Patrick Joseph Donovan

West Point, 1965

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Jack Jannarone on April 18, 2015:

I roomed with Pat during our Firstie year in D-2. Prior to that he was that guy who comprised the other half of the Mutt and Jeff team along with George Ruggles. Since either George or I controlled the dining hall seating assignments (the real power in the company), George, Pat and I were at the same table for most of the year. Two plebes just happened to be at our table as well. Their duties were to show up (not hard to do), eat (not hard to do) and to amuse us occasionally (definitely not hard to do). I don't know if they realized it at the time, but they were probably the luckiest members of their class. We stuck one of them with the nickname Turtle. I don't remember the name of the other one. One of Pat's quirks was that he had a complete set of the Pogo comics on his bookshelf. I started reading them out of curiosity and worked my may through about 25 volumes if I remember correctly, and of course, some things were permanently implanted in my brain. Each Christmas season I find that I start singing the real words of that Christmas Carol (according to Albert Alligator) "Deck us all with Boston Charley...." and all of the verse that follow. So each year at Christmas I also conjure up a fond memory of my year with Pat Donovan, and give thanks for the nonsense that is rattling around in my head. I suspect that I spent so much time reading Pogo that my GPA might have slipped a few points giving yet another example of Pogo's famous quote, "We have met the enemy, and he is us". In early May of 1965, about a month before graduation,The Corps traveled to New York City to march in the Armed Forces Day Parade. We were marching down 5th Avenue and had come to a halt. A group of young people began to heckle us about Vietnam (remember the war had not really escalated at this point) and then they began to sing "We Shall Overcome". What they didn't know or understand was (1)that the cadets from the First Captain all of the way down to Turtle did not set national policy, (2) That we associated Vietnam with the TAC's with the red MACV patch on their right shoulder, and they tended to be you know whats from our perspective, (3)As a result we usually referred to Vietnam as Viet f......g nam, (4) Germany was the place we wanted to go to, (5) "We shall overcome" was our song too. We would sing it on our way to class especially during test season. So there we were standing at parade rest trying to ignore the hecklers on the sidewalk. All of a sudden and completely out of character and in a totally identifiable Boston accent my roommate, Pat Donovan, shouted "you do your overcoming, and we will do your fighting for you". And the silence followed. As cadets we knew that there were unwritten rules that could get you written up for just about anything, and this had the potential to be a major anything. I am sure that most of us within hearing distance had visions of Pat walking the area until graduation or beyond as well as the nagging fear that we might be walking with him because the system believed in guilt by association. Fortunately the hecklers didn't respond physically and we were soon back at right shoulder arms and leaving the scene at 120 beats per minute. I have not seen nor spoken to Pat since the morning of graduation. I hope that he is now in a place where he can say "I did overcome".

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