1 week ago
5
In Memoriam: Fallen Stars of 2024
Conan O'Brien's family is facing an unimaginable loss.
The former late night host's mother Ruth O'Brien died Dec. 12 at age 92, three days after his father Dr. Thomas O'Brien passed away at age 95.
Both of Conan's parents were trailblazers in their fields, with Ruth being only one of four women in her Yale Law School class of 1956, according to her obituary. When she became a real estate attorney, she was the second woman to be a partner at her law firm in 1978. She retired in 1996 after 25 years.
Meanwhile, Thomas—who also shared kids Neal, Jane, Justin, Kate and Luke with his wife of 66 years—was a physician, epidemiologist and professor at Harvard Medical School for three decades, per the Boston Globe. During his career, Thomas worked diligently to address the threats of drug-resistant strains of microbes by pioneering the use of databases to allow doctors to respond quickly to outbreaks.
Although Thomas was a renowned expert in his field, Conan—who shares kids Neve, 21, and Beckett, 19, with wife Liza Powel O'Brien—also reflected on his dad beyond his career.
"Science has said there's no such thing as perpetual motion, but my father was proof that that was wrong," he told the outlet Dec. 12. "My father was in constant motion. And he was interested in everything—absolutely everything."
In fact, his dad introduced the kids to late-night talk shows and comedy films, which he became fond of during medical school. He recalled, "The loudest I've ever heard anybody laugh was sitting next to him in a theater watching Peter Sellers in a Pink Panther movie."
The 61-year-old is grateful that Thomas, who he noted had a "voracious appetite for ideas and people and the crazy variety and irony of life," will live on in spirit.
Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images
"For the rest of my time on earth I will be hearing from people who want to talk with me about my dad," he explained. "I've never met anyone like him, and he happens to be my father. If I met him randomly in a hotel lobby, I'd think, 'Who the hell is this guy? He's the most interesting person I've ever met.'"
Conan previously shared insight into his childhood and the loving chaos that came with a full house.
"There were six kids, two dogs, a cat, my grandmother and a parakeet," he explained in a 2017 video, in which Ruth earned the iRelaunch Pioneering Relauncher Award. "I'm not kidding. That house was madness sometimes, lovely madness, but madness. I don't know how they worked it out, but they worked it out pretty well."
Rich Fury/Getty Images
And looking back at his mom's career, Conan understood how much work she put in to make partner at Ropes & Gray after seven years.
"I remember my mother coming home and telling her mother, who lives with us, my grandmother, that she made partner," he said. "You can imagine what that was like for a woman who was then practically 90 and had grown up in an era when the Irish were discriminated against in Boston. My grandmother watched her daughter, who went to Vassar and Yale Law School on full scholarships, become a law partner."
As he put it, "It was pretty emotional and pretty amazing."
For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App
English (US) ·