Terry Connelly ’61 published a new book, ‘Let’s Blow Up the Elite College Admissions Black Box: It’s Roiling Young Lives, Rigged for the Rich, and Wrong for America’. He answered questions about the book and other aspects of his life.
Why the New Book: My experience on committee at our daughters’ public high school to revise its academic schedule and pressures following two suicide clusters among its students. It took four years!
Impact of Work on my Life: Tremendously grateful to have had so many different careers in different locations, while helping to raise five wonderful children (see below). It has taught me a lot about how easy it is to lose sight of one’s principles and it’s been a humbling as well as modestly successful journey, and to a great degree unplanned and sometimes just plain lucky, just taking some unexpected opportunities as they came up, even after some disappointments, personal mistakes and horrible events, like Robert Kennedy’s assassination. I happened to be the person at NY campaign headquarters at 2 a.m. who got the phone call from Jackie Kennedy asking if it was true that he had been shot!
People I have met and worked with have been very generous mentors
Role of Faith: Surviving my failings and re-finding a moral compass after I got sucked into a world of power and privilege in New York City and London before I was ready for it, and guiding me and my family through a divorce and later a second marriage and family which thanks to my former wife particularly has become in many ways one family!
More books? Not a chance!! I will be too busy marketing the latest one, because I really believe in its message. But I also like to do new things by helping on non-profit boards and the like. I spend 4 years helping the CEO of California’s largest adoption and family services agency get past the Great Recession.
New Initiatives: Besides the book — Helping with the strategic expansion of the Catholic Center at Stanford University (my wife is an alum, and they have been very welcoming to me even as divorced and remarried). They also have a great book club led by retired English professors which I am lucky to be part of. I have also enjoyed my work with PRRI in Washington D.C., which is a non-partisan think tank focused on polling how religious affiliation and values affect voting and policy preferences down to the county level in 50 states!
Greatest achievement: No question (but with gratitude to both my wives): five wonderful children (with six grandchildren) Jennifer, a poet and breast cancer survivor living Falmouth Maine (married with two daughters) Blair, a senior partner with Latham and Watkins law firm in New York City (married with two sons); Mark, a lawyer and digital media expert consultant living in Sydney, Australia (married with a daughter and a son); Lianna, a 2019 Georgetown graduate (Physics) and now the Program Coordinator for the Sustainability Science Center at The Nature Conservancy world headquarters in D.C.; and Kaelyn, a Chemistry major (and future PhD candidate) now a junior at University of Rochester (and also a classical flutist in the UR Symphony).
Hobbies: Golf (both younger daughters played on their high school team) and hiking — no more cross country skiing!! Love theater and music concerts, and of course, politics. And I do invest in securities as an avocation — almost on a daily basis — and very occasionally an income source!
Memories of Pius X: All my fabulous collection of classmates, as well as the great faculty and staff – Fr. Gene Kalin (my youngest daughter’s name is pronounced the same; Vince Aldrich as mentioned above. The utter decency and of the place and the people. And gratitude for sending me to Boy’s State, which gave me my first taste of the importance and potential of honest politics and public service.
