November 29, 2017

Former Trustee Chuck Donofrio dies at 62

Former Goucher Trustee Harold C. “Chuck” Donofrio Jr. died on Sunday after a long illness, at the age of 62. He served on the board from 1997-2005 and again from 2008-10. He was also a trustee at St. Paul's School for Girls and was board chair there from 2005-07. 

  • Chuck Donofrio

As head of his own firm, Carton Donofrio, he brought needed experience in marketing, knowledge of the Web, and use of multi-media presentations to the board. He served on the Presidential Search Committee in 2000-01, and also recruited the head of St. Paul's for Girls to serve a term on the Goucher board, bringing us needed experience in secondary education. Chuck was savvy and smart, warm and witty, and down to earth.

He stepped down from the board in 2010 to begin a battle with early onset Alzheimer's disease, a battle he chronicled in his blog, Early Onset Alzheimer's Adventure. An avid outdoorsman, Chuck wrote not only about his frustrations and trials with Alzheimer's but about his boundless curiosity and his observations of the world around him. In a post dated August 12, 2010, he wrote:

The last 24 hours have shown the power and the unseen hand of the weather, the force of the universe, and the remarkable breadth of the forms that evolve on this planet. We awoke clear and bright, and we will sleep until the morrow, when the wildness of the surf and its winds and tides will once again re-make the shore, tossing up the wrack, and giving the observer another plate of food for the curious, as in olden times, as our science and its truths began to take the wonder out of man's affectionate longing for truth, cause, and the certain nature of things. I am no Luddite, but I yearn for the kind of discovery that only the curious can conjure, taking half-truths based on imagination, nothing but "what-ifs and "why's," pushing so hard to find a plausible notion, that seems to fit, seems to reveal a tiny piece of the whole, our one star the only light we see, often clouded, ever-changing and ever-present, but here, there, in ourselves and in our own beacon, shone sometimes benighted, but never yet extinguished.

There will be a memorial service Wednesday, December 6, at 10:30 a.m. at the Vollmer Center, Cylburn Arboretum, 4915 Greenspring Drive, 21209. Condolences can be sent to his wife, Deb, and daughters at 12124 Hooper Lane, Glen Arm, MD 21057.