Donnie was a dear friend to many and I was lucky to be one of them. He was 90 days older and my friend for more than sixty years…his great heart stopped at 10 am on July 22nd after being diagnosed with terminal cancer in May last year...his once strong body ravaged by the consequences of cancer. Donnie left us just a few days before finishing 74 full years on this earth.

For those who knew him, Donnie was a special human being. He made friends out of most acquaintances. Folks loved him. His ability to make and be a friend throughout his long life was second to none.

This eulogy is to celebrate Donnie’s life.

I miss him today, but this grief does not compare to what I felt when I learned in June 2012 that Donnie had terminal cancer and that his time with us was limited by the extent he could handle palliative care. I was devastated then. I wept with close friends for a month. I have missed him for fourteen months because we could see the end.

His death 7-22-2013 does not enlarge my grief. Rumi, a prolific Sufi poet, more than 800 years ago wrote, “I saw Grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out, ‘It tastes sweet’. ‘You've caught me’, Grief answered, "and you have ruined my business. How can I sell sorrow, when you know it is a blessing?" Donnie’s death was a blessing. He had endured all he could.

Through the past fourteen months, I thought about a lifetime of Donnie Whitesell’s friendship and about losing him. Countless personal stories during the past sixty years shaped the wonder of our friendship. We logged hundreds, maybe thousands of conversations and I want to tell of those stories, but they are only mine and each of us has our own Whitesell stories to treasure.

Nevertheless, left for me will be my own memories, similar to yours but different because they come from my experiences of Donnie. Sharing all would produce a wonderful multipart oral tapestry of his life, but would take another seventy-four years and that time is not available. My memories are mine yours are yours. One day they will comfort us. Most of all, his many friends will remember him for the delight he brought us, his wit, charm, good humor, expansive breadth of interests, special insights and simple love of this life. He did so love his life. Even during his darkest times, he lived it with great joy

Roots author, Alex Haley told of an African proverb that fits for Donnie. “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground." So many things that are gathered within a lifetime; so much knowledge; so many stories; so many emotional experiences, so much wisdom; so much physicality is recorded in life. All of these kinds of things were collected, catalogued, preserved, loaned and kept safe in the great human library that was Donnie. Now it is forever lost except in our consciousness.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet said about his father, the King, “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again. Indeed, we shall not see Donnie’s like again. I am proud to have been his friend.

This week I have been in contact with many people who knew him. A friend from elementary school until today said that if there was one kid in all of our Cradock community that symbolized what we were and wanted to be, it was young Donnie. He was strong, athletic, and handsome and perhaps the smartest kid in school. Before classes started at James Hurst, the boys played marbles for “keepsies” and Donnie kept more than any other kid; no matter what the skill set he mastered it. He did not flaunt his talents. He was never a bully. He was liked and admired by his classmates and his teachers.

The grace and beauty of Donnie as a kid playing sports was an incredible thing to see. He had a mind-body connection that made him truly fun to watch. Donnie played every sport in school and excelled in all of them. I remember playing summer league baseball in Pete Peterson’s summer league at James Hurst. Whenever Donnie came to bat (we did not have fences) the outfielders in left and center field moved back to the edge of the woods so that they would not need to chase Donnie’s long hits into the woods past the playground. He was spectacular and only 12-years-old.

At Alexander Park and later in high school at Cradock, Donnie continued to excel in athletics and in academic pursuits. He led the football team in his senior year (7 Wins-3 Losses) as the top scorer, gained the most yardage of any back, and was on the All-City squad. He lettered in basketball and baseball and ran track in College. The National Honor Society was his for his Junior and Senior years. Most Likely to Succeed was the choice of his senior classmates. He won academic scholarships to several in and out of state colleges. He was a class officer all four years and no one I know was better liked in CHS-57.

He chose a scholarship to William and Mary College, received a BS in Chemistry and graduated in 1961 to become a staff chemist with several national companies. He loved his life in “the Burg”, his fraternity life, athletics, social life, and rarely missed a season without returning to Williamsburg to renew old school ties.

