William Michael (Mike) O’Fallon was born to John and Luella Smith O’Fallon in Princeton, MN, on March 7, 1934. Although the doctor told his parents to “Take him home and keep him warm until he dies,” he fortunately survived. He died on February 19, 2022, in his home in Charter House in Rochester MN.
Mike graduated from Litchfield MN High School in 1952 and St. John’s University (SJU) in Collegeville MN in 1956. Expecting to become a high school teacher, he attended Vanderbilt University, where he earned a Master of Arts degree with a major in mathematics in 1957. He was then recruited to teach mathematics at SJU in fall 1957.
When asked to teach Statistics at SJU, he took summer courses in statistics at the University of Wisconsin Madison in 1958 and Oklahoma State in 1959, where he was encouraged by his statistics teachers to return to graduate school to obtain a doctorate in statistics. In 1960 he was accepted into the doctoral program at the Mathematical Statistics Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), where he met his future wife! He completed his PhD in Mathematical Statistics in 1967.
In 1965, he was recruited by Duke University into a biostatistics position jointly funded by Duke’s Medical School and Department of Mathematics. After promotion to the tenured position of Associate Professor, he decided to use his sabbatical year to study Epidemiology. In 1974 Mayo Clinic’s Department of Statistics and Epidemiology accepted him to design a breast cancer epidemiology study.
In September 1974, Mayo recruited him to chair the Biostatistics Section, a position he held for the next 20 years. During these years the Section more than doubled in personnel and productivity and established a successful promotion system for the staff. He was promoted to Professor in the Mayo Medical School, co-authored more than 450 peer-reviewed publications, served as Principal Investigator or co-investigator on nearly 50 major grants, and served on several NIH & FDA committees. In 1994 he was appointed to chair Mayo’s Department of Health Sciences Research, a position he held until the year 2000. He continued his statistical consulting activities for several years after he retired from Mayo in 2002.
He was a member of several professional organizations, notably the American Statistical Association (ASA Fellow 1986) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS Fellow 1994). He was especially active in the ASA, ultimately being elected to serve as ASA President in 2000 and given the ASA Founder’s Award in 2002 “for extraordinarily effective leadership.”
At his first class at UNC-CH (1960), he discovered that one of his classmates (Judith Rich) was a fellow Minnesotan. He kindly offered to be her study partner. Quickly the friendship turned into something more, and they were married a year later on September 2, 1961, at St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Fairmont, MN. They continued their statistics studies and professional development together until death parted them 60 years later.
Family was important to Mike. He enjoyed spending time with his sons Sean and Liam. He actively supported their sporting, musical, and academic interests. When they got married, he took pleasure in visiting their families and getting to see his grandkids.
Mike had a wide range of interests and loved to share them. He was a hunter, golfer, long-distance runner, bowler, wrestler, and softball player and became an accomplished soccer referee. He liked to play cards and loved to read and hang out in bookstores and libraries. His personal passion was genealogy–he spent lots of time and effort to learn about the O’Fallon and Rich families, where they came from, and what they did. He was never happier than when he could share his knowledge with relatives and friends.
Mike was committed to making the world a better place. In the 1960s he championed civil rights and voting rights. In retirement he served as the interim director of the Channel One Food Bank. He was active in The Rotary Club of Rochester, serving as Club President in 2005 and Assistant District Governor in 2009-2011. He was active in his church, too, serving on committees, participating in men’s group activities, mentoring new members, and lectoring.
Mike is survived by his wife Judy, sons Sean (Maureen Popp) and Liam (Janine Barden), grandchildren Emily (Sean & Maureen), Lydia, Cade, and Ian (Liam & Janine), his brothers John and David, and many beloved nieces and nephews.
We wish to express our deepest appreciation for the caregivers at Charter House for their kindness and support for Mike in his final months.
A memorial service to celebrate his life will be held in Rochester this summer, when family members and friends can attend. In lieu of flowers, donations in Mike’s name can be made to the Channel One Food Bank (https://www.helpingfeedpeople.org/) or your favorite charitable organization.
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