A Family Tradition

How three generations found purpose, profession, and connection across the decades at MCPHS.

It’s been nearly 70 years since Peter O’Reilly, BSP ’58, graduated from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, but his go-to hat is still an MCPHS ballcap.

At 93, his connection to the University remains woven through nearly every chapter of his life, from community pharmacy and planning alumni Reunions to the generations of family members who followed him there: daughter Cathy, son-in-law Ed Taglieri Jr., and granddaughters Lisa and Katie.

“It’s been part of Peter’s whole life to be linked to MCPHS. It comes out of every pore of him,” says Ed. “He’s incredibly proud to be an alum and a pharmacist.”

In the Beginning

Peter’s path to MCPHS was a circuitous one. After graduating high school, he overlooked college to work as a stock and delivery boy at a local pharmacy. The owner’s wife, realizing Peter’s potential, encouraged him to think long-term and secured him an application to the pharmacy school. Peter was admitted to MCPHS and enrolled, but struggled academically in his first year and lost his draft deferment. Off he went to serve as a medic, stateside.

“He would tell you he really grew up in the Army,” says daughter Cathy. “When he came home, he said, ‘I really need to get an education.’”

Now ready for the rigors of academia, he returned to the Boston campus and thrived. Peter won the Rexall Award and served as President of the Class of 1958, the treasurer of Kappa Psi, and in the Theatrical Society and the Newman Club, for the college’s Catholic students.

His future wife, Marjorie, accompanied him to the Senior Prom and, after graduating in 1958, he worked as a drug company sales rep before buying Menotomy Pharmacy, in Arlington, Mass., in 1963.

Declares Ed, “Peter is the patriarch of the traditional retail pharmacy era of the 1950s and 60s.”

The Second Generation

Daughter Cathy remembers her first job in Menotomy Pharmacy, at age 10: emptying the trash cans. All six O’Reilly children pitched in at the family business, with Cathy later delivering prescriptions from her bicycle and running the cash register. At 16, she joined the pharmacy department.

“I liked talking to people,” she recalls. “I liked how people would ask the pharmacist a question and they would go back and forth to help the patient.”

When it came time to choose a profession, though, she was torn: pharmacy or hairdressing.

She admits, laughing: “If I had known how much chemistry was involved in pharmacy, I would have been a hairdresser.”

She settled on MCPHS after her father weighed in: “Why on Earth would you go anywhere else? Go to the best.”

Meanwhile, 25 miles north in Beverly, Mass., Ed Taglieri Jr. was being raised in another family business—Rantoul Pharmacy, where his uncle, Anthony S. Taglieri, BS ’60, dispensed the drugs while Ed’s dad ran the business.

“There was no other path for me in the world than MCPHS,” says Ed. “It was a given.”

Cathy and Ed met in their first month on campus and became quick friends. In year two, that friendship blossomed into romance and they married in 1982, just three months after their Commencement. Ed’s graduation gift from his new in-laws? A wooden captain’s chair engraved with the MCPHS seal.

Their oldest daughter, Katie Taglieri-Noble, remembers growing up in a houseful of MCPHS swag: the captain’s chair, a lunch box, beach towels, windbreakers, and little stuffed cardinals that chirp when squeezed. There were college friends aplenty, too, including Katie’s godfather, Steve Frisiello ’82, and sister Lisa’s godmother, Donna Harris ’82.

The Third Generation

While neither Katie or Lisa followed the family into pharmacy, the pull to healthcare—and MCPHS—was strong in Peter’s granddaughters.

Lisa earned her physician assistant credentials at Springfield College and, after a few years on the job, sought a new challenge: teaching. Mom Cathy had paved the way when she joined the Boston faculty of MCPHS two decades earlier and earned her terminal degree, a PharmD, at age 50.

In 2020, the mother-daughter professor pair developed an interprofessional education activity on congestive heart failure that is still in use by Pharmacy and PA students. A year later, in 2021, Lisa officially became the fourth alum in the family by earning a Doctorate in PA Studies from the University.

Cathy was retired by the time daughter Katie followed Lisa onto the MCPHS faculty, joining the School of Physical Therapy in 2023.

“Fate brought me here,” says Katie, an assistant professor specializing in neurologics who earned her physical therapy credentials next door at Simmons College. Having her little sister on the faculty is “a heartwarming benefit.”

Though the sisters are sometimes mistaken for each other, they welcome questions.

“It’s nice to be asked, ‘Are you Cathy’s daughter? Is Peter your grandfather?’” says Lisa, who was named Program Director for the PA Studies–Boston program this spring. “Now with Katie, people know the connection. It’s nice to all be part of MCPHS while being different parts of it.”

Katie will become the family’s fifth alum in 2029, when she wraps up her Doctorate in Health Sciences. Like the rest of the family, she’s proud to follow in Peter’s footsteps.

“What he built after he left MCPHS is front and center to all of us,” she says.

Building the Legacy

With three generations entwined with one institution, it’s natural to wonder: was this legacy borne from expectation or happenstance? The truth is, a bit of both.

Grandpa Peter—a longtime University Corporator who kept his pharmacy license active until age 89—was always an ardent advocate.

“When we were looking at colleges, he would say, ‘Pharmacy is a great profession,’” says Lisa, with affection. “He really, really tried with all the grandkids. But he was very happy when we at least went into healthcare. He said he got ‘close enough.’”

As for Ed and Cathy, their advocacy had no bias: just find something you love to do because you’re going to spend a lot of hours doing it. The couple each recently retired; Ed after a successful career in healthcare management and service to the Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy, and Cathy as a clinical pharmacist and Faculty Emeritus.

“It’s neat that we all converged at MCPHS but followed our own paths there,” says Ed. “It just happened naturally.”

Adds Katie, “That makes it sweeter.”

When asked if there might be future Cardinals among the Taglieri grandchildren, ages 2 to 12, the family laugh and say it’s too soon to tell.

Daughter Cathy brings it back to her dad, who started it all: “MCPHS was a small part of my persona that got larger when I taught there. But for my father, it remains a huge part of who he is. He’s so proud of that, and of all of us.”