Paul A.Donato

Origins

Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts

He was born in Boston on 26 October 1915, and his family almost immediately returned to Italy with him, to Saponara in Sicily.S22S1

He returned to the United States at the age of seventeen, after the influenza epidemic killed his mother, two of his brothers and his sister. Given that he had left as a baby, he was for all intents and purposes immigrating to the United States from Italy. He had to learn American culture and the English language.S1

In August 1937 the Manchester Union described him as an Italian instrument maker who had lived in the United States for five years, which places his return at about 1932.S2 By then the family was in Roxbury, and he ran, boxed and wrestled under the colors of the Boys Club of Boston.S9 This also settles the ARRS rankings, which give his birth year as 1908 and are wrong by seven years.S15 He really was twenty one on the mountain.

The Cathedral Run

Earliest known photograph

The earliest image of him yet located. He is in the center, about twenty years old, in the singlet lettered BCOB for the Boys Club of Boston, with his arms over the shoulders of Francis Ryder and Johnny Simkonis.S11

His First Boston Marathon, Hidden Under a Misspelling

3:09:14 · Forty third of 70 finishers · Short course

He is in the association’s results file for 1936, but under the name “Paul Decato”, which is why this race went unrecorded for many years.S20

His First National Championship, and an Olympic Trial

3:10:15 · Entered as number 83, Boston Boys’ Club

The fifth annual Evening Star Marathon, which was simultaneously the national AAU championship and the United States Olympic marathon trial for the Berlin Games. The winner, William McMahon, took a place on the team with 2:38:14.4. Johnny Kelley was second.S16

Donato was about twenty, entered under the Boston Boys’ Club, and finished twenty first in 3:10:15. It is the earliest race of his yet documented, and it means he stood in an Olympic trial field four years before the one he nearly made.S16

His First Boston

3:01:15 · Twentieth of 85 finishers · Short course

His second Boston.S20 He was twenty one, four months from winning Mount Washington, and eight minutes quicker than the year before. Twelve months later he would take another nineteen minutes off it.

His 2nd Boston Marathon

3:01:15 · Twentieth of 85 finishers

His 2nd Boston Marathon, and eight minutes quicker than the year before.S20 He was twenty one, four months from winning Mount Washington. Twelve months after this he would take another nineteen minutes off it and finish fifth.

National A.A.U. Marathon Championship

Thirteenth · Entered as number 17, Roxbury Boys’ Club

The sixth annual Evening Star Marathon, run over the full 26 miles 385 yards. Mel Porter of the Millrose A.A. took the lead near the sixteen mile post, was passed by Pat Dengis, then overhauled him again crossing Arlington Memorial Bridge and won by almost half a mile in 2:44:42. Clarence DeMar, then forty nine, was fourth.S8

Donato finished thirteenth, an improvement of eight places on the previous year.S16 The family holds the framed panoramic photograph of the assembled field, and he is in it: eleventh from the left of the second group, in the Boys Club singlet, wearing the number 17 that the Evening Star entry list assigns him.S16 That identification also dates the photograph, because he wore 83 in 1936.

He Wins the Mount Washington Road Race

1:16:24 · Number 2 · 44 starters · Age 21

The second running of the race up the Mount Washington carriage road, then still dirt. Eight miles at a twenty two degree average incline, from the Glen House on the Pinkham Notch road to the summit, an ascent of about 4,800 feet.S5 The modern race measures 7.6 miles.S1

Francis Darrah of Manchester, the defending champion and record holder, led at the five mile mark. Above the halfway house Darrah’s stomach gave out and he walked the last mile. Donato went by and won in 1:16:24, in front of more than four hundred spectators who had come up on a special cog railway train. Italo Amicangioli was second in 1:19:25 and William Honeywell third in 1:19:41.S2S3

He is a swell runner and a fine sport, I’m sorry his stomach slowed him up.

