Shrewsbury Chronicle
By Sophia S. Huling / Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Irving James Donahue Jr. graduated from Shrewsbury High School in 1940, but he was still taking courses at Quinsigamond Community College 50 years later.

The Shrewsbury resident and philanthropist, who died last week in Worcester, left a legacy of service to the town and many non-profit organizations and a desire for lifelong learning. He died Dec. 1 after bouts with cancer and heart problems, said his granddaughter Debra Falzoi.

"I was almost 70 when young people like our grandchildren and son-in-law would talk together about computer stuff that was foreign to me," Donahue wrote in a 1996 letter to Falzoi, his daughter Susan's daughter.

Donahue went on to tell Falzoi what he considered one of his greatest accomplishments.

"I decided to try to find out what it was all about and took a beginners course at Quinsig Community College -- the best basic course I have taken in my life -- like how do you turn a computer on?" he wrote. "I felt like a baby learning to crawl."

Born in Worcester in 1922, Donahue earned degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Harvard Business School in the 1940s.

"We are never too old to continue to learn -- even at my tender young age of 74," he wrote to Falzoi. "But my mind makes me think I'm a 20-year-old -- with a very short crew cut."

Now 27, Falzoi remembered her grandfather had a great sense of humor, even during his last days in the hospital.

"He was very young in spirit, always joking around," she said. A man of seemingly boundless energy, Donahue served for years with the Shrewsbury Board of Selectmen, Finance Committee, Town Meeting, and Coolidge School PTA. He also found time to volunteer at the First Congregational Church, Rotary Club, Ray Stone American Legion Post, Lions Club, Shrewsbury School Music Association, Historical Society, Lake Quinsigamond Commission, and WPI, his alma mater.

In 1956, he founded Donahue Industries, a Shrewsbury metal manufacturing firm. That was followed by an exporting company, Donahue International in 1967 and a securities investment firm, IJD Inc. in 1974. Her grandfather's high standards are what Falzoi said she will remember most
about him.

"When he started his business he was very goal-oriented," she said. "Every kind of milestone I'd go through, he'd sit me down and talk me through my goals and get me thinking based on those."

Thanks to the encouragement he gave her and her two siblings, Falzoi said, she started her own Web site design business last year. "He was always stressing the importance of getting to know ourselves, what was important to us," she said.

After his discharge from the U.S. Navy in 1946, Donahue married Barbara May Grant of Athol. The couple had two daughters, Susan and Judith, and three grandchildren, Laurie, Debra, and Curtis. Susan is a substitute schoolteacher in Northborough elementary schools, and Judith took over from
her father as president of Donahue Industries.

Donahue is probably best known in town for the rowing center on North Quinsigamond Avenue that bears his name. He and Barbara added to a state and federal grant to build the rowing center, which opened in 1993. The couple offered another $700,000 to build a 9,000-square-foot addition, making the Donahue Rowing Center the largest in the country devoted exclusively to rowing, Donahue had said at the expansion's September 2002 opening.

At that time Donahue only said, "I've been very fortunate to be able to be successful in business."
Donahue began rowing at Shrewsbury High School in 1938, the year after the school introduced rowing as a sport. He continued rowing as a student at WPI from 1941 to 1943.

"Then I went on another type of boat -- a destroyer in the Pacific," he quipped. "We didn't use oars."

Shrewsbury Parks and Recreation Director Angela Snell said it was hard to imagine what the town would be like without Donahue.

"Probably his love for the community and the sport of rowing," said Snell when asked what she would most remember about him. "Without him, there wouldn't be a rowing center."

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