I doubt many, while growing up, felt he was a man who would make a real difference. Even today, if you saw him in a crowded room, you probably wouldn’t notice him if he weren’t just a little taller than most of the people there. After talking with him for a short period, you probably wouldn’t think of him as someone who would ever attain greatness. That is the problem with drawing conclusions from first impressions.

Most of those in the public eye are there specifically to be in the public eye. However, every once in a while there are those in the public eye only because they’ve been thrust there. More often than not, the ones who are there quite by accident, are the ones who do the most and make the biggest differences.

Don Donoher is one of those men.

Don grew up in Toledo, Ohio, the fifth of five children and the fourth of four boys. Brought into a deeply religious family, sports weren’t always the main topic at the dinner table. The boys played the typical sport in season, but certainly not with the passion we find in many households today. In the end, Don was the only boy who did not join the priesthood.

Probably the most athletically inclined of the brood, Don spent a great deal of time with his father attending athletic events. “My father was a great fan. He was small and was never on an organized team. He would take me to all the games, the Tigers, the Red Wings, the University of Toledo. I had a one-track mind from the time that I was a pup.” Little did he know at that time where his love for sports would take him.

Although he played baseball and football growing up, Mickey, as he is called by many, concentrated on basketball in high school. Tall and skinny, he was not very fast and certainly was no threat to jump his way out of any buildings. He played in an area that loved its basketball, and Toledo Central Catholic was the best in the area. In fact, the school’s hoops team was one of the best in the state. It was during this time that his love for basketball really blossomed.

“I played on a very good high school basketball team. As a junior, we were runners-up in the big school Class A championship, having lost that game to Hamilton Public. We had two junior starters that eventually went to the University of Dayton, and both of us (Specs McCloskey) were out of the lineup that day with an injury or illness. We had good size on the team and I played forward. I didn’t play a lot my senior year due to an injury. Athletically I was very limited, but I had some range. In that day, we all had two-handed set shots. You could shoot that thing from downtown. We didn’t shoot a very high percentage. If you look back you will find that teams would shoot around 33%. If you shot 35% or 36% that would be pretty good.”

Because of his knee injury as a senior, Donoher feared he would get passed over by colleges when it came time to hand out scholarships. Primarily interested in Catholic schools, Don looked at Xavier, John Carroll and Detroit but really had his eye on Dayton. “The fact was that there were so many kids from Toledo here that I really had my heart set on coming to UD. I was just hoping Coach Blackburn would give me a chance.”

If we were to go back in time and see how recruiting was done in the 1940s and 1950s, we would probably wonder how anyone could put together a good team. It was rare to be on anyone’s radar screen before your senior year. The thought of actually recruiting juniors in high school was rarely considered. Even attending high school games was not nearly the priority. “The coaches didn’t watch much high school basketball in those days. We really wouldn’t know if there was anyone there to watch us play. Even as visible as we were, I really don’t remember seeing any coaches there except the Toledo coach, Jerry Bush.”

The recruiting was done through contacts, and Tom Blackburn had contacts throughout Ohio, including several at Toledo Central Catholic. They would utilize those contacts to create a list of potential players. Those players would then be given the opportunity to actually try out for the team. “Recruiting back then was very different than it is today. In the spring of the year, the colleges would have tryouts, which were allowed then by NCAA rules. The NCAA wasn’t a very big body in those days. I tried out at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The Fieldhouse was just being constructed at that time. There were dozens of players trying out, including Jim Paxson.“

The wining and dining that is done for recruits has come a long way in the last 50 years. “I came down twice in the spring of my senior year. The first time I came down with my best friend who was being recruited for football. We stayed in the athletic dorm and I remember Coach Blackburn taking me down for breakfast Saturday morning on Brown Street. It was the first time I had ever met him. We stayed the weekend and I got a chance to meet some of the players. We had hitchhiked from Toledo and hitchhiked back. I came down for a second weekend for the tryout. I really couldn’t play very well because of the injury, but I did suit up and play anyway. I had to let him know that I would be OK to play eventually.”

This was a different time, and although the concept of giving out scholarships to play basketball was a new idea at the University of Dayton, they were plentiful. There were to be 12 scholarships given to incoming freshmen that year, and as luck would have it, one was designated for Don “Mickey” Donoher and his bum knee. If the rules were as they are today, Donoher may well have been headed for the local sporting goods store to earn enough money to pay for college. Little did he know it at the time, but Tom Blackburn was about to begin a friendship that would last until his own passing.

Continue on to PART II.