John O’Meara Jr.’s community service has spanned more than 47 years. “Making a difference in someone’s life is its own reward,” he says.
John O’Meara Jr. has been selected Moorestown’s Citizen of the Year.
The township’s Service Club Council will hold a dinner in his honor at the community house on Wednesday at 6 p.m.
“Moorestown is a place where, if you need help and you want to get things done and there’s a need, there’s a whole group of people that are there to step up,” O’Meara said. “You don’t feel like you’re that voice crying in the wilderness.”
O’Meara is a Pittsburgh native who was born in 1947, the oldest son of Ricki and John O’Meara Sr. Not long after his birth, the family moved to St. Louis, where O’Meara spent most of his childhood. After attending high school at St. Louis Priory School for Boys and becoming an Eagle Scout, he earned a degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University.
Upon graduation, O’Meara was commissioned as a Navy officer and spent four years on three ships. Soon after he married his wife of 51 years, Mary Anne, they moved to California, where he got an MBA at Stanford University. The couple moved to South Jersey in 1975 and O’Meara began his long career with Inductotherm Corp in Rancocas.
After he and Mary Anne found a home in Moorestown and started their family, O’Meara joined the Moorestown Rotary Club in 1978, when he began his journey of volunteerism and community work. For the next eight years, he was a Rotary board member, chairman of the Rotary Youth Exchange and host to four students, president of the Moorestown United Fund, a Burlington County United Way board member and treasurer of the Moorestown Improvement Association.
“Making a difference in someone’s life is its own reward,” O’Meara noted. “You can’t deposit those funds in the bank, but what they do is, they build life-long friendships and contacts. It’s like meeting the neighbor across the street, and suddenly you’ve got a background and contact that just automatically opens the doors between us, and you feel like you’ve got new friends.
“And that’s really a wonderful part of it.”
Meara and his wife moved north in 1986 to accommodate his career at Inductotherm. They planted new roots in Northport, Long Island, and became engaged citizens. O’Meara’s volunteer work included the Rotary Club of Northport’s youth exchange program, for which he hosted two students; a stint as a church elder; and a Princeton University alumnae interviewer.
In 1989, still in Northport, O’Meara was asked to be the volunteer vice president of three Pension and Health Trust Fund boards associated with IUE (International Union of Electrical Workers) Local 463, and he’s still in that role today.
O’Meara and his family returned to Moorestown in 1996. He reunited with the Rotary Lunch Club, serving as club president in 2010 and 2011 and was a member of the Service Club Council. O’Meara expanded his township involvement by serving on the boards of the Moorestown Free Library Association (member and president); the Saint Matthew Lutheran Church Council (member and president); Blason Woods II Condominium Association, (member and president); MEND (member); the Walden School summer music camp for young composers (member and board chair); and the Moorestown School of Music, which he and his wife founded.
“Be open to new things and new opportunities,” O’Meara emphasized of community service. “If somebody asks you for help with something, just say yes. It may be something you don’t know about or it may be something that you’ve done for years, but helping somebody else will make you happier and better and broaden your horizons, and you’ll enjoy it.”
For information on tickets to the Citizen of the Year award dinner, visit www.moorestownrotary.org.