Donato on Darrah, at the summitS2

At the summit Darrah himself handed over the cup, with Governor Francis P. Murphy of New Hampshire and his daughter Eleanor looking on.S4 A second photograph of the presentation, published by the Boston Globe the following summer, shows Donato with the governor and with Dr. George S. Foster of Manchester, the man in whose honor the race was founded.S5 Paramount and Pathé newsreel cameras filmed the ceremony.S12

Toronto Marathon

2:58:25

A month after the mountain, and his first race outside the United States as far as the record shows.S15

Port Chester Marathon

2:58:37

The first of three Port Chester marathons he ran over four years.S15

Boston Marathon

2:42:05 · Les Pawson won in 2:35:34

His first top ten finish at Boston.S20

Three days beforehand the United Press ran a series in which contenders assessed their own chances. Donato wrote his own, and it is the longest piece of his own voice yet found. He was twenty two.S25

I have been training a great deal and have run the full course from Hopkinson to Boston on four occasions. My times have been very good.

Walking has been an important part of my training. I have walked twenty miles every Monday since the middle of January.

I came to this country from Italy about five years ago. I am 22, weigh 140, and am unmarried.

I pick Pat Dengis, Gerard Cote, and Johnny Kelley to finish in that order but there’s a good chance I can beat them all. I will eat a pound of lump sugar before the race and drink tea containing a great deal of sugar during the race.

Paul Donato, written for the United Press, 16 April 1938S25

Salisbury Beach Marathon

2:39:18

His fastest recorded time at a marathon.S15

The Vertical Mile

Second · Darrah won in 2:08:14.8 · 15 starters, 10 finishers

This was the vertical mile: twelve and a half miles up the Pikes Peak Highway from Crystal Creek to the summit, finishing exactly one mile higher than the start.S17

Francis Darrah won it, as he had won the mountain in 1936 and would win it again that August. Donato was second, about six minutes back.S2S17 A Boston runner traveling to Colorado to race in 1938 was an unusual undertaking, and this is the only race of his yet documented west of the Mississippi.

Paul was offered money to compete in the race. A good natured man, he gave part of it to Francis Darrah and another training partner so they could travel and race together. Unfortunately for Paul, Francis beat him in the race. We do not know if Francis shared the prize money, if any.

The obituary adds the texture of the drive west:S1

They sent him $300 for travel expenses, but instead of using it on himself, Dad invited two other runners to go out there with him.

The trio were so tight for money that they rode west in Mr. Donato’s car, slept by the side of the road, and ate beans by an open fire.

Paul G. Donato, on his fatherS1

The obituary also gets two details of the race wrong. It dates it to 1937, and it says Pat Dengis of Baltimore, beat out Mr. Donato to win. Contemporary newspapers place the race on 4 July 1938 and name the winner as Francis Darrah, who is the man in the sash in the photograph below.S1S17 The same obituary misreports his own name in its headline as Paul G. Donato. He was Paul A. Donato. Paul G. Donato was his son.

Old Orchard Beach Ten Miles

Somewhere between fifth and tenth

The field included Clarence DeMar, Les Pawson and Hawk Zamparelli. Pawson finished third in 52:44.2. The published account names the fifth through tenth finishers as a group, Donato among them, without ordering them.S10

Mount Washington, Defending

1:19:10 · Darrah won in 1:15:27

Three days after Old Orchard Beach he went back to Mount Washington and lost to Darrah, who took the title back and lowered the mark. Amicangioli was third again in 1:20:17.S2

This was the third running of the race. Donato’s name is inscribed on the original winner’s trophy, which the race history names as the Foster Trophy and which was still being presented in 1961.S1S19

National A.A.U. Marathon Championship

2:50:33

His third national championship and his best placing in one to date, sixth over the full distance.S15

Boston Marathon, and the First Olympic Qualifier

2:34:25 · Ellison “Tarzan” Brown won in 2:28:51.4

Sixth, behind Brown, Heinicke, Young, Dengis and Pawson.S7S15 This race was also the first of the three counting toward selection of the 1940 United States Olympic marathon team.S6

This is his fastest Boston Marathon. The association’s own results file gives 2:34:25 and lists him sixth, behind Pawson at 2:33:57.S20 The ARRS rankings give 2:34:25.2 and Dave Dunham’s history 2:34:36; the association’s record is preferred.S15S2

He should not have started. He had come down in training and carried a badly bruised, indigo coloured knee to the line, and nearly everyone advised him not to run. He ran anyway. Michael Ward records that he suffered through the first three quarters of the race and then found the closing miles free of it.S23

I was in agony.

