John Donovan

By Kathy McGee Burns

“Enthusiasm is: a quiet spiritual strength; an inner glow; and faith in action.”

If you know John Donovan, as I do, you’ll see him immediately in this quote. These are the qualities this Mayfair native lives by.

John was born in St. Matthew Parish, one of the eight children of Jean (Dunn) and John Donovan. His parents were typical inner city, Irish-American, Catholic parents.

Jean, whose roots were Dublin and Mayo, was a stay-at-home mom; John (Cork and Sligo) worked two jobs to keep his family going. The Donovans later made that inevitable move to the suburbs—in their case, to Havertown (St. Dennis Parish). They managed to squeeze all eight kids—and a granddad—into a three- bedroom twin home: One room for the parents; one room for the two girls; and one room for the six boys and their grandfather.

And only one bathroom and, says John, “there were no locks on any door.”
Each year the kids would ask where they were going for vacation and their father would say, “Yardsville” referring to the backyard. As an occasional treat, they would go to Longport at the Jersey Shore for the day, changing in the car and off to visit Lucy the Elephant, in Margate. John tells these stories with such a twinkle in his eye.

His were loving but firm parents who expected the children to pay their own school tuitions and clothes themselves….and they all did. John went to Archbishop Carroll High School. and in order to earn tuition, he worked at General Mills from 3 to 6 PM in the mail room and 6 to 9 PM cleaning offices. While at Carroll, he became a National Honor Student and a Mathlete (an active participant in mathematical competition).

John went on to St. Joseph’s University as an accounting major and shared a room there with Jay Coyne. Jay had a very pretty sister, Elizabeth, who always turned up at their parties. There was an immediate attraction. After John graduated in May, he got his first job in August and married Elizabeth Coyne in September.

I asked John what first got him interested in his Irish heritage. Surprisingly, he said it was through the Coyne family. Their house was full of Irish music and John’s new in-laws, Jim and Ginny Coyne, were in touch with their roots. There was an awareness of Irish history and culture which very much appealed to John.

Today, Jim and John are very close. Jim Coyne told me that when Elizabeth first brought John home to the family, he was put off by his shoulder-length hair. Elizabeth said, “Daddy, he is really a nice person”. This was a monumental understatement, Jim says. “John is one of the finest men I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing,” says Jim.

Under Jim Coyne’s tutelage, John joined the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in 1977. He has been the secretary, vice president, president and now, director emeritus. Now theirs is a Friendly Sons family dynasty. Most of the Donovan and Coyne men have joined.

Through the Friendly Sons came one of John’s finest achievements. It was his father-in-law who led the charge to establish The Irish Memorial at Penns Landing, a tribute to the courage and sacrifice of Irish immigrants who fled An gorta mor—the great hunger—to start new lives in America. But it was John Donovan who saw to all the minute details: construction, bookkeeping, government grants, auditors–he handled all the nuts and bolts.

Bob Hurst, past president of The Irish Memorial, says of John: “John Donovan is a rock solid man who places great importance on routine, where actions have consequences.” John, he says, is the epitome of trustworthiness, honesty, quiet strength, dependability and character.

The light of John’s life is his family. His inner glow shines when he talked about his seven brothers and sisters: Mary ( Marty Roddy) , Kathy (Michael Dolan), Joe and Anne, Father Bill, Ed and Ellen, Tom and Mary, Jim and Dana. Of course, there are his own kids and grandkids; Stephen and Michelle (Bree), Michael and Lori (Gabriella, Emma, Madeline and Jack), Beth, newly married to Brendan Egan, Brian and Susan (John). John and Elizabeth have been married for 35 years and he is an Executive at Compas, Inc which specializes in pharmaceutical marketing.

As for faith in action, the Donovans are loyal members of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parish located near their hometown of Perkasie, Bucks County.

John Donovan is being honored by the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame this Sunday, November 13, at The Irish Center, along with Kathleen Murtagh and Tom Farrelly. For information or tickets, contact President Kathy McGee Burns at 215-872-1305.

Every Wednesday, a platter of sandwiches is delivered to the Irish Immigration Center in Upper Darby for the weekly seniors lunch. Then, the regulars arrive, many of them men and women who emigrated to the United States in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, spending most of their lives separated by a vast sea from family and old friends. They’ve raised new families here and they’ve become old friends, but the weekly lunches are an opportunity to hear Irish voices again, to share memories, and make new ones.

