At the ripe young age of 99, Dick Donaldson ’48 is among Carleton’s oldest living varsity athletes. A native of Tracy, Minnesota, he competed in football, basketball, and baseball while on campus, and during last fall’s homecoming weekend, Carleton president Alison Byerly and athletic director Gerald Young presented Donaldson with a varsity blanket to recognize both his longevity and his service in WWII.
Originally a member of the Class of ’45, the retired lumberyard owner recalls hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor shortly after finishing his shift with several other men as a waiter during the ladies’ dinner service at Evans Hall. “Right away we knew that we would be involved,” he recalls. Donaldson joined the Army Air Corps and piloted a B-29 bomber on 35 missions over Japan before the war ended and his studies resumed. He earned an economics degree and met his late wife Mary Kangas ’49 at Carleton. (The couple’s two children, Mark Donaldson ’73 and Laurel Ulland ’76, also attended Carleton.)
Even as he nears the century mark, Donaldson remains spry and wry: “The big advantage of being as old as I am and a WWII veteran is that I can tell a lot of old stories and nobody can contradict them.”