Jacqueline O'Reilly, pushed for lottery to fund the arts

Jacqueline (Desprez) O'Reilly was a self-described stage mother at the Boston Ballet who championed public funding for the arts.

''She was extremely dedicated to the cause," Walter ''Sandy" Fraze Jr., a board member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, said yesterday of Mrs. O'Reilly, who died of cancer Sunday in Epoch Senior Health Care in Norton. ''She showed us what one committed citizen could accomplish."

Mrs. O'Reilly, 79, choreographed the creation of the former Massachusetts Arts Lottery as a way to channel money to arts organizations in the state.

''She almost single-handedly convinced the Legislature to approve one of the great populist ideas of all times, a lottery to fund the arts," Fraze said.

When the oversize, lavishly illustrated State Arts Lottery tickets first went on sale in 1980, they guaranteed a $200,000 payoff each month.

The rest of the proceeds was to go to arts organizations. But the $5 tickets did not sell well and were discontinued within a year. The program was transformed into the state's very successful Megabucks lottery.

When Megabucks ticket sales took off, the Legislature capped the contribution to arts organizations at $3 million a year; the remainder of the game's profits are shared with the state's 351 cities and towns.

''As soon as the money came pouring in, they capped the amount," Fraze said. ''Otherwise Massachusetts would be spending more money on the arts than most countries."

One of the original trustees of the Boston Ballet, Mrs. O'Reilly first thought of the lottery in the summer of 1971, while she was enrolled at an arts administration course at Harvard taught by James Hagler. Hagler had discussed the success of the arts lottery in Australia that financed the Sydney Opera House.

The following year, Mrs. O'Reilly prevailed upon state Representative Michael Paul Feeney a Hyde Park Democrat, to file a bill to explore ways to finance art organizations. As the commission's unsalaried chairwoman, Mrs. O'Reilly began lobbying other legislators and attended fund-raisers for countless politicians.

In 1979, when legislation passed creating the arts lottery, Mrs. O'Reilly was named chairwoman of the Massachusetts Arts Lottery Council by Governor Edward King. In the post, she oversaw the disbursement of funds to about 300 local arts councils throughout the state.

The council merged with the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities to form the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 1990.

Mr. O'Reilly was a modest woman who was ''as strong and energetic as a Belgian peasant," her daughter, Eve O'Reilly-Keddy of Foxborough, said yesterday.

''I was born in South Lawrence, which is poorer than Lawrence," Mrs. O'Reilly said in a story published in the Globe in 1981. ''My mother was born in Belgium and my father in France. They were part of a large group of Franco-Americans working South Lawrence Mills. I was born in one of the little houses the mill owned."

When she was 4, her family moved back to Belgium, where she started taking dance lessons. She was accepted to the Paris Opera Ballet School, but with World War II imminent, she was unable to attend. She moved back to Lawrence with her family.

Mrs. O'Reilly graduated from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy when she was 19 and married fellow pharmacist William O'Reilly, who died in 1982.

They were co-owners of O'Reilly's Pharmacy in Foxborough, where they lived.

When her first daughter, Ellen D. O'Reilly-Jonas of Foxborough, began studying with E. Virginia Williams at the Boston Ballet School, ''I became a stage mother," Mrs. O'Reilly said in 1981. When her daughter became a founding member of the newly-formed Boston Ballet in 1963, Mrs. O'Reilly became a trustee.

''There were six of us, all stage mothers, except one father. The Boston Ballet was fun, like a family," she said in 1981.

''She helped make the costumes for the Boston Ballet's first production of 'Nutcracker,' " O'Reilly-Keddy said.

But Mrs. O'Reilly kept the various parts of her life separate.

''The people at the pharmacy didn't know about her work with the lottery, and the people at the State House didn't know about the pharmacy," O'Reilly-Keddy said.

In addition to her daughters, she leaves a son, William J. Jr. of Brooklyn, N.Y.; two grandchildren; and a dear friend, Ed Driscoll of Walpole.

A funeral Mass will be said at 9 a.m. tomorrow in St. Mary's Church in Foxborough. Interment will be in Rock Hill Cemetery in Foxborough.