The O’Donnells, Generation 4: Laurence (‘Lorny’) O’Donnell (1927-1961)

Introduction

Lorny’s name was frequently misspelled, even by his own family, but it was Laurence, a common Irish variant since the 12th century, in honor of the saint Laurence O’Toole.

Picture of Lorny (Standing). (C. 1936-1937)

This picture shows Lorny around the age of ten or eleven (so 1936-1937). The family was then living at 511 N 16th St. This was after the extended family lost the O’Donnell Flats at 1217-1221 Clybourn St.

For pictures see the entry on the Flats and Tory Hill, which also has Dad’s draft memoir of some of the people living there.

Lorny Tries to Join the Military

Lorny really, really wanted to enlist in the military in World War II. The first and second records below show he tried to register for the service a year before he reached eighteen. He went to the registration office on January 3, 1944, the first day the office would be open in the new year, two days after his seventeenth birthday, and lied about his age. He was predictably discovered and rejected, his card typed in denial red.

A year later and now eligible, he succeeded in registering, this time on January 2, again the first day the office was open in that new year and one day after his birthday. This time his card was typed in approval black.

Regrettably, Lorny did not and could never have his youthful dream fulfilled. He had juvenile diabetes and would have been instantly rejected during a physical.

Marriage and Family

He married Jeanne K. Herr (1930-1971) (below) in 1951, and in 1952 Daniel was born. Jeanne graduated from North Division HS in 1949 and the following year was working as an “office typist” at the “telephone company,” back when there was only one.

After Lorny died in 1961 Dad tried to maintain contact with Jeanne but the connection was lost.

Although Jeanne kept the O’Donnell name, her obituary tells us she had a second son, Dean, presumably also with the O’Donnell name since a different one isn’t given. It’s unlikely that Dean was a child of Lorny’s. Attempts to find a Dean O’Donnell or Dean Herr yielded no results.

The last line of the obituary also mentions that her body would be “not in state,” or not able to be viewed. She appears to have donated her body to medical research.

Jeanne Herr North Division HS Graduation Picture (1949)

Daniel O’Donnell Pius XI HS Yearbook (1968) (Sophomore Year)

Daniel O’Donnell Pius XI HS Yearbook Graduation Picture (1970)

Janell Kovnesky, West Allis Central High School Graduation Picture (1979)

His Son, Daniel (‘Mick’) O’Donnell

Lorny’s indisputable son, Daniel McKee O’Donnell has left us with scant–but adequate–documentation.

He preferred to use his middle name, ‘McKee’, and went by ‘Mick’. In all four of his yearbook pictures (two are above), he ls listed as ‘M. O’Donnell’. Other research confirms that he used ‘Mick’ throughout his life.

Daniel McKee ‘Mick’ O’Donnell (1952-2015) attended Pius XI High School, graduating in 1970 (the picture above showing a neatly groomed young man), just a year before his mother died. Her obituary notes that he is then a Private in military service.

A Note To the Unwary Researcher

As improbable as it is, a second Daniel McKee O’Donnell was living in Milwaukee during the same time as our Daniel McKee. Any records search will indiscriminately mix the two men in the results, and it’s challenging even to recognize there are indeed two different people at issue here.

Just start from the premise that there are two individuals with the same unusual name and similar dates in the same city. You’ll save yourself no end of confusion.

And they are different, beyond doubt. The other McKee has a different birth year, different parents, different brothers and sisters (eight of them), and different death year. All confirm he is not our Daniel McKee.

You can see the other Daniel McKee’s obituary here.

Which branch of O’Donnells the second Daniel McKee comes from isn’t known.

One note of interest is that while Daniel kept the patronymic prefix, “O’,” in his last name, his family did not. His parents and the siblings mentioned in the obituary have Anglicized it to “Donnell.” Seems like a regrettable loss of ethnic heritage.

Mick’s time in Vietnam was commendable, shown by the three medals he won. In May 1970 he was given the:

Army Commendation Medal Service with two Clusters,
Bronze Star (Valor) with one Cluster on September 7, 1970, and a day later
Purple Heart.

Aside: Each cluster represents each time the recipient has received the medal, so he was awarded the Bronze Star (Valor) two times.

What our Mick did in his work life isn’t known. We do know that he married twice, first to Carol-Ann Maier in 1979 and divorced in 1983. In 1986 he married Janell Kovnesky (b. 1960) (picture above). They remained together until Mick’s death in 2015. They had one daughter, Kelly Marie, born in 1988.

One cautionary note: The mother-daughter relationship between Janell and Kelly is convincing but not conclusive. It relies on property searches for names of people and dates living at an address, or several, to infer a connection. Both Janell and Kelly have lived at the same address in the past, and they’re currently living together in Watertown, WI. And both are Facebook friends of each other (h/t Mary Ellen O’Donnell).

A birth certificate would be a surer foundation but none was discovered.

Death

Lorny’s juvenile diabetes would have been debilitating but controllable with a careful diet–which he didn’t follow consistently–and the help of insulin, a drug that had been first tested on humans only twenty years earlier. The more immediate cause of his death was dermatomyositis, a very rare (five in one million) idiopathic inflammatory disease marked by muscle weakness and a skin rash. There was no cure then, nor one today.

Lorny is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in his father’s family plot, with his mother, Margaret, his father, his father’s first wife, Sena Thompson O’Donnell, and his sister, Marie, whom he never knew, having been born a year after she died in 1926.