The last five [miles] didn’t bother me at all.

Donato on the 1939 Boston MarathonS23

He gave his own account of it a year later, under his own byline, and characteristically played it down: Although I slipped from fifth to sixth last year, I did pretty well because a leg injury slowed me up.S25

Salisbury Beach Marathon

2:45:31

His second running of the race, a place better and six minutes slower.S15

Irish American A.C. Twelve Miles

Second annual · 100 entered, 50 started, 25 finished

Run in heat that halved the field twice over: a hundred entered, fifty came to the line and only twenty five finished. The field included Hawk Zamparelli, Clarence DeMar, Jock Semple, George Durgin and Anthony Medeiros. Les Pawson entered and did not show.S23

His placing is not given. Placing sought, New Bedford Standard Times, 10 July 1939

Port Chester Marathon

2:58:20

Eight places better than two years before, on effectively the same time.S15

National A.A.U. Marathon Championship

2:47:32

The second of the three Olympic qualifying races. He placed 10th, which was exactly enough: the American Olympic Committee counted only the first ten finishers of each qualifier toward selection.S6

A United Press wire report published the next day names him in the first ten in finishing order, after William Wicklund, Don Heinicke, George Durgin and Frank Kelley.S18 At 2:47:32 over the full distance, this is the fastest true marathon he is recorded to have run.S15

Others in the first 10 included in the following order: William Wicklund, New York; Don Heinicke, Baltimore; George Durgin, Boston; Frank Kelley, Philadelphia, and Paul Donato, Roxbury, Mass.

United Press wire report, 13 November 1939S18

Pat Dengis Memorial Three Miles

B.A.A. Games · A seven man invitation field

An indoor memorial race for Pat Dengis, the Baltimore marathoner who had been killed in an aeroplane crash the year before. The B.A.A. filled the field by invitation and announced seven names: Tarzan Brown, Leslie Pawson, Johnny Kelley, Lou Gregory, Frank Darrah, George Durgin and Paul Donato.S24 Pawson won it in a meet record 15:05.4.S28

Being named to that seven is the measure of where he stood in February 1940. Austen Lake of the Boston Evening American caught what the race was for.

For tradition, mes ames, is the soul of the B. A. A.! A dip of the knee to old memories, a flirt of the hand to the past, a kindly kiss down the corridor of the years, an auld lang syne to vanished good fellows.

Thus this three-mile oddity! With such artisan athletes as Johnny [Kelley], Leslie Pawson, Tarzan Brown, Frank Darrah, Paul Donato, George Durgin and Lou Gregory twitching a sad cavalcade around the Garden’s wooden saucer, men who suffered gas pains, blurred vision and ankle-aches with Dengis each Patriots’ Day through the years.

Austen Lake, Boston Evening American, 9 February 1940. The scan reads “Johnny Raley”, a misprint for Kelley.S24

His placing is not known. The paper previewed the race three times and never printed a summary, and no other digitised paper carries one. Result sought, Boston Globe or New York Times, 11 to 12 February 1940

North Medford Twenty Miles

Fourth · Les Pawson won by more than four minutes

The traditional tune up for Boston, run over the roads of Medford, Stoneham, Somerville and Malden. Pawson beat the whole field by more than four minutes, into a stiff head wind. Behind him: Don Heinicke second, Gérard Côté third, Donato fourth, George Durgin fifth and Johnny Kelley sixth.S28

Reporting the same race, Michael Ward preserves the plainest of the names the Boston papers hung on him.S23

the Roxbury strong boy

Boston press, March 1940, quoted by WardS23

Two weeks later he named the race himself as part of his preparation: The North Medford race in which I finished fourth has helped to condition me.S25

