By Rita McInerney

Growing up in the '30s and '40s was pleasant for the Donoghue brothers, Daniel, John, Edward and Patrick. They had the security of loving parents strong in their Catholic faith, and a parish church and school where they were nurtured in religious truth, book learning, and sports.

With their parents, Daniel and Rose Ryan Donoghue, they lived on 16th Street in the northwest section of Washington. It was a solid middle class neighborhood about a mile from the Shrine of the Sacred Heart and its parish school staffed by Sinsinawa Dominicans.

Both parents came from Ireland and met in Washington where Daniel, a lawyer, worked with the General Accounting Office of the government. Before her marriage, Rose had worked as a domestic for a wealthy family. Later, she suffered poor health and had to be hospitalized many times while her sons were growing up.

Mrs. Donoghue had been a strong woman before the onset of the illness never precisely diagnosed, according to Edward Donoghue. At one time she was sent to Saranac Lake, N.Y., to be treated for tuberculosis.

Much of the burden fell on his father, Daniel says, but he never complained. He spent as much time as possible with his boys, on Sundays taking them to the Smithsonian Institution and other places of interest around Washington. An unmarried aunt, Mary Ryan, helped out when she could. Each boy had chores to do.

"We took life as it was," Daniel said, in a home where religious faith was always strong.

Also strong was the devotion to sports among the brothers. All of them played in church and neighborhood leagues, mostly baseball and basketball.

Edward remembers that John was "captain of the school (Sacred Heart) basketball team. The team won the city CYO championship and also beat the champions of the Baltimore and Delaware CYO leagues." When he entered Gonzaga High School, "I became captain."

At St. Charles Minor Seminary in Catonsville, Md., the future archbishop played basketball, football and soccer. "He was a good athlete," Edward says.

It was a good era for young sports fans. Television was not yet the arbiter it was to become and boys could sometimes get close to their idols. For the Donoghue brothers, it was great to go down to Griffiths Stadium to see the Washington Senators play on summertime Saturdays. They could get in for a quarter.

"We would go down in the mornings just to meet the players," Daniel recalls.

The brothers had an instant of fame with one of the greatest baseball heroes of the day. It happened when they were leaving the hospital after visiting their mother. Coming out at the same time was Joe DiMaggio, after being treated for a game injury. A press photographer snapped the four awestruck boys with the New York Yankees slugger. The picture appeared in a Washington daily.

Another athlete, a Catholic high school star, had a big influence on John Donoghue.

Father Paul Repetti, the youngest priest at Sacred Heart, had been a basketball standout at Gonzaga High School before entering seminary. He took a lot of interest in the teams at Sacred Heart, traveling with the players to games, advising and encouraging them. He was also in charge of altar boys.

"John thought a great deal of him," Edward says. When Father Repetti told the young boy he thought he should consider the priesthood, John took his advice.

His youngest brother Patrick said his brothers had an idea John "was going to be a priest." When he was nine or ten years old, he would pass out "communion" in the form of Necco candy wafers to them on Saturday nights.

In later years, Fathers Donoghue and Repetti remained friends. The younger priest gave the homily at the funeral Mass for Monsignor Repetti in April, 1983, at St. Mary's Church in Clinton, Md.

In his homily, Father Donoghue spoke of priests: "In his struggle to radiate God's truth and love in the world, the priest -- like his brother Christians -- must bear the cross of being what he is: a man of flesh and blood, of weakness and common human infirmities, of failure and frustration. As he lives out his priesthood, he becomes growingly aware of his own limitations and of how deeply he shares the maladies of those to whom he ministers."

During World War II, while John was in seminary, the family moved from the 16th Street home to a more suburban neighborhood in Nativity parish, Takoma Park, near Walter Reed Hospital.

On summer vacations during his later years at St. Mary's Seminary, John Donoghue subbed for the head bookkeeper at Metropolitan National Bank opposite the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington.

When John came back each summer, Edward says, it was the signal that the head bookkeeper could take his vacation. "He was good at it, imagine a kid on summer vacation replacing the head bookkeeper."

The bank wanted to keep him and offered to send him to a banking institute but the future priest wasn't to be distracted from his vocation.

Rose Donoghue died in July, 1954, after her son had been ordained a sub-deacon. "At that point she figured I was going to make it," the archbishop says now. He offered prayers as she was dying of pernicious anemia, and was on the altar at her funeral Mass.

The future archbishop was ordained June 4, 1955, by the Archbishop (later Cardinal) Patrick O'Boyle at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington. This prelate was destined to become his mentor and friend. His first Mass was celebrated at Sacred Heart Church with Father Repetti as homilist.

His first parish was St. Bernard in Riverdale, Md., where the first wedding at which he officiated was that of brother Patrick and his bride Vickie. About a year later, the couple moved into St. Bernard where Father Donoghue served from 1955 until 1961. These were also the years when Patrick and Vickie began raising their family of six sons.

During 29 years while appointments in the Washington archdiocese brought increasing responsibility to Father Donoghue, he was able to remain in close touch with his brothers and their families. In those decades, Daniel and his wife Patricia had eight children, Edward and Mary had three boys and three girls.

Daniel, a lawyer by profession, is vice president and manager at the Washington office of Stone and Webster, a global engineering firm. His responsibilities include lobbying federal agencies and Capitol Hill.

Edward served in the State Department for about 37 years before retiring. He was director of development and planning for Africa. In his State Department career he visited almost every country around the world.

Youngest brother Patrick, the comedian in the family, is a barber forced to retire about a year ago because of a bad foot. He is quick to tell people interested in learning about his older brother that he, Patrick, "taught him everything he knows." Such good-natured boasts bring a grin from the Archbishop.

Daniel says his brother used to stop by for a visit every Sunday afternoon, and Edward recalls him driving up to his house at Christmas time with a carload of gifts.

Daniel's daughter, Sister Eileen Donoghue, a Daughter of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, says her uncle "was always good to us as children," taking them to parish carnivals and other celebrations.

He was encouraging while she was deciding about entering the convent. But, she adds, "he was always very supportive of whatever way it would go."

Now 25 years a Religious and director of new patient delivery system at St. Vincent's Medical Center, Jacksonville, Fla., she remains close to her uncle, whom she considers both "deeply spiritual and down to earth."

Daniel says his brother was "not academic to the degree you would figure him to be a book worm. We all recognized he was going to be a very good priest. I think he hoped to be a parish priest. But whatever he's asked to do, he'll do."