Long live the king

Winter Carnival enthusiast battles back from brain injury

Whitefish folks know Rick Donahue best as Herald the Hark, the quintessential royal trumpeter who belted out ceremonial music announcing Whitefish Winter Carnival kings and queens for almost a quarter-century.

When a traumatic brain injury a couple of years ago put an end to his trumpeting, Donahue found other ways to help out with the carnival. This year he's the big daddy of them all - King Ullr L for the 50th annual celebration that culminates Feb. 7-8.

For three decades the Winter Carnival has been his passion. He has served on the carnival board for 30 years, played trumpet for 24 years and now has served in every capacity possible on the royal court. Donahue, 53, was in high school when he was crowned Prince Frey. He was the prime minister in 1995.

He got the trumpet gig in 1984 when then-Prime Minister Gary Elliott was looking for a way to jazz up the event for the 25th anniversary.

"Gary said he needed a noise-maker and knew I played the trumpet. I said, 'It sounds like fun,'" he recalled.

"I'm a strong believer that heritage and history need to stay alive," Donahue said about his enthusiasm for the time-honored carnival. The people who put on the event "are the marrow of the community," he added.

From time to time, carnival organizers have been approached by newcomers to Whitefish who say they'd like to be king or queen. He laughs at that notion.

"I do appreciate the people moving in. We have a lot of things because of them," Donahue said. "But you can't buy your way into carnival."

DONAHUE'S other passion in life has been golf. He's well-known in the Flathead golfing community and still owns and operates Rick Donahue's Golf Academy, a private teaching business.

He was giving a golf lesson at Village Greens in 2005 when an errant swing by a teenage golfer put an end to Donahue's ability to golf. The young man, a nongolfer, "was just there to swing as hard as he could," and hit Donahue at the base of the neck.

It wasn't until the next October that Donahue began to experience post-concussive syndrome.

"I had a sore neck for nine months, but the trauma didn't hit immediately," he said.

Then Donahue began having grand mal seizures and hundreds of smaller seizures that left him essentially incapacitated.

"I had 300 seizures in six months' time. I couldn't even leave the house," he said.

With no wife or children to help care for him, Donahue surrounded himself with empty cardboard boxes at his home to help break his fall if the seizures were too bad. He spent a year unable to go anywhere because the lights and noise bothered him so badly.

Donahue went from doctor to doctor, getting misdiagnosed along the way, until a nurse practitioner 'recognized what was going on" and helped him get the medical care and seizure medication he needed to stabilize the brain injury.

He deals with his injury one day at a time. It's difficult to absorb new information, and over-stimulation from noise and lights is still a problem. Most troubling was how the injury affected his depth perception and ability to size up spatial relationships.

"My golf career was over, as for the competitive end," Donahue said. "But I can still teach."

NOT BEING able to golf was a blow.

In his heyday, Donahue was a successful professional golfer competing in tournaments in 13 countries, including the 1980 British Open in Muirfield, Scotland, and the 1981 South American Tour.

The sport came naturally to him. After graduating from Whitefish High School in 1973 he became a two-sport letterman at the University of Montana - in golf and bowling.

"I was a macho sport kind of guy," he said, tongue-in-cheek. "Hey, we had a heck of a bowling team."

As a youngster, Donahue got involved in Whitefish's youth bowling program and also found a home away from home at the golf course.

"I got kicked off more than I played," he recalled with a laugh. "They didn't want junior golfers there, but it was instantly in my blood."

He kept on golfing, much to his parents' chagrin.

"My parents hated me golfing," he recalled. "They were from the Depression era. To them golfing wasn't a job. They would have preferred that I work at a tire store."

Donahue was a business-administration student at UM when he was approached by the Whitefish Lake Golf Course board about vying for the head pro job. He wrote his senior paper about how to run a golf course, but lost out on the job to Mike Dowaliby. Dowaliby later got Donahue on board as the golf course's first assistant golf professional.

Donahue's game continued to improve and in 1979 he became the head pro for Crystal Lakes Resort near Eureka. He remained there until 1983 and continued to golf on the pro circuit.

"Financially, it was not a rousing success' playing as a pro, he said. "I think my biggest check was $7,000. Travel was very expensive and I definitely spent more than I earned."

He came back to Whitefish in 1983 as an independent teaching professional and intended to go on tour full time. A sponsor promised to back him, but days before he was to leave, Donahue learned the prospective sponsor was a scam artist.

"It killed me," he said. "It was November and I had no job. So I started bartending at the Whitefish Golf Course."

Donahue took a job as head pro at Gainey Ranch Golf Course in Scottsdale, Ariz., not long after then and stayed there until 1987. He came back to Whitefish and has been there ever since. These days he's still teaching private golf lessons and is an account executive with Whitefish Radio.com.

DONAHUE by all rights is a Whitefish native, even though he was born in Iowa and came to Whitefish when he was 4 days old. It was a strange twist of fate that landed him in the arms of his adoptive parents, Jim and Jackie Donahue.

Alice Brawley, considered by most historians to be the first person born in Whitefish, later in life became a nun, Sister Mary Regis, and moved to a convent in Iowa. She was a friend of the Donahues, and one day, out of the blue, she called Jackie Donahue and told her about a young unwed mother who was giving up her child.

"I think you should come and adopt the baby," Sister Mary told her.

The Donahues had a 12-year-old son, Terry, and another child had died at childbirth.

"They said OK, and here I am," Donahue said.

Now here's the twist, he said. Brawley, before her days as a nun, was given the Indian name "Charging to the Front" by the Blackfeet Indians during an early-day powwow in Whitefish.

It was that "Charging to the Front" attitude that persuaded the Whitefish railroad family to adopt a baby from so far away, and, Donahue said, it was a name that also has applied to him, "charging to the front" for his passions, with either a golf club or a trumpet in hand.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com