1994-95 Cormac O'Malley (No 42)

Cormac K H O'Malley, B.A., J.D., is the second son of Ernie O'Malley, Irish militant nationalist and author of On Another Man's Wound and The Singing Flame, and American artist Helen Hooker O'Malley from Greenwich, Connecticut. He was born in Ireland but went to the USA at age 14 to live with his mother after his father died in 1957.

After schooling in Ireland, England, Colorado and Massachusetts, Cormac attended Harvard College (1965) and Columbia Law School (1970) and served in the US Navy (1965-1967). He worked for forty years in international legal law in private practice in New York and Mexico (1970-1981) and then as international counsel with a multinational pharmaceutical company in Brussels, London, and New York (1981-1999) followed by being an international legal consultant (1999-2012).

Cormac has been interested in Irish history and culture since his college days and has been active in many Irish cultural activities in the US and in Ireland. Since 1963 he has helped preserve his father's literary and historical legacy by republishing his earlier works, co-editing volumes of his letters and publishing a multi-volume series of his father's military interviews (The Men will Talk to Me). Apart from republishing his father's memoirs, he published Western Ways, a book of Mayo photographs (2015), Modern Ireland and Revolution: Ernie O'Malley in Context (2017), Nobody's Business: Aran Diaries of Ernie O'Malley (2018), I Call My Soul My Own (2020), Ernie O'Malley: A Life written with Harry F Martin (2021), and The Enchanted Bay: Tales and Legends from Ernie O'Malley's Irish Folklore Collection. He helped organize exhibits of his mother's photographs at the National Library of Ireland in 2019, and produced two documentaries on her, A Call to Arts: An Artistic Journey in Ireland, 1935-1975 (2020) and Camera and Clay (2023).

Cormac married Moira Kennedy of Worcester, MA in 1971, and they had two children, Bergin and Conor.

Cormac first joined the O'Malley Clan in 1963 and was Chieftain for 1994-95. He served on the Clan's Granuaile Trust and later on the Clan Council. He has been a regular attender at Clan Gatherings for over 50 years.