The Final Tryout

2:34:54

By 1940 he was rated. Five days out the Globe published a preference poll that had him fourth in the country, behind Pawson, Brown and Heinicke and ahead of Côté and Kelley. The Herald ran its own board of seventeen road racing experts, which put him fourth again on 110 points out of a possible 170.S23

He was on that panel himself. Will Cloney seated him among the seventeen experts, alongside Hawk Zamparelli, and the two of them were barred from voting for themselves. At twenty four a foundry hand from Roxbury was considered enough of an authority on road racing for a Boston paper to ask him who would win.S23

If past performances, of both runners and experts, mean anything, then Pawson, Brown, Heinicke, and Donato will be in the first five on Friday. It will be fun to see how the thing turns out.

Will Cloney, Boston Herald, five days out. Donato finished fifth.S23

Two weeks out he wrote for the United Press again. The swagger of 1938 is gone and something steadier has replaced it.S25

Road work three times a week and working in a foundry have put me in top physical condition.

This will be my fifth B.A.A. start. In my first try in 1936, I was 43d. The next year I advanced to 20th. I sure hope to be somewhere in the first five this patriot’s day.

Paul Donato, 5 April 1940. He finished fifth.S25

The 1940 Boston Marathon doubled as the final Olympic tryout. The official result recorded by the American Olympic Committee reads:S6

1. Gerard E. Cote, 2 hrs. 28 min. 28⅗s., St. Hyacinthe, P.Q., Canada · 2. John A. Kelley, 2 hrs. 32 min. 3s., Arlington, Mass. · 3. Don Heinicke, 2 hrs. 32 min. 21s., Baltimore, Md. · 4. Leslie S. Pawson, 2 hrs. 33 min. 9s., Pawtucket, R.I. · 5. Paul Donato, 2 hrs. 34 min. 54s., Boston, Mass.

American Olympic Committee Report, 1940, page 50S6

Côté, the winner, was Canadian and therefore not eligible for the American team, so the whole team had to be chosen on average placings across the three races.S6

Afterwards, with his head on the rubbing table, he told the reporters he was finished. Michael Ward records the moment, and the nickname the press had hung on him:S23

Yes, this is my last Marathon. Why stay in it? I’ve finished fifth twice now, and sixth in another try. It isn’t worth the time and trouble any more. I’m quitting now, and having some fun for a change. Say, what do you have to do to win this race now, run the course in 2:20?

Donato, grinning, 19 April 1940S23

He ran Boston five more times.

Named to the Olympic Team

The Games were never held

The team was picked on a three race point system announced in advance and mailed by registered mail to every known prominent marathoner in the country: the 1939 Boston Marathon, the 1939 national championship at Yonkers, and the 1940 Boston Marathon as final tryout.S6

Donato placed sixth, tenth and fifth. On raw placings that is 21 points and fourth overall, eight behind Pawson and four behind Kelley. On the committee’s own adjusted table, which removed ineligible runners and moved everyone up, it is 13 points, and he is still fourth.S7S6 Either way he finished one place outside the team and was named the first of the three alternates.

The team is, therefore, as follows: Don Heinicke, Baltimore, Md. · Leslie S. Pawson, Pawtucket, R.I. · John A. Kelley, Arlington, Mass.

Alternates: Paul Donato, Boston, Mass. · Fred A. McGlone, Roxbury, Mass. · George L. Durgin, Beverly, Mass.

American Olympic Committee Report, 1940, page 50S6

Rule four of the selection plan added that no alternate will be taken to the Olympic Games unless one of those named to the team is unable to compete.S6 The report carries the line the celebration of which was prevented by war on its cover. Helsinki did not host the Games until 1952.

