Dip the guidons, muffle the drums, the riderless horse is passing by...

Colonel Timothy Hamilton Donovan, United States Army, Retired, Rotary International, "Career Complete"

Or, his most important title as far as I'm concerned... "Dad"

It was a long and difficult labor. The mother was fighting desperately to *not* give birth to ensure that her son was *not* an April Fool’s baby. And in the wee hours of the 2nd of April, 1929, on the cusp of the Great Depression, Timothy Hamilton Donovan came into the world in Denver, Colorado, son of John T. and Rose Donovan, and brother to his sister Elaine. He spent his formative years roaming from Colorado to Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas with his father, an oil company geologist, as he surveyed the oil fields. He spent summers in Canada, living in tents and riding horses in the Canadian Rockies as his father did surveying tasks for the provincial government. It was there he was swept off his horse by a grizzly bear, leaving three long scars across his chest that lasted his lifetime. They were just the first scars he would earn in mortal combat.

Tim’s connection to Missouri began at the Missouri Military Academy in Mexico, where he was a model student, Missouri State champion wrestler, and captain of the football team. He commanded the color guard that honored former Prime Minister Winston Churchill when Winnie gave the iconic “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton. His enduring connection to Columbia began when his athletic prowess earned him a football scholarship to Mizzou. While there , he suffered the fate of many a Sigma Chi brother – he was blinded by the radiance of a Stephens’ girl – Elizabeth Ann Meriwether, and the two were joined in a love that lasted 56 years, a partnership broken briefly when she passed in 2006, but which is rekindled anew.

Lieutenant Tim and Mrs. Ann Donovan, at her parent's house prior to his departure for Korea and high adventure.

Commissioned into the Missouri National Guard as a Lieutenant of Field Artillery with the 128th FA in Columbia, Lieutenant Donovan was ordered to drop his football and college career, leave his new bride, and go to Korea in 1952. He served with the United Nations Partisan Forces – Korea (North Koreans fighting for freedom, not oppression) and while qualifying for the Combat Infantryman Badge, he earned a Silver Star for his role in the destruction of a Chinese HQ’s unit.  A battle fought in night and fog and at close quarters - in which he earned the second of three Purple Hearts earned in Korea and was captured – but such was the loyalty he inspired that his guerrillas crossed the Yalu river into China proper to free him and bring him back.   Foreshadowing a bad family habit... this is the first time a Donovan was bayoneted...  At least Dad didn't do it to himself, as I did.  There is a story in there, too - of a man who got himself free of his cage, disposed of armed guards bare-handed yet without raising an alarm, freeing fellow captives as his own guerrillas arrived to take him back across the river.  But that's a story for a different time.

Upon his return from Korea he set about being a father. His daughter, Kathy, was born in Lawton, Oklahoma where Tim taught young artillerymen the finer points of the trade, and he commanded rocket and cannon batteries. Having been present when Churchill named the Iron Curtain, it seemed appropriate for Captain Donovan to take the family to Germany to help defend that frontier of freedom, and, as the result of a very brief trip back to barracks during a long field problem, son John entered the world with an exotic birthplace and a foreign language birth certificate which confuses officialdom to this day.

LTC Donovan found himself in command of an artillery battalion in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, where he was observed hanging out of the door of his command helicopter firing a submachine gun one-handed at enemy soldiers attacking one of his batteries, an action that so annoyed the enemy that they shot back, and Tim earned the third of his four Purple Hearts from Vietnam (for a total of 7) and a Bronze Star with V for valor. As one of Tim’s long time friends observed – “the record’s eight, why’d he slack off?”

He ended his military career as the Professor of Military Science at MU, where he was privileged (his words) to commission the first women officers from the ROTC program. It was as the PMS where he found his second enduring love – Rotary, where he made his mark as a club and district leader, and was proud to vote to allow women into the club. You find your quiet feminists in the strangest of places…

His greatest joy after his family came from interacting with Rotarians; finding the Rotarians who just didn’t know they were Rotarians yet, and mentoring them into the world of the Four Way Test. Tim Donovan’s life embodied the motto of Rotary – Service Above Self. He leaves a huge hole to fill, but he trained the people who will step into the breach, whether in the Army, in Rotary, and in his family, where he is survived by his daughter Kathy Donovan Hanson and her husband Ed, their children Timothy, Patrick and Erin; and his son John and his wife Beth, and their son, Andy Healy Poland and his fiancée Ashley and his great-grandson Miles. If he departed this world with a regret, it was that he was not able to dance on the grave of Petey – the obstreperous horse who had the temerity to throw him and break a rib, an action that the gentle giant of a man never forgave…  And this was a man who had many cats and dogs over his lifetime, all the ones of his choosing being rescues.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Rotary Foundation, via the Rotary Club of Columbia, PO Box 88, Columbia, Mo, 65205.  The funeral is today.



And you can see he bred true, so to speak - given this is a picture of him twisting the handle on a blasting machine, with an expression many of my friends would recognize...

Now is the second time at Castle Argghhh! when we dance the dance I dreaded.  This time for Dad: In Memoriam of Colonel Tim Donovan...   Dad.  Hopefully you were in heaven a half hour before the Devil knew you were dead, given that was one of your favorite blessing.  Allons!