Honorable Daniel J. O’Hern

Daniel J. O’Hern, born in 1930 and raised in Red Bank at 60 Locust Avenue, served his town, state, and nation through a life of public service and legal distinction. He commuted from this station to Regis High School in Manhattan, graduated from Fordham University with honors in 1951, served as a Lieutenant J.G. in the Navy during the Korean War, graduated from Harvard Law School with honors in 1957, and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. Returning to Red Bank, he practiced law and entered public service as a councilman from 1962 to 1968 and mayor from 1968 to 1978. During his mayoralty, after seeing the public demoralized by the 1963 demolition of the original New York Penn Station, he successfully fought in the 1970s to preserve Red Bank’s Victorian train station when the state wanted to tear it down. Governor Brendan T. Bryne named him DEP Commissioner in 1978 and Chief Counsel in 1979, and in 1981 Bryne nominated him to the New Jersey Supreme Court, where he served as an Associate Justice until 2000. Remembered as kind, humble, courteous, and without enemies, O’Hern was presented as a model of integrity, morality, compassion, and civic dedication whose actions enhanced the lives of many.

Red Bank, New Jersey · United States