Port Chester Marathon

3:16:55

Eighteen minutes slower than the year before, and his slowest recorded marathon.S15

National A.A.U. Marathon Championship

2:50:06 · Full distance

His fifth and last national championship, and the first he finished outside the top ten.S15

The Race He Should Have Won

Second · Number 2, General Electric · 75 starters

The thirty first annual Cathedral Club ten mile road race, starting at the clubhouse on Union Park Street in the South End and running out by the Strandway. Seventy five men entered. Les Pawson was number 1 and Donato was number 2.S24

It was a handicap race, and Pawson was the only man off scratch. The officials sent him away a minute early by mistake. Pawson won it, and beat Donato home by something between a hundred and a hundred and twenty five yards, inside the minute he had been given in error.S23

It was agreed afterwards that without the mistake Donato would have won. He had no intention of protesting.S23

This is all supposed to be sport.

Donato, declining to protestS23

Neither wire report of the race mentions the false start or any protest, which is exactly what you would expect: there was nothing to report because he would not make it a story.S18 The finishing order was Pawson, Donato, Fred McGlone, Francis Ryder and Edward Cook, and Pawson’s 51:58 took forty four seconds off Tarzan Brown’s course record.S23

The officiating was poor at both ends of the course. Nobody had painted a finish line on the road, which made a mess of the close finishes, and the timekeepers made a worse mess still: their figures had seven men inside Brown’s record. One official was found to have left his stopwatch sitting in its set position.S23

Then at the end of the race, the watch readers developed astigmatism, or something, cut 3 minutes off everybody’s time, and ha[d] seven runners breaking Brown’s record.

Will Cloney, Boston Herald, reported as 13 April 1941, page 28, via WardS23

His remark survives because a Boston reporter wrote it down and Ward went back and found it. Ward’s endnote is reported to give the Boston Globe of Sunday 13 April 1941, page 27, though that citation has not itself been verified.S23 Globe report to be pulled and read, 13 April 1941, page 27

The Ryder who finished fourth is Francis Ryder, the same man standing with his arm around Donato in Plate 2, five years earlier.

Boston Marathon, the Fourth Top Ten

2:49:02 · Running for General Electric Employees

His fourth and last top ten finish at Boston. By this race his club affiliation had changed from the Boys Club of Boston to General Electric Employees, the works team at the Lynn Riverworks plant where he had gone to work as an electrician.S9S1

Two miles along, at Ashland, he was in the leading bunch: behind Hawk Zamparelli, who was running on a bandaged knee, and the tight formation of Lou Gregory, Johnny Kelley and Gérard Côté, in company with Don Heinicke, Joe Kleinerman, Les Pawson, Scotty Rankine and Joe Smith.S23

It was a hot day, and Will Cloney of the Herald reached for a comparison that Ward notes he never bothered to explain.

It was plenty hot. In fact it was so hot that the runners appeared to be running in cellophane panties.

Will Cloney, Boston Herald, on the 1941 raceS23

He Ran It as a Soldier

2:51:35 · Seventeenth · On a pass from Fort Devens

He sent in his entry and then the Army took him. Michael Ward:S23

It was reported that Paul Donato had been inducted into the Army between the time he sent in his entry and race day. Stationed at Fort Devens, in Massachusetts, there was a chance he might make it to the marathon. As of April 17, he had not received his superior’s permission.

Michael Ward, page 337S23

Two days out, the Army had not said yes. It said yes. He got his pass, went to Hopkinton, and ran 2:51:35 for seventeenth, a newly inducted soldier out of Fort Devens finishing ahead of Charles Robbins, Leo Giard, William Wicklund and Clarence DeMar.S23S20

It was his first Boston outside the top ten in five years, and the last he would run for five more. The pre war career does not end with a decision. It ends with a draft notice arriving between the entry form and the starting line.

The War Years

United States Army, electrician

He was inducted in the spring of 1942, between posting his Boston entry and race day, and went first to Fort Devens in Massachusetts.S23 He served as an Army electrician until 1945, in France, Italy, Germany and North Africa.S1 He was twenty six when he went and thirty when he came back, and those were the years that would have been the back half of his competitive prime. He wasn’t the same runner when he returned from the war.

