Philanthropic matriarch, supporter of faith-based education

Rhodora Donahue was a difference-maker.

A proud member of the “Greatest Generation,” she was a beloved matriarch and philanthropist with an unbreakable joie de vivre.

Her devotion to faith-based education and generosity made a major impact on Catholic causes and schools like Duquesne University, where Mrs. Donahue became one of the first benefactors to make a seven-figure gift toward a college of osteopathic medicine.

As a mother of 13, she suggested that the school include a fertility awareness component — an idea that will be realized through a center for fertility-based education and research, according to university President Ken Gormley.

“Rhodora was a remarkable woman of deep faith and selfless service, the matriarch of a family whose name is synonymous with philanthropy and whose impact in Pittsburgh and beyond is immeasurable,” Mr. Gormley wrote in a memorial of Mrs. Donahue.

Mrs. Donahue left the world gently and gratefully at her Naples, Fla., home on Dec. 12, surrounded by her family and anxious to be reunited with her husband, Jack, and other family members who preceded her in death. She was 97.

She grew up in a religious Catholic family in Point Breeze, attending Holy Rosary Elementary School before graduating from Mount Mercy Academy and Mount Mercy College — now Carlow University — where she studied home economics.

Mrs. Donahue, nee Jacob, met John F. “Jack” Donahue through a cousin when she was 14. Their connection was instant, said her son J. Christopher Donahue, of Point Breeze.

“They were done at first sight,” he said.

The young couple met at streetcar stops and got to know each other on brief walks home.

“It was good as it gets,” their son said.

Their Dec. 26, 1946, marriage was splashed across society pages of the day.

“Before an altar decorated with Christmas poinsettias and greens,” she wore a traditional silk dress “with an off-the-shoulder neckline of Chantilly lace,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted in its coverage of the wedding.

A financial innovator and brilliant businessman, Mr. Donahue built one of the world’s preeminent financial companies — Federated Investors — in 1955 with two high school classmates at the Donahues’ kitchen table.

Now called Federated Hermes, the firm manages nearly $650 billion in assets for clients around the globe, said Christopher Donahue, who is now CEO and president.

After 70 years together, Mr. Donahue died in 2017. Since then, Mrs. Donahue looked forward to being reunited with the love of her life, Christopher Donahue said.

“Her plan for the last five years has been to join my dad,” he said.

After their wedding, the couple moved to Roswell, N.M., for three years, where Mr. Donahue, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, served in the Air Force.

When they returned home in 1950, the young family made their home in Ligonier, where Mrs. Donahue reveled in her role as a devoted wife and mom.

“She made dinner every day,” her son said. “That was a big deal to her.”

Mrs. Donahue was widely admired for her philanthropic efforts, including the annual Medallion Ball, sponsored since 1964 by St. Lucy’s Auxiliary to the Blind.

“Mom was among the founding mothers of the ball,” her son said.

Most of the girls in their family were presented at the ball, a modern-day coming out of sorts.

Mrs. Donahue sponsored awards for students and educators and supported organizations mainly in the Pittsburgh area and in Naples, where she and her husband spent many winters before eventually moving there in 1986.

The Donahues endowed a graduate school of business and a chair in business at Duquesne, Mr. Gormley said, along with contributions to Oakland Catholic and Central Catholic high schools, the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Extra Mile Foundation and Holy Family Institute.

Mrs. Donahue’s philanthropic spirit is perhaps most evident at the Rhodora J. Donahue Academy of Ave Maria in Florida, a K-12 private school in the local Catholic parish that was renamed in 2009 to honor the Donahues’ unparalleled support of faith-based education, including more than $5 million in donations to Ave Maria University.

The couple were the “largest donors” to the university, located less than a mile from the K-12 school, said headmaster Dan Guernsey in a February 2009 story in the Naples Daily News.

The decision to rename the school after Mrs. Donahue was a natural progression, her husband said at the time.

“We all love my wife so much,” Jack Donahue said. “I think I love her the most, but the children and the grandchildren just revere her.”

Mrs. Donahue also loved writing handwritten letters to commemorate birthdays, special occasions and of course, Christmas.

Her annual holiday card was the toast of the season for many friends, loved ones and colleagues — and this year’s 26-page edition was no exception, Mr. Gormley said.

“The week before Rhodora passed, I received her beautiful 2022 Christmas card in the mail — an elaborate 26-page photo album of each of her children’s families, along with pictures celebrating new weddings, new births, and new gatherings of grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” Mr. Gormley recalled. “That card encapsulated everything that this great matriarch of the Donahue family — and of Pittsburgh’s community — deemed most precious in life: The central importance of family as the building block upon which everything else rests.”

“It started back in the ’50s when they just put out a photo of the family,” her son said of the cards. “This was her delightful errand of love every year and everybody sent their pictures in because this was mom’s project — everybody toed the line.”

During their courtship, Mr. Donahue often read to his future wife from an 1834 poem penned by American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It was called “The Rhodora.” Here is an excerpt:

On being asked, whence is the flower —

“Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask; I never knew;

But in my simple ignorance suppose

The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.”

Along with her son, Mrs. Donahue is survived by 12 other children: Maribeth Donley and Susan Petnuch, both of Point Breeze, Katherine Freyvogel, Rhodora Barton, Patricia Dolan, William Donahue and Thomas Donahue, all of Fox Chapel, Theresa D’Orazio, Carol Moore, Maureen Murphy, Rebecca Foxhoven and Gregory Donahue, all of Naples, Fla.; her siblings Kathryn Frey, of Lancaster, Mary Alice Stanton, of Boston, Robert Jacob and Vincent Jacob, both of Somerset, Richard Jacob and Virginia Ware, both of Fox Chapel; and 84 grandchildren and 168 great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Donahue was preceded in death by her husband; a brother, William Jacob Jr.; grandchildren Heather Donley and Melissa Donley; and a great-grandchild, Conlan Rheingrover.

The funeral Mass was held Wednesday at St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland.

Remembrances may be made to Oakland Catholic High School and The Red Door.

Janice Crompton: jcrompton@post-gazette.com.