Introduction

For some time now I have wished that I could write down all of the scrambled facts of Philip Edward Donohue's life before they begin to be obscured by poor memory. He passed away in March of 2003. I thought about publishing a biography for his grandchildren, using the opportunity to interview the remaining family members for facts, but that was not practical.

Furthermore, my favorite thing about Phil Donohue, my dad, was his colorful self-mythologizing, and I would hate to be disabused of any of my fallacies about him. He wanted to be like Hemingway, and never managed to publish a novel, although I expect that he would have settled into some writing routine in his planned retirement in Key West. He told stories so beguilingly. I have so many of them in my head. No idea whether they can verified, and not sure I want to try.

In the four years since I last spoke to him I have only had photographs to refer to. I really love them because they reinforce most of what I know about him - charisma, street smarts, flair for melodrama, and how he was actually strangely paternal after all, in spite of never having been in a family unit as a child.

It took me too long to recognize that the things that we fought about were our mutual misunderstandings about what our roles were.

I loved him, although he could be miserable to me at times. Not long before his death, about 6 months, he came into focus somehow, and I understood him so well, and really did understand myself better at last.