The Boston Marathon was run through the war, and he is absent from the published results for 1943, 1944 and 1945.S20

He surfaces once, in Naples, in a Stars and Stripes column of 21 September 1944 about a long distance race the Allied Sports Commission was thinking of sanctioning. It is the only source found anywhere that gives his rank, and it shows the Boston record had travelled with him:S27

He will be opposed by such men as Pfc. Paul Donato, four times a finisher in the Boston Marathon first ten; Pvt. Ernest Marquez, Indian known as Chief Hot Foot, and several others of national repute.

Jim Burchard, Stars and Stripes, Naples, 21 September 1944S27

No such race is ever reported in the paper, so it seems never to have been run.S27 Unit and service record sought

Boston Marathon, Nine Years On

2:57:55

Thirty fifth, at about thirty two, roughly twenty three minutes off his 1939 time on the same course.S20 He was still running, and no longer close to the front.

Boston Marathon, 1948

3:01:45

Thirty first.S20 The 1948 Olympic team went to Ted Vogel, Johnny Kelley and Ollie Manninen; Donato was some thirty places and twenty five minutes from that conversation.

It was his last Boston for seven years.

The Last One, Seven Years Later

3:05:21 · Fifty third · Listed from Lynnfield

The family was right and the results file was misleading. Tom Derderian’s appendices carry a line the association’s published extract does not: 1955, 53rd, 3:05:21, P. Donato, Lynnfield, Massachusetts.S26

The obituary always said his last race was the 1955 Boston Marathon, twenty years after his first.S1 An earlier version of this page treated that as unproven, and for a while as probably wrong, because he does not appear in the association’s file after 1948. But that file is a truncated extract for these years: 1955 lists only thirty five finishers and stops at 2:54:12, eleven minutes ahead of him.S20 He was invisible in it, not absent from the race.

Seven years after his previous Boston, at thirty nine, he went back to Hopkinton and ran 3:05:21. That is four minutes slower than his first Boston nineteen years earlier, and it is the last race of his yet documented.

What he did between 1949 and 1954 is still unknown. Racing 1949 to 1954 sought

A Start He Is In

Boys Club of Boston singlet, number 9

The field going away from the line at Hopkinton, crowd pressed to the kerb, bare trees. He is in the middle of it in the BOY’S CLUB singlet wearing number 9, and the face matches the 1936 Cathedral run print and the 1937 Mount Washington photograph.

The year is not established. Two things narrow it. He wore the Boys Club singlet from his first Boston in 1936 until about 1940, when he appears in a singlet lettered BOSTON, and from 1941 he ran for General Electric. And the numbers already known do not fit: 6 in 1940, and reportedly 15 in 1938 and 5 in 1941. That leaves 1936, 1937 or 1939 as the likely years, and a number as low as 9 suggests a runner the organisers already rated, which points away from his first two.

Also in frame: a runner in a MILLROSE singlet at number 3, and a winged-wheel emblem on number 15. Year sought

Closing Note

Where this archive stops

He lived in Lynnfield, then Medford, moved to Clearwater, Florida in 1979, and died on 8 May 2004 at eighty eight, of congestive heart failure, at Mease Continuing Care in Dunedin.S1

The line most often quoted about him is not his historian’s but a sportswriter’s. Tom Derderian, writing about these years, quotes the Boston Globe columnist Jerry Nason.

Squat, broad-chested, short legged… he might easily pass as the strong man in the circus.

Jerry Nason, Boston GlobeS1

Three Generations on the Same Two Roads

The one part of this story that has not stopped

Paul A. Donato ran Boston ten times between 1936 and 1955, and won Mount Washington in 1937 in 1:16:24.S20S26S2

His son Paul G. Donato of Lynnfield ran Boston in 1997 in 4:56:07, and went up the mountain four times: 1:55:06 in 1997, 1:51:34 in 1998, 2:01:13 in 2006 and 1:56:29 in 2007.S20S21

His grandson Dan Donato has run Boston in 2:56:23 in 2022 and 2:53:17 in 2024, and the mountain three times: 1:36:01 in 2015, 1:37:31 in 2019 and 1:46:53 in 2021.S21

Three generations of the same family over the same two roads, across ninety years. Paul A. Donato stopped running eventually but the races did not, and this is the reason most of this information is available.