I usually launch this year-end review with upbeat anecdotes about championship teams, unexpected success stories, and feel-good memories of the previous 12 months.
This time I chose a different approach.
Jim Donaldson was an excellent sports reporter and entertaining columnist for the Providence Journal for close to 38 years. He had an acerbic wit and an opinion about everything, which he seldom hesitated to share. He could make you laugh and fume in the same story or column.
Jim was also a husband, father, friend and colleague. A man who could rip the Red Sox or Patriots one minute and in the next minute ask how your kids were doing in school.
Jim died six days before Christmas. He was 73. His family did not reveal the cause of death, but he did have heart surgery in mid-October.
Jim arrived at the Journal in 1979 after a stint at the Richmond Times Dispatch. Sports editor Gene Buonaccorsi assigned him to the Patriots, a job he welcomed like a Brady to Gronk touchdown pass. By the 1990s, Jim had become so opinionated in his Pats stories that Dave Bloss, the sports editor at that time, took him off the beat and made him the third ProJo sports columnist, joining Bill Parrillo and Bill Reynolds. Few newspapers at the time featured three full-time sports columnists.
Jim covered 27 Super Bowls, World Series, Final Fours, Big East Tournaments, Masters golf tournaments and much more during his career. He wrote a book about fantasy football. He retired in 2016.
Jim grew up in Pawtucket, attended Tolman High School — the gym is named for his dad, James W. Donaldson, Sr., a beloved Tolman teacher and coach — and went to the University of Notre Dame on a Navy ROTC scholarship. He did a tour at sea as a press officer.
One of our early discussions as young sports writers at the ProJo concerned the 1966 football Game of the Century between undefeated Notre Dame and undefeated Michigan State at East Lansing, Michigan. I criticized ND coach Ara Parseghian for not playing to win when the Irish had the ball late in the game. Instead, he settled for a 10-10 tie. Overtime did not exist in those days.
Jim aggressively defended the Irish coach and his strategy. Backup quarterback Coley O’Brien was running the offense after starter Terry Hanratty was injured. Michigan State featured defensive stars George Webster and Bubba Smith. The game was at Michigan State. So, a no-brainer, Jim concluded. Plus, he always pointed out, Notre Dame later beat USC and earned the national championship.
A tennis player in high school, Jim switched to golf and became a fanatic. He often wrote about the sport and the many Rhode Islanders who played it well. He joined Agawam Hunt in Rumford and spent many hours there.
Fellow Agawam member Al Hall tells of the day he and Jim were hitting balls in the practice area. Jim was breaking in a new driver but was frustrated because he couldn’t clear a row of trees. He wondered if he had made a $500 mistake. Along came an assistant pro, a left hander. He took the driver from Jim, a right hander, flipped the head upside down, and launched a pair of drives to and over the trees. “Nothing wrong with this club,” he said, handing it back. Jim’s reaction?
“He did an unusual thing. He stopped talking and went back to hitting golf balls with his new driver,” Al said. “I think the reality maybe sunk in that ability can count more than new and improved drivers.”
Tolman held a moment of silence in Jim’s memory before the boys’ Christmas Eve game against Rogers. Condolences to Jim’s wife Sandra, their three children and two grandchildren.
SUZANNE MURRAY: “A GOOD GOLFER BUT A BETTER FRIEND.”
Sue Murray was a great wife, mother, grandmother and friend. She was also a pretty good golfer, easily the best in her family. Her husband Terry, retired CEO of Fleet Boston Financial, and their five children were no match for Sue.
Playing out of Warwick, Wannamoisett, Point Judith and Newport over the years in Rhode Island and the Everglades Club in Palm Beach, Fla., she knew her way from tee to green and fairways in between. She was competitive when she had to be and patient when paired with those of lesser ability. Years ago, she played a round with me at Portland Country Club in Maine. I was the walking definition of an athletic hacker. Several times Sue nodded and gently told me why I was hitting a pronounced fade on many shots. Uh-huh, I said, and continued the fade.
Sue was at her best in the summer of 1987 when she won the women’s championship at three of her clubs.
