James Piereson, longtime executive director of the John M. Olin Foundation, emails an obituary:

Francis A. (“Frank”) O’Connell passed away last Sunday at his home in Grass Valley, California at the age of 94. As the first executive director of the John M. Olin Foundation and a longtime board member of National Review, he was an influential and widely known figure in the conservative movement. His death, like that of William F. Buckley, Jr., earlier this year, is another reminder that the generation of men and women that came of age during the 1940s and 1950s is now passing from the scene.
Frank was educated by the Catholic priests at St. Nicholas of Tolentine High School in the Bronx, carrying with him always the marks of the classical education he at received their hands. He proceeded to Fordham University and Fordham Law School before entering service as a cryptographer in the U.S. Army in World War II. He returned to the practice of law after the war, before joining the Olin Corporation as the company’s lead labor negotiator, where he formed an enduring partnership with John M. Olin. In that era of tense business-labor relations, Frank was a practitioner of “Boulwarism,” or the doctrine (put into practice by Lem Boulware of General Electric) that a company should put forth its best and fairest offer at the beginning of a labor negotiation, and refuse to bargain further from that point. By that approach he won the confidence of John Olin, though the experience certainly toughened an already tough hide, and left behind some scars besides. Frank was no romantic where labor unions were concerned — to put it mildly.
In 1975, John Olin tapped Frank as the executive director of his foundation, which he hoped would engage the battle of ideas to preserve liberty and free enterprise against the bizarre mix of statism and antinomianism that emerged from the 1960s. Frank knew little about foundations when he took the job, and even less about the universities and think tanks that would compete for funds from the new enterprise. Through study and conversation with scholars and economists, including the likes of Milton Friedman and George Stigler, Frank charted a path for the foundation that it followed until it closed its doors in 2005. Frank was much influenced by the writings of Hayek, particularly ”The Road to Serfdom,” and saw the purpose of the foundation to lie in the defense of free institutions against the challenges of collectivism.
Frank retired from the Foundation in 1979, serving thereafter for some years as a consultant, and always as a dear friend to the staff and trustees. As one of his successors as executive director, I valued his advice, experience, and personal knowledge of John Olin. For many years he came regularly to New York from his home in California to attend board meetings of National Review and to meet with his friends at the foundation to discuss programs and politics. Failing health forced Frank to end those trips a decade or so ago, much to our loss.
Frank, as noted, was a man of the old school, educated in another era, possessing a solid foundation in the classics and highly proficient in the Latin taught in the Catholic schools of his time. He recited from memory long passages from Shakespeare or from any number of poets. I was surprised to learn in conversation with Frank that he was an avowed Oxfordian — that is, he held that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, the real Shakespeare being incapable of producing such high works of art and philosophy. There is some considerable evidence to support this theory, and Frank was a forceful advocate of it. Though this was perhaps a weak point in Frank’s intellectual armor, he defended it with an impressive arsenal of fact and conjecture. One had to be thoroughly versed in Shakespeare (which I was not) in order to contest the Oxfordian case against him.
Frank’s final years were marked by failing health, but never failing spirit. Ever cheerful, despite the lengthening shadows, he could tell a good story, recite a poem, or reminisce about the old days, even to the end. It is a sad day when one has to say farewell to such a friend.
He is survived by his wife, Lonnie, and many children and grandchildren — to whom we extend our heartfelt sympathy.