Former Fresno supervisor John Donaldson, the ‘ultimate Renaissance man,’ dies at 95

Update: A Celebration of Life is scheduled Oct. 2 at 11 a.m. at Hope Lutheran Church, corner of Barstow Avenue and Fresno Street. Attendees are required too be vaccinated.

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John Donaldson, who taught physics at Fresno State for 35 years, served on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and is best described by longtime friends as the ultimate Renaissance man, passed away May 23 after a short illness. He was 95.

Donaldson was immersed in astronomy, an avid hiker and a former Southwest Conference champion in the discus at Rice University in 1945 and the Owls’ most outstanding male athlete in 1946 before receiving a Ph.D in physics at Yale. He played bridge with ferocity, spiked a volleyball with impunity and had a broad interest in transportation issues and classical music, singing since its inception with the Fresno Community Chorus Master Chorale.

“He’s a perfect example of a life well lived,” said Anna Hamre, artistic director of the Chorus Master Chorale.. “He always followed his passion and he did it with great integrity.

“The stories they tell about his work in service of the public are wonderful. He’s a model for everyone and his joy in life, his ability to stay positive and forward looking forever, is just a model for us all.”

Donaldson started with the chorus in 1956 when he was 30 and was still a fixture in the bass section when it premiered a piece commissioned for its 60th anniversary in 2016 when he was 90.

The weekly rehearsals were “something you build your life around,” Donaldson told The Bee in 2016, when the chorus was preparing for that 60th anniversary performance.

“John has quite a legacy,” Hamre said. “He was an incredible musician. People use the word amateur these days in kind of a derogatory way, meaning not professional. But a true amateur can be very professional and does something solely for the love of it and that was John to a tee in the most rich, most positive sense of the word. He conducted. He sang. He coordinated. He contracted musicians. He’d type our programs sometimes.

“I remember one time in a concert and John was singing in the bass section and suddenly he left the choir to cover a percussion part because there was no money to hire an extra percussionist. John did everything. He was a very gifted musician. Musically, he had a consistent low-C and any choir director will tell you that person has to be front and center because we don’t have many consistent low Cs.”

A love of music

Donaldson also served for decades as the choir director at Community United Church of Christ.

“John was just incredible,” said Phillip Fullerton, a longtime friend. “He did it all, from being an athlete, to an interest in music and physics. He was such a good person, he just did it all. He was an old backpacker and we would share information. He lived for a year in Switzerland with Shirley, his wife.

“He just loved music. He moved Bach’s Mass in B Minor. He was a great choir director. He did a fine job, and he understood the music. He would turn around and explain to us why the music was important.”

Donaldson married Shirley Brown in 1951 and she died from Alzheimer’s disease in 2006, shortly before their 55th wedding anniversary. Together, they had four children. Several years after Shirley’s death he reconnected with Ruth Reynolds, an old college friend who had introduced Donaldson to his future wife. Ruth died in 2017.

A celebration of life is being planned, Hamre said.

Donaldson’s interest in politics went beyond his time on the Board of Supervisors, serving on the board of the League of Women Voters and attending meetings of the Fresno Council of Governments, which deals with transportation planning and programming issues.

“His car was filled with all kinds of political stickers,” Fullerton said.

“He loved being on the board. He loved everything, really,” said Francine Farber, a former LWV president. “Not only did I know him through that, but he was a musician and so am I and my husband is a music lover.

“We used to go to the Lorenz Piano Concerts and John would always be there. He enjoyed everything. He was a little bit of a character because he would wear plaid flannel shirts and he would wear a bow tie with them. That was his signature. He’d always wear a bow tie and he always had on white socks, white sports socks, no matter what else he was wearing. You could tell him by those two things, the socks and the colorful bow tie. He participated in everything he could. He just was an enthusiastic person.”

Recruited to run for Board of Supervisors

Donaldson had been recruited to run for the Board of Supervisors, former Fresno City Councilwoman Linda Mack said.

“At the time, there was a lot of commotion or problems with the Board of Supervisors,” she said. “I was the acting chair of the committee for responsible government and we were seeking to elect a majority to the Board of Supervisors and at one of our meetings someone just suggested him I think based on knowing his activities in the community and that he was not just a physics professor, but a very involved member of the community. He just had a lot of interests and he knew a lot of people. …

“He was interested in what was going on in the community and politics, but he also had an interest in music. He also had an interest in sports. He was just a well-rounded person, I thought, and he was very active in his church. He had a wife and children. He was devoted to his family. He was just an all-around good person.”

Donaldson served two terms on the board in the 1970s, and in 2006 returned along with former supervisors John Krebs and Armando Rodriguez to argue against changing a long-standing policy prohibiting communication between the board and parties with ties to land-use applications. That policy was enacted in 1978 because at that time there were a lot of deals being made between supervisors and developers without much transparency.

After hearing from Donaldson, Krebs and Rodriguez, the board delayed a vote on the issue and directed county counsel to bring another option to consider, a more restrictive policy that would eliminate all communication before a hearing, even before an application is filed.

“John Donaldson was a very intelligent, very kind and very generous man,” said Rudy Savala, who was one of Donaldson’s students at Fresno State, later became an attorney and worked on the campaign to get him elected to the Board of Supervisors. “He was a special person and in our hearts.”

This story was originally published May 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.