I first heard of Tom Donovan, (who is pictured in the photo above as he appears in the Central Williamson Creek Greenway website) in the late 1980’s when he was a high school teacher. Towards the end of his life, he worked to preserve the beautiful natural areas of Austin, and a Nature Trail in south Austin is now named for him. However, I when knew him he was working in a high school, trying to get teen-aged kids interested in learning new things about Texas wildlife—and bugs and plants and ecosystems. Tom Donovan was passionate about nature and he wanted his students to share his passion.
Some background to this story
This story starts in the mid-1980s, when my wife began teaching in a private high school for young people who were “bright divergent thinkers.” Yes, my petite, quiet wife had started wrangling unruly teenagers! A few years after she started teaching, she also began working in the school office, so she became aware of much of what was happening behind the scenes. (And please note that this story is told as I remember it. She might have a much different version.) At the time that I am remembering, in the late 1980’s, the school year had just started and a newly-hired science teacher was having severe discipline problems. A few weeks into the school year, the new teacher came charging into the office and said “I QUIT! I’VE HAD IT with these students!” And he stormed out of the office, and out of the school.
This put the principal of the school in a real bind. She talked to people at other institutions where she taught, or had connections, including the Austin Theological Seminary, where she tutored students in writing, and the University of Texas at Austin, where she had run the writing lab before starting her own school, and she advertised everywhere she could. She had several people apply for the position, and, as I remember, she hired someone from the Seminary.
This young seminarian was a very quiet, religious guy, who said, as I recall the story, that he “couldn’t think of a better way of serving the Lord than helping these troubled young people.” He even felt that this might be his calling. So he started at the beginning of the next week.
But about a week or two later, he also came into the office and said, “I QUIT!” The last they saw of him, he was trotting up the hill to the bus stop. So a new search started for a science teacher. But it was quite difficult to find teachers willing to start work this late in the school year.
Tom Donovan joins the high school faculty
Economically, that period was a hard one in Austin, and the housing industry in particular was struggling. One day the principal’s husband heard that a friend, Tom Donovan, was having trouble getting work. Tom had been building really nice custom homes for wealthy people before the housing downturn came, but that work had come to an end. He also happened to be very close to having a PhD in biology, as he had completed all the required course work, years earlier, although he had not completed a dissertation within the allotted time frame. Now he was looking for a job outside the housing industry, and a job teaching high school science seemed a good fit for him.
So the principal hired Tom Donovan to be the new science teacher, and she told the students to expect him on the next Monday. (The students would be calling their new teacher by his first name only, because that was the school policy, but as I remember they did it with the greatest respect!)
The new science teacher makes his dramatic entrance
As I remember the story, the principal had just gone into the science classroom to make sure that the kids were behaving themselves, and to introduce the new teacher, when a loud “hog” (also known as a Harley Davidson Motor Bike) roared up into the driveway, just outside the classroom window. Some of the the guys jumped up and rushed over to the window to see what was happening. A man with a long beard slowly unfolded himself from the seat. He appeared to be about seven feet tall and very muscular, with no fat on him. He had a black leather jacket on, with a “HELL’S ANGELS” patch on its back. He was wearing leather pants and black combat boots.
He was coming to their classroom! A moment or two later they heard his boots thumping towards the door. He came in and gruffly announced that he was the new science teacher. Then he walked straight to the front of the room, nodded and said hello to the principal, grabbed a piece of chalk, and started teaching. There were no discipline problems in the science classes from that day forward, and the students loved him.
Tom explains his place in the hierarchy
After Tom joined the school, any time that there were discipline problems in his area of the school building, Tom would be sent to take care of them. One day in study hall, the students had made a bad mess and he was sent in to get the kids to clean it up. Another time, one of the kids asked why Tom was allowed to carry a pocket knife into school and they were not allowed to do the same.
Tom, as I heard him tell the story, was eating an apple with the knife he called his frog-stabber, carefully cutting the apple into pieces, then using the knife to put the pieces into his mouth. He slowly leaned forward to look at the person who had questioned him. Then he spoke in a firm voice, taking hold of the blade of the knife, and slapping the handle against the open palm of his other hand.
“BECAUSE I’M A TEACHER!” He looked the inquisitor straight in the eyes. That was the last question on that subject, and Tom’s reputation among the toughest kids continued to grow.
It became hard for me to know which of Tom’s stories were true and which were not. Tom was of Irish extraction, and storytelling came naturally to him. And of course, each time he re-told a story, it got better and better. He certainly had “the gift of the gab.”
