Glen Ridge Congregational Church sanctuary for all those impacted by addiction. For the past two years, he has provided the data and materials for a monthly counting of crosses, representative of those in New Jersey who have died from opioid overdose. These souls and their families are lifted up in the morning prayer.
And Jim served his hometown of Glen Ridge. As a member of the school board; the Gas Lamp Players, as a Board member and occasional “actor” in casts that featured the town’s children and teenagers; and as the helper who played Santa Claus for many Glen Ridge tree lighting ceremonies.
Among Jim’s hobbies were his love of sailing, his beekeeping, and his membership in the Cloud Appreciation Society.
Jim walked his talk. Sober for 42 years he was a model of a life in service to a Higher Power, who he called God. It was impossible not to feel the truth of his faithfulness when in his presence, even briefly.
Jim was blessed to be surrounded by people who loved him – his family, his church community, and even the many members of the medical community who he encountered briefly or over many years as he struggled with kidney disease, heart disease, and related complications.
Jim’s courage was evident throughout his life. He excelled with overt acts of bravery – rushing into burning buildings and staying calm and alert when on a risky mission aboard his beloved Halibut. What must have been most difficult was finding the courage to face illness, uncertainty, multiple surgeries and medical interventions with equal resolve and calm. Jim – the one who was so strong and proactive in his youth — learned to accept the help of others with grace and dignity.
Jim received the extraordinary gifts of two kidneys from living donors – the first in 1997 from his dear brother, Jack, and the second in 2011 from his dear brother-in-law, Tony. It is impossible to express in words the depth of generosity and kindness that were shown by these gifts. Jim and his family are forever grateful.
Jim was greatly loved – because he himself radiated the love of God to every person he met. Equally important, he had the humility to accept what others offered him – a smile, a kind word, a helping hand, a blood draw, an EKG, a kidney. He gave many others the opportunity to serve him – and in doing so, made all of us better for having been touched by his gracious and grateful receipt of our gifts, both large and small.
A memorial service to remember Jim O’Brien will be held on Friday, November 12 at 11:30 AM at the Glen Ridge Congregational Church, 195 Ridgewood Avenue, Glen Ridge, New Jersey. All friends are invited to a repast to celebrate Jim’s life immediately following the service at the Glen Ridge County Club, 555 Ridgewood Avenue, Glen Ridge, New Jersey.
In lieu of flowers, friends may contribute to: Centurion Ministries, 1000 Herronton Road, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 (an organization dedicated to the vindication of the wrongly incarcerated); the Glen Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Squad, 3 Herman Street, Glen Ridge, New Jersey 07028 (which served Jim faithfully for many years); the Glen Ridge Congregational Church, 195 Ridgewood Avenue, Glen Ridge, New Jersey 07028(Jim’s church family); or Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, 357 Clermont Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11238 (to a scholarship in Jim’s name). Please express condolences at www.oboylefuneralhome.com