He completed his Selective Service obligation as a National Guard Officer. He was proud of that affiliation. He considered serving his country to be a privilege.

After ten years as a laboratory chemist, he changed careers, received an MBA from Old Dominion University and chose a career as a stockbroker, where he served clients in Hampton Roads, until his retirement in the nineties. He taught as an adjunct professor at both Old Dominion University and Tidewater Community College.

He was deeply and profoundly grateful to his loving wife, Donna. He said often through the last fifteen years, and constantly in the past 14 months that he would never have lived for 74 years without her. She showed him more than twenty years of a beautiful and loving life. He cherished his daughter, Hunter, a confidant during their adult relationship. He cherished his beautiful grandchild Gracie more than he ever expected; she was the light of his life for the past six years. It was sad near the end when he was physically unable to handle her boundless enthusiasm for life.

Donnie’s running mates, old friends as well as work mates always shared “special adventures” with him from high school through his first half century. An outing with Donnie was a memory maker. If you have been with him on an ‘adventure’, you understand, and he always had a great sense of humor about the good times we shared. Once forty years ago on the way to the Gulf Stream fishing, he sipped a cool brew and asked my brother and I soberly, “Kirsch boys, I wonder what the poor people are doing today”...then all of us cracked up in gales of laughter. Of course, we were the poor people. Life for Donnie was always “as good as it gets”.

Lately I loved his regular phone calls...often three times a week (for 15 years) when he was in good health. He was always a good storyteller and rarely opened a conversation without a humorous antidote. Donnie overwhelmed me with his diversity of his interests. He believed in the goodness of the human spirit, and he was full of that goodness. He repeatedly said to me...”There are no unnatural or supernatural phenomena, only huge gaps in our knowledge of the natural. He worked always to fill those gaps of ignorance in himself. He never stopped voraciously reading everything that interested him and spent many hours during his final illness reading and re-reading the classics. I loved our conversations about recent reads. Donnie was always seeking enlightenment. He never stopped learning...from Zoroastrianism, the state religion of the Achaemenid Empire, to the Council of Nicaea to the Higgs boson, and anywhere his interest wandered.

I never saw malice in Donnie. He did not piously spout expressions of love, but he was ever so kind in discussing and discoursing on friends and acquaintances. In the past twenty years, Donnie and I talked for hours, days, weeks about the mundane events, our mutual friends, public officials, sports heroes, and the everyday events of our lives and families. I sometimes brought out my long-knives, spewing venom about the SOB’s I encountered, whereas Donnie gave everyone a pass. He knew humanity, understood and forgave foibles. I love him for the regular doses of “kindness training”.

He had no complaints about life nor the hand he was dealt to end it. He said, “This is about as much time as the Whitesell men get...its not that my life was shortened...I made it seventy-four years”. He did not want to go and hoped he would not go very far...just some soft place in the back of our memories where he could nudge us from time to time with a smile or a laugh. A few months ago, he reminded me of the amusement park game where you picked up a rubber fish and won a prize. The prize these days for many of us as the stream of life runs by is inscribed on the bottom of the pickup toy with “heart disease”, “cancer”, “dementia”, “Parkinson’s” and the like....prizes we never expected.

In the last few years, Donnie spoke at funeral services for friends. He liked to read “Desiderata”, by Max Ehrmann an American writer, poet, and Indiana attorney who often wrote on spiritual themes. Surely, this contained Donnie’s life’s philosophy. Find it and read it.

Shakespeare’s Juliet speech before confirming the news of Romeo’s death...

“Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”

My thought in closing: Donnie, you made a lifetime of good memories for me. These are my keepsakes. You are no longer in my daily keeping, but forever in my heart.

Goodnight, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Farewell Donnie, my brother, I have loved you mightily…always…and I love you now.

Bernie Kirsch, CHS-57 (7-28-2013)