Tom solves a student sabotage problem
The next story may be apocryphal, but I will tell it anyway. In the spring term of the year that Tom started teaching, the bell in the back school building failed to sound at the beginning of class one day. Someone had cut the electrical line to the bell. The students in that building missed the the start of class. Since Tom had worked in the construction industry, the principal asked Tom to fix it so that the students could not do this again. The principal was thinking about maybe putting the line in metal conduit or burying the wires. Tom said that he would take care of it. The next day, Tom had his ladder out, repairing the line in full view of the students. And he pounded a huge nail into the wall below the new line. While he was working, he would tell every boy who walked by that he was repairing the electrical line, and if it was ever cut again, Tom would personally hang whoever cut the line from that big nail. The line was never cut again, and the incident was soon forgotten as the school year passed. Tom’s popularity among the students continued to grow, and the stories about him grew also. He became a legendary figure among the students, and I am sure that many of them remember him to this day.
Tom and his crew add a family room to our house
During the summer vacation following Tom’s first year of teaching at the school, Marilyn asked him if he could look at our house to see what it would take to add a family room on the back. It was something she had wanted to do ever since we had bought the house, and she had it all planned out. He came by and gave us a quote. So we hired him to put the room on, and that’s how I got to know him. His workers were just as colorful as he was. They all rode motorcycles, and they lined them up in front of the house each day. I got numerous questions from the neighbors! Tom and his team did excellent work. We (and our grandchildren) still enjoy our family room, and it has outlived several other improvements we have had done on the house.
Tom’s work crew told a lot of stories, and in general they were fun guys to be around. I remember in particular that Tom was the president of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club which kept order at Eeyore’s Birthday Party, which was always held at the end of April in Pease Park, near the UT campus. Eeyore might be an innocent character in a children’s book, but his birthday celebration in Austin could get quite raucous!
Tom’s San Diego Stories
Tom had grown up in San Diego, California, like Marilyn, so they had some things in common to talk about. One of the more memorable times for me was when Tom asked Marilyn where she had gone to high school. He said he had gone to Hoover High in North Park, but he knew all the other high schools in town, and he might know some of the people from her school. Marilyn said she had gone to Our Lady of Peace, also in North Park. Tom got a totally blank look on his face and said, “Nope, never heard of it.” (Marilyn guessed that her high school didn’t have any teams that competed with his high school, since her high school was all girls.)
One San Diego story that really hit home for me was when Tom admitted that one of his favorite high school activities had been going downtown and rolling drunk sailors for some easy money. When I was doing my Navy training in San Diego, we were constantly warned to be very careful in the downtown area because some of the local people would steal our wallets if we got really drunk. I’d never had any trouble with that, but here in Austin I was actually hiring one of the people I had been warned about!
Tom Donovan’s legendary pickup truck
Tom had an very old pickup truck that always looked like it was just about to break down. He told me that once, when he was driving on a very narrow street in Austin, heading down towards UT, a small, shiny new convertible pulled up behind him. The driver (either a frat boy or a very entitled attorney, Tom thought) was clearly irritated because Tom was not going very fast. So the guy honked and waved at Tom, trying to get him to either speed up or pull over. But Tom just continued his journey, driving a bit under the speed limit and stopping very carefully at all the stop signs.
By this time Tom was getting fairly close to the UT campus, and the guy behind him was getting really rude. At the next stop sign, Tom threw open the door of his truck, reached under his seat for a big pipe wrench, and climbed out, very slowly unfolding himself to his full height. He was well over six feet tall, and very muscular. He headed back to talk to the impatient driver. In his story to me, Tom said the guy’s eyes got as big as dinner plates as Tom walked slowly back to his sports car, swinging the big pipe wrench, and narrowly missing the headlights on the little car. The guy slammed the car into reverse gear, laid rubber backing up, and then turned around and headed away as fast as he could go.
Why Tom Donovan did not have a Ph.D. diploma
As I have said, according to what we both had heard, Tom had completed all of the course work for a PhD in biology, but he had never written his doctoral dissertation. As Marilyn remembers the story, his son’s birth happened just at the time when Tom should have been working on his dissertation. As I remember, his son was very sickly for the first few years of his life, and Tom felt that supporting his family and taking care of the baby should be his top priority.
Tom Donovan moves on…
Tom continued teaching at Marilyn’s school for several years. But eventually the economy in Austin improved, and Tom went back to construction work. We did hire him to install grab bars in our bathroom when we were having it refurbished before my mother’s visit, and at that time he told us he was moving to another city to be near his son, who was starting his own business. That was the last conversation I remember having with him, but I will always remember him as a true “Weird Austin” character and a friend.
Note: When I was working on this piece, Marilyn did some Google searches to try to find Tom Donovan and she found a memorial site about the nature trail in south Austin that bears his name. He was truly one of a kind.
Note: When I was working on this piece, Marilyn did some Google searches to try to find Tom Donovan and she found a memorial site about the nature trail in south Austin that bears his name. He was truly one of a kind
