Donna Susan Donovan

1943 - 2025

Donna Susan Donovan
06/27/1943 - 03/13/2025
The daughter of an Irish mother and Italian father, Donna was born on June 27, 1943, in St. Mary's Hospital and grew up until age 7 on Wheeler Avenue in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, nestled between Bayshore, rail yards and that somewhat secret tunnel under the 101 over to Candlestick. In 1950, George J. and Susan Grosso (née Chambers), Donna, and her younger brother George A. moved to the Parkside neighborhood on 22nd Ave between Ulloa and Vicente. She attended Saint Cecilia School and then Mercy High School and graduated from Lincoln High School in 1961.
Following high school, Donna was certified as a medical assistant and worked for several doctors in a variety of practices throughout her life. She met her future husband, Gerard O'Donovan, during a mixer in San Francisco while he was attending UC Davis for graduate school. After getting married at Saint Cecilia in 1963 and briefly settling in Davis, they moved to San Francisco while Gerard was a postdoc at UC Berkeley. Brian was born in 1966 and in a few years' time the family moved to College Station, Texas where Kevin was born in 1971. A diehard San Franciscan Donna moved back to the City ten years later, eventually settling at 28th Ave back in the Parkside where she lived until she passed. Many of the doctors she worked with became lifelong friends including William Roman (OB/GYN) in Bryan, TX, Joseph Scott (Family Med) in Denton, TX, Steven Mehalko (AIDS/Hospice) at Davies in SF, and F. William Heer and K. Jan Bossart (Surgery) at Davies. She had many interests outside of medicine, including raising two springer spaniels (Bruno and Spot). She was a fixture at the dog run in Golden Gate Park getting to know many a canine and human friend. She was a regular at the San Francisco Symphony and the City Arts and Lectures Series. She always had the radio on in her house listening to Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk, NPR, and the BBC World Service. She was more well informed than most and consequently would beat you at Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit and was an ace at crosswords and card games. She developed a love of baseball in her sons, and we often took the Ball Park express to Candlestick in the 70's/80's. Later in her life, she became a regular at the Tennessee Grill. She continued to make new friends throughout her life and yet maintained her lifelong friendships from childhood, Texas, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and everywhere else her friends may have moved.
Donna is survived by her brother, George and sister-in-law, Chooi-Eng and niece, Gina; her son, Brian and daughter-in-law, Lisa Stolarski and step-granddaughter, Cecilia Stolarski; her son, Kevin and daughter-in-law, Jee Hae Kim and grandchildren, Niamh and Sean.
A Funeral Mass for Donna will take place on Friday, March 21, at 10:30am at Saint Cecilia's Catholic Church, 2555 17th. Ave., San Francisco, CA. Interment to follow at Holy Cross, Colma, CA.