Nephew John Boyle displays Donnelly's medal of valor.
His friends called him “Smilin’ Mike.”
Eighty years after his line-of-duty death, they still remember that smiling and brave Philadelphia Police Officer, Michael Donnelly. On April 12, 1929, the County Leitrim native and World War I U.S. Navy veteran was gunned down by a robber he had chased down an alley following the holdup of Sobel’s Candy Store, just a few blocks from his headquarters at 4th and Carpenter. It was nearly midnight. He had less than 15 minutes to go on his shift.
On Wednesday, Donnelly’s surviving nieces and nephews from both sides of the Atlantic joined with Philadelphia police and local dignitaries to dedicate a sidewalk plaque in his memory near where he fell, at 921 South 4th Street.
Michael Donnelly has been gone a long time, but his relatives have never forgotten his bravery. One of those relatives, Sr. Peg Boyle, had heard about a program to honor Philadelphia’s fallen police officers with commemorative plaques. Lawyer Jimmy Binns oversees the Hero Plaque program and he remembers talking to Sr. Peg about it six months ago. “She asked me whether we would do a plaque for Michael Donnelly,” Binns said.
Soon, more and more relatives from the United States and Ireland joined the effort to memorialize Michael Donnelly. And the more they dug, the more they learned about him. “We all knew a little bit about Michael,” said nephew and plaque sponsor John Boyle of Hatboro. “We just had the family lore. It wasn’t until we started talking to Jimmy Binns that we were able to pull together the whole story.”
The story that emerged is one of extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice. In those days, cops’ uniforms were decorated with lots of shiny metal buttons. The light from nearby streetlamps evidently glinted off those buttons and Donnelly’s badge as he attempted to scale a fence in his pursuit of the suspect. The gunman aimed for those shining buttons, police reports from the time indicated. But Donnelly was undeterred. “He kept going over that fence,” said Boyle. “He was shot three times. But they (the police) expect you to stay in the fight, and he did just that.”
One of Donnelly’s relatives from across the pond, Tony Boyle of Kildare, was most impressed by the commemoration, which featured a police honor guard, the Philadelphia Police and Fire Pipe Band and a bugler to play taps. “We absolutely cherish every minute of this trip,” he said.
The skies threatened throughout the ceremony, and in the end finally opened up. Donnelly’s plaque was adorned with roses and spattered with raindrops. The plaque reads:
In Memory of
Police Officer
Michael Donnelly #1951
Died In The Line of Duty
Protecting the Citizens
of Philadelpha on
April 12, 1929
Dedicated by
His Family and Friends
