O Brien

Jerry O'Brien of John Carroll School was named Maryland State Athletic Director of the Year at the 19th annual conference of the Maryland State Athletic Directors association last week at Ocean City.O'Brien, 56, has been athletic director at the school since 1973 during which time its athletic teams have won or shared 79 championships.Three of them came this spring when the softball team won the Harford County title, the baseball team shared the county title, and boys lacrosse won the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic association B Conference title.

He has leapt from military airplanes, served in jungles during the Vietnam War and traveled extensively to current battle zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. From his working-class roots in the Bronx, N.Y., Edwin Frederick O'Brien has steadily risen to the upper echelons of Catholic power - carrying a Christian message of peace and love to some of the world's worst war-torn terrain. Now, O'Brien, 68, will leave his job as head of one of the nation's largest and most far-flung Roman Catholic archdioceses to lead its oldest as the new archbishop of Baltimore.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Dan is no longer to be confused with Dave.Just ask Dave."Dan is doing so well, he's head and shoulders above everyone else," said Dave Johnson, a 1992 Olympic bronze medalist in the decathlon. "At any competition, he could set a world record. My job, basically, is to scare him into a world record. That's all any of us can do with him right now."a,3 Dan O'Brien has been on a mission since the million-dollar debacle on June 27, 1992, in New Orleans, where he missed the opening height in the pole vault of the U.S. trials and didn't make the Olympic team.

MIAMI -- Believe it or not, Jim O'Brien has kicked a game-winning field goal that gave him a bigger thrill than winning the fifth Super Bowl in January of 1971 with his 32-yarder that sailed through the uprights of the Orange Bowl with five seconds left in the game.O'Brien, now 47 and living in Thousand Oaks, Calif., gave the Baltimore Colts a 16-13 victory against the Dallas Cowboys in his very first year in the NFL. But he says college squeakers were more fun."My junior year at Cincinnati," explains O'Brien, "I kicked a 47-yard field goal against Miami of Ohio to win the game as time ran out. I'm not saying the Super Bowl kick wasn't neat, but in college it's neater because you know more people in the stands."

Now we're talking. "Our city has been in crisis for decades," Baltimore's new archbishop, Edwin O'Brien, said shortly after his installation yesterday. From using "our" in reference to his new city, to bluntly noting the drugs, violence and poverty that beset it, O'Brien sent off signals as loud and clear as the pealing church bells that ended his official induction as Baltimore's 15th Roman Catholic archbishop: This was a church leader who would not retreat behind the cathedral doors but would emerge to mix it up a bit. Good for him. If it's not too sacrilegious, let me say to his Excellency, "Welcome to Baltimore, hon."

Walter T. O'Brien Sr., a retired passenger representative of the Pennsylvania Railroad who booked trips for sports teams and fans for more than four decades, died Sunday of a stroke at the Hospice of Martin Inc. in Stuart, Fla., while on vacation in nearby Hobe Sound. The Lutherville resident was 87.Called "Obie," he was also known as "The Sports Man with the Pennsy." He worked for the carrier for 45 years and retired in 1968.He began his career at the railroad in Annapolis, booking accommodations for various Naval Academy teams.

The TV Repairman:The show was under way -- the Big Show, of course -- and there was our man, "California Cool" himself, Pat O'Brien, bidding us welcome. And in the very next chair, yippee, why it's the pudgy kid with the glasses and the Big Apple accent. What is that, Queens, Staten Island, Essex County or a combination thereof?No matter. A warm feeling enveloped all noon visitors to the initial CBS telecast of the Road to the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four Big Dance, which will total 63 games from 13 venues over about a thousand hours, including the title game April 5 in the New Orleans Superdome.

Don O'Brien -- the morning drive time personality for dance-oriented Top 40 station WERQ-FM (92 Q) and one of the area's most identifiable broadcast names and voices -- was fired yesterday.Mr. O'Brien, 36, had been with the station formerly known as WYST-FM since 1990 and was one-half of the infamous Brian (Wilson) and O'Brien morning team on WBSB-FM (B-104) in the mid- and late 1980s."I guess they figured I wasn't young enough or hip enough," said Mr. O'Brien, who added that he was warned in a memo from the management of the station two weeks ago to "get your act together or get another job."

Stay tuned for a radio reunion. Brian and O'Brien, the quarrelsome drive-time deejays who once topped Baltimore's ratings, are scheduled to do a one-shot-only broadcast together tomorrow night on WMIX (FM-106.5)."They are going to do the show. They have signed the papers. Hopefully, they are going to be in the same studio," says program director Greg Dunkin, who engineered the reunion stunt, scheduled for 7 p.m. to midnight in place of Johnny Dark's usual " '70s Saturday Night."Mr. Dunkin emphasizes the word "hopefully," for announcers Brian Wilson and Don O'Brien had a stormy on-and-off-the-air relationship in the mid-1980s, when their morning madness show on WBSB-FM (B-104)

ATLANTA -- You probably haven't seen his face in a while. You probably haven't heard his name mentioned by anyone but those connoisseurs of the decathlon who follow the results from faraway places. You probably didn't notice that he has changed from Reebok to Nike.Dan O'Brien is back, ready to obliterate the memory of what happened at the U.S. Olympic trials four years ago, ready to rewrite the record books that he has helped author, and add an Olympic gold medal to his three consecutive world championships.