John C. Donahue Jr.

NORTHFIELD - John C. Donahue Jr., 88, died Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008, of cancer, at home.

He was born July 24, 1920, in Lynn, Mass., the son of Kathleen (Martin) Donahue and John C. Donahue Sr.

He was a longtime newspaperman whose career spanned 75 years from 1933 to 2008, including as editor and publisher of The Northfield News and Transcript, which he sold in July. He had started The Northfield Transcript in retirement in 1999, and published it until 2001. In 2007 he bought the 129-year-old Northfield News and combined it with the revived Transcript.

At the age of 12, Mr. Donahue and his cousin, the late Thomas A. Donahue, established the (Northfield) Falls News, a summer weekly that continued for five years. He worked his way through high school and college on various newspapers.

He had worked for Bostonian magazine, the Boston Transcript, United Press, the Burlington Daily News, Vermont Sunday News, The Washington Post, the (Braintree, Mass.) Sunday Forum, the Boston Evening Globe, Suburban Trends in Butler, N.J., and the Daily Record of Morristown, N.J.

Mr. Donahue taught journalism at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., and served as publisher of the student daily, the Purdue Exponent.

He retired in 1992 and returned to Northfield.

He was a U.S. Coast Guard veteran of World War II.

He was educated in schools in Northfield Falls and St. Albans, in Massachusetts, Ohio, New York and New Jersey. He graduated from Manhattan College in New York in 1942 with a bachelor of arts degree in English and history. He did graduate work at the New School for Social Research in New York, at the University of Vermont, the University of Rhode Island, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of the Université de Paris and the Università Italiana per Stranieri in Perugia, Italy.

He married Marie Maurice Christiane de Vitry d'Avaucourt in Paris in 1953. She survives him.

He is also survived by three sons, John C. Donahue III of Denville, N.J., Pierre M. Donahue of Takoma Park, Md., and Marc T.C. Donahue of Monticello, Ind.; three daughters, Anne de la B. Donahue of Northfield, Christiane K. Donahue of Northfield, and Mayalen Mary Donahue of Tampa, Fla.; a sister, Meg Donahue Davis of Northfield, and seven grandchildren as well as many cousins and other relatives in Northfield.

He was predeceased a sister, Frances D. Leach of Burlington.

Mr. Donahue was a member of the O'Donoghue Society - Royal Order of Eoghanacht O Donnchadha of Ireland, the Manhattan College Alumni, the Northfield Historical Society, St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church and Sorrel-Maynard Post 63 American Legion.

A Mass of Christian burial will be held at 10 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 6, at St. John the Evangelist Church, Vine Street, Northfield, with burial following at Calvary Cemetery.