When lunch is over, some of the seniors wrap up the leftovers and, on their way home, visit other seniors, those who are isolated by illness, disability, or lack of transportation.

And it’s those people–the ones who don’t come–that motivated the center’s board to approve the hiring of an Irish social worker who’ll be able to regularly visit homebound immigrants to offer them support and the familiar lilt of home.

“The people we see all the time are the healthiest and in the best shape,” says Immigration Center Executive Director Siobhan Lyons. “We would love to do more for the seniors who come here—but, of more importance—the ones who can’t come here.”

At the end of November, Leslie Alcock, a native of Carlow with a master of social science from University College of Dublin, will join the staff at the immigration center. Her first job, says Lyons—assess the needs of the community’s seniors. Alcock, who has wide experience with various communities, from prisoners to families, will be providing services to all ages, but the impetus for bringing her on is to make sure that Philadelphia’s elderly Irish immigrants don’t experience the same fate as others around the world.

“One of our regular lunch people, Attracta O’Malley, sent me a news story about an old Irish immigrant in New Zealand who died and whose body wasn’t found for a year,” says Lyons. “Just a couple of years ago there was a famous case in New York that served as the inspiration for a survey of Irish senior citizens in New York.”

In 2009, the headlines in New York newspapers blared, “He died alone.” He was 72-year-old Tony Gallagher, a retired carpenter from Mayo whose wife, who has Alzheimer’s, was in a nursing home. The two had no children. Gallagher was found dead in his Queens apartment about a week after he died of natural causes.

Ireland’s unique Immigrant Support Programme, which funds immigration centers around the world, was created in reaction to stories of increasingly isolated immigrants, mainly in England, who hadn’t become educated, married, saved, or assimilated into the culture—essentially becoming ghettoized.

“The inspiration for a lot of these senior programs are the experiences of the London Irish, who emigrated in the ‘50s, sent money home, didn’t assimilate into the English culture, didn’t get married or have families, and by the time they were in their ‘60s they didn’t have a support system,” says Lyons. “Our seniors are better adjusted and assimilated and certainly wealthier than the London Irish, but when a spouse dies they get isolated. Some of them are living in a neighborhood that used to be Irish but is now not a neighborhood they necessarily feel part of. Some have less confidence in their physical abilities and are wary of going out.”

Kathleen Murtagh, one of the center’s Wednesday “lunch ladies,” knows some of those people. A widow and mother of six, she regularly takes them leftovers, visits the homebound, and calls those she hasn’t seen in a while. “We try to keep track of people we know,” she says. “We’re always looking out and reaching out. If there’s someone you normally see and you don’t see them, you check on them. But there are people we don’t know and I think having a social worker who could find them, call or knock on their door, would really help.”

The inspiration for hiring a social worker from Ireland came from Chicago, says Lyons, where an organization called Wellspring Personal Care joined forces with the Chicago Irish Immigrant Support Center to bring Irish social work students to the US as interns to serve the elderly Irish population. Alcock is a graduate of that program.

“I’m familiar with what they’re doing in Chicago and they’re a few years ahead of us in their program, but they’re the model for what we’re doing,” says Lyons.

The Irish government is impressed too. It has funded “The Chicago Irish Project” and encouraged other immigration centers to replicate the design, which also gives field training to Irish social workers whom it hopes will bring their knowledge of senior care back to Ireland.

“I love the idea that we could set up an exchange program between schools in Ireland and schools with great social work programs here, like Bryn Mawr and Temple with Trinity maybe,” says Lyons. “That’s our long-term strategic plan, but right now the first step is for Leslie to sit down the seniors here and start making a list of all the seniors we’re not reaching and for her to go out and see what their needs are. That way we can build up a database of who is out there who needs help and what they need.”

Eventually, says Lyons, she’d like to establish a volunteer program of younger people who would do home visits, run errands, and do small chores like lawn mowing and snow shoveling that the elderly now have to pay for—a financial hardship when you’re on a fixed income. “It will be nice to see the next generation of the Irish community helping our seniors,” says Lyons. “We want people to know they’re cared about.”

You can help Philadelphia’s “Irish Project” by attending a fundraiser on Sunday, November 6, from 3-6 PM at Finnigan’s Wake, 3rd and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia. The $40 per person ticket covers a buffet and open bar and live music with the popular Bogside Rogues. For more information, contact Siobhan Lyons, 610-789-6355.