Sometimes you think you know someone, but actually don’t know that person at all. Meet Jim O’Connor, a 70-year-old veteran of the Vietnam War who now works as an algebra and calculus teacher at St. Francis High School in California.
The army veteran is known to be respected across his students, and he is usually quite strict in his lessons. He thinks school isn’t meant to be fun, and he uses his watchful gaze and authoritative voice to give very no-nonsense lessons in his classroom. When a CBS reporter asks his students if they would associate the word “love” to Jim, they’re absolutely surprised by the suggestion and wouldn’t seem to call Jim an affectionate person at all.
“If you have a class full of 32 teenage boys, you better have some discipline,” the vet told to TODAY. “If you don’t have control of the class, you don’t have a learning environment.”
Jim has been known in school as the strict and tough teacher, but that opinion of him completely changed when one senior found out he had an alter ego after school hours.
The student recently went to the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, and when he told an employee where he was studying, he was asked if he knew Jim O’Connor. He then heard that his math teacher was a “TLC volunteer” at the hospital and even spotted the ranking of all the blood donors. Jim O’ Connor was steadily on top.
The man first came into contact with the hospital when he was pursued by a friend to donate blood. Jim has Type O negative blood, which is considered to be a universal donor. Over the years, Jim became the top donor in the hospital and returned frequently to donate both blood and platelets. In total, Jim has donated around 72 gallons of his blood so far.
While he was visiting the hospital to donate blood, he noticed that there were volunteers at the hospital who were helping sick children.
It didn’t take long before Jim asked one of the staff members how he could help.
Jim isn’t married and doesn’t have any children of his own, but he was more than willing to provide some attention and love to the ill kids in the hospital. Three days in a week, Jim can be found in the hospital caressing, cuddling and comforting the babies as best as he can.
“He holds them, feeds them, walks around with them, gets to know them and he can always coax a smile out of them,” Sherry Nolan, clinical manager of the medical unit at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles said. “They just stare at him adoringly and he can really just get the crabbiest baby to calm down. It’s amazing… He’s just a natural-born cuddler.”
“They’re beautiful; they’re just dependent on people. They can do no wrong,” Jim said about the babies in the hospital.
He especially likes taking care of babies who don’t get a lot of visits and need the attention the most.
“The kids who have nobody, those are the ones who obviously need volunteers a lot,” he said. “They just want to be held by somebody.”
The staff at the hospital can’t praise him enough.
“Jim is invaluable to us,” Erin Schmidt said. “I can’t image working without him,” Sherry Nolan added. “We really do depend on him.”
In an interview, a CBS reporter funnily told him that he’s actually not a tough guy.
“I know [I’m not a tough guy],” he said. “But don’t tell my students.”
What an amazing man!
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