Sue was more than a golfer. An alumna of the Lincoln School in Providence and Radcliffe College in Cambridge, she remained active for decades in leadership positions at both schools. She was a founder of Sophia Academy in Providence, a middle school for girls from low-income families, and recipient of the school’s first “Women of Wisdom” award.
Sue died Nov. 27, the day before Thanksgiving, at her home in Narragansett. She would have turned 84 on Christmas Day. Three hundred admirers attended an uplifting celebration of her life on Dec. 21 in South Kingstown.
“Sue was a special person. She was a good golfer but a better friend,” Nancy Chaffee of Rhode Island Country Club, one of the great golfers in Rhode Island history, told me.
“We played RIWGA team matches, state tournaments and invitationals. She always had a smile on her face and loved to compete. We have all learned a lot from the game, but most of all we value the friendships that last a lifetime.”
Condolences to Sue’s family and her many relatives and friends.
TEACHER-COACH JOE GILMARTIN AND OTHERS
Joe Gilmartin of Narragansett, a beloved teacher and coach at North Kingstown schools, died in October when he fell from his boat while fishing off the Narragansett shore. He was 59.
Among the many prominent figures from the world of sports at-large who passed in 2024 were Luis Tiant, ace of the Red Sox pitching staff in the early and mid 1970s; Bill Walton, All-Star center from UCLA and the Portland Trailblazers who as the Sixth Man helped the Boston Celtics to the 1986 NBA Championship; Larry Lucchino, architect of the 2004 and 2007 Red Sox World Series Championship teams.
Also NBA stars Jerry West, Dikembe Mutombo, Al Attles, Joe ‘Jellybean” Bryant, Bob Love, and Robert Reid.
And baseball heroes Willie Mays, Pete Rose, Ricky Henderson, Rocky Colavito, Orlando Cepeda, Carl Erskine, Ken Holtzman, Jerry Grote, Don Gullett, Bud Harrelson and Fernando Valenzuela.
Football giants Mercury Morris, Jim Otto, Roman Gabriel, Frank Ryan, Norm Snead and Abner Haynes. Golfers Chi Chi Rodriguez and Peter Oosterhuis. Football coaches Gerry Faust and John Robinson. Basketball coaches Lou Carnesecca and Lefty Diesel.
Race car driver Parnelli Jones. Soccer star Franz Beckenbauer. Hockey stars Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. Network studio host Greg Gumbel.
May the memories of their exploits make us smile.
THERE WERE CHAMPIONSHIPS!
The Boston Celtics put together one of the most dominant seasons in NBA history and raised Banner No. 19 to the TD Garden rafters.
The University of Rhode Island football team ended 39 years of frustration by going 11-3, sharing the Coastal Athletic Association championship with Richmond and reaching the second round of the FCS playoffs.
The Rhode Island College women’s basketball team had a season for the ages, won the 2024 Little East and reached the NCAA Division III Sweet 16.
U.S. Gymnastics and Track and Field teams were stars at the Olympics in Paris. Sailor Stu McNay of Providence, marathoner Emily Sisson of Providence and rower Emily Kallfelz of Jamestown competed. URI women’s basketball coach Tammi Reiss was the assistant coach for the U.S. Women’s 3×3 team that won a bronze medal.
The U.S. Senior Open returned to the Newport Country Club after the 2020 COVID shutdown.
The Providence College men’s soccer team didn’t win a title but did reach the second round of the NCAA tournament, won, incidentally, by Vermont. Yes, the University of Vermont!
The Rhode Island Football Club came close to a title by reaching the USL final in its first year.
AND THERE WERE DISAPPOINTMENTS
Patriots coach Bill Belichick, his touch no longer magic, and the Patriots parted ways after a 4-13 season. He became a media celebrity and this month the head coach at the University of North Carolina.
The Red Sox, with few expectations from media and fans, started fast, faded and missed the playoffs again.
The Bruins left the ice early again.
College sports were a mess thanks to NIL money, the transfer portal, bloated conferences, disappearing loyalty and power concentrated in four conferences.
There you have it, sports fans, an up and down 2024. I can’t wait to see what 2025 brings.
Happy New Year!
