Howard's Eulogy

Remarks prepared for delivery at his father's memorial service

Ojai United Methodist Church

September 23, 2017  

My father was born the day after Independence Day in 1929, just three months before the infamous stock market crash which ushered in the Great Depression. His mother, Pearl Stoughton Donnell, was an English teacher, while his father, William Howard Donnell, had only a high school education, and I understand that he worked as a longshoreman in Seattle at that time. As the downturn in the economy worsened, he found himself out of work, like millions of other Americans. Around 1932 or 1933, after learning of employment opportunities pursuant to the federal government's presence in the far-flung territory of Hawaii, Grandpa Howard went there by himself to secure a position, then subsequently sent for his wife and two young children to join him in Honolulu. Hence my dad went on to grow up and receive all of his formal education in territorial Hawaii—a place considerably different from the tourist destination it is known as nowadays. When he was a twelve-year-old boy, he lived through the trauma of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, which precipitated the United States' entry into World War II. When my sister Helen and I were children, our parents took us to Hawaii to visit our grandparents four times during my first twelve years, between 1972 and 1981. While we visited many sites of touristic interest on those trips, we never visited the USS Arizona Memorial, since it was a reminder of such a painful childhood experience for my dad. Even in their last years of life, neither my father nor his sister Barbara wanted to visit the National Museum of the Pacific War when he had come to Texas for a visit and we were in the area on an excursion.

Growing up on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a time before jet airplanes, it is not surprising that my father developed an interest in seafaring and, in particular, sailing. He used to hang out at the yacht harbor in Honolulu, and the summer he turned 21, in 1950, he and a friend sailed all the way to Everett, Washington, in a small sailboat. (There were still older members of the Donnell extended family living in nearby Snohomish at that time.) Right about that time was also when young men were being drafted for the Korean War. When he reported for his physical examination, he was found to have a heart murmur, which sufficed to exempt him from military service, though it did not stymie his lifelong sense of adventure and love of travel. Four years later, in 1954, shortly after completing his college education at the University of Hawaii at age 25, he and another buddy once again set sail for the mainland, only this time they went to Santa Monica, California, and they both went to stay. I recall twice in my childhood visiting my dad's old friend and his wife in their later years on their ranch near Alpine in San Diego County. That was the first time I heard anyone call my dad “Al.”

My dad spent his entire career working in telephone systems. He started in an entry-level field job with the local telephone company in Honolulu in 1947, when he 18. After four years of hard, physical work, he had acquired enough maturity, experience, and income to then be ready to undertake higher education during the first half of his twenties. My aunt Barbara was the scholar of the two siblings: she earned her bachelor's degree at Reed College, a private liberal arts college in Portland, and later went on to a master's degree at the University of North Carolina and a career at the University of Texas. My dad, by comparison, stayed at home for college at the University of Hawaii. After he had earned his degree and moved to California, he once again went to work for the local telephone company, only this time in a position requiring more brainpower than physical strength. Twelve years later, in 1966, he obtained a position in telecommunications at UCLA, which became his employer for the last 25 years of his professional career. During the 1980s, as the old Bell System monopoly was broken up, he had significant responsibilities in overseeing the process of transitioning the university to its own telephone network. Hence, throughout my childhood and youth—up until my last semester as an undergraduate at USC—Dad was always getting up early every weekday morning to get from our home in Woodland Hills to his office “over the hill” on the UCLA campus, then arriving home in time for dinner each evening—unless he had a business trip, which happened at least once every year.

My parents met at a Methodist church in West Los Angeles in 1960, and married in July 1961. A few of you here today probably have a childhood memory of that event. My mother had told me that cousin Jim MacKellar was the organist that day, though he was just a lad. Once married, Alan and Harriett did not hurry into parenthood, and ended up missing the cut-off date for the Baby Boom—though they could not have known at the the time that 1965 would mark the beginning of a new generation. My sister Helen was born in September 1967 and I came along in July 1969, three weeks after my father's 40 th birthday.

During the first six years of their marriage, my parents—before they became parents—had a sailboat which they kept at Ventura Marina and sailed on weekends, coming out from the San Fernando Valley. I recall that my mother had said that they became acquainted with Ojai back then as a nice place to visit on weekends when the weather or surf conditions were not propitious for sailing. While child rearing subsequently supplanted sailing for them, I do recall that we rented a sailboat in Ventura a time or two when my sister and I were children, years after the folks had sold their second boat. My father also subscribed to Yachting magazine, and liked to go to the boat show in the L.A. area annually, even after he was no longer on the water regularly himself.

While I did not inherit an interest in boating or landline telephone systems from my father, I did inherit his interest in vehicles and love of travel and adventure. My dad started taking me to the auto show at the L.A. Convention Center when I was nine, and around then we also started going to the RV show that used to be held at Dodger Stadium during baseball's off-season. My parents took my sister and me on our first camping trip to the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Bryce Canyon National Parks with a rental tent trailer when I was eight years old. Before that trip, they bought sleeping bags for my sister and me, and had the foresight to purchase adult-size bags which we would not soon outgrow. To this day, forty years later I am still using the very same sleeping bag when I go camping, as I did this July when I towed my own camping trailer from my home in Texas all the way up to Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. Every night before his surgery, I called my dad to tell him of the day's adventures. He said he wished he could have been there with me, and expressed paternal concern for my safety as I traveled.

During my years in junior high, high school, and college, my father and I went on many trips together, just the two of us—many times camping, either with a tent or a folding trailer. We visited most of the national parks and monuments in California and the Southwest, even as far north as Crater Lake in southern Oregon, and enjoyed hiking and exploring dirt roads together. We had a great many memorable experiences together, some of which are represented in the selection of photos that you may see here today. For example, one of our most ambitious early expeditions together took place at Labor Day 1982, when we obtained a wilderness permit and, in one long day, hiked five miles up the steep, eastern face of the Sierra Nevada from about 9200 feet at Onion Valley to over 11,700 feet atop Kearsarge Pass, where we gazed across the divide into the vast wilderness portion of Kings Canyon National Park—then hiked another five miles back down again. I remember feeling light-headed until the next day.

Even in later years, after I became an adult and settled in Texas after graduating with my bachelor's degree from USC, he and I still took advantage of our less frequent opportunities to travel together. The last time we camped as a duo was our third trip to Death Valley, nearly 20 years ago now. Our very last outing together of any sort was a year and a half ago, the first time I went to visit him after he entered assisted living in Florida. We took his cane and his walker and headed south to see Lake Okeechobee, Everglades National Park, and even Dry Tortugas National Park, which requires a whole-day excursion featuring a long ferry ride from Key West to a tiny, remote island further west in the Gulf of Mexico. There was a small craft advisory in effect that winter day. The rough sea caused me and many other passengers to become seasick, but my dad, seated in his walker, knew how to keep his gaze fixed on the horizon in order to avoid becoming dizzy and disoriented—a skill he had mastered on the high seas much earlier in life.

While not a conspicuously emotional person, my father was always kind, gentle, loving, and faithful to my mother, my sister, and myself. He was a model of involved and supportive fatherhood for a man of his generation—the so-called Silent Generation, which experienced such hardship in their formative years. Some of you here today may also be able to attest to the concern that he showed for others outside the family through the church here, and the Ojai Retired Men's Club. I am most thankful to have had him in my life as my dad for my first 48 years. May he now rest in peace here with his beloved Harriett, and may God bless you all.