Philanthropy, Family & Community
Dorothy & Dee Donohue Live Life to the Fullest
Giving back and contributing to their community is what Delaine (Dee) and Dorothy Donohue spend the majority of their time doing. The pair, who has lived in the Valley of the Sun since 1996, calls Sun City West their home and regularly gives to the Sun Health Foundation through a donor advised fund. A donor advised fund is typically established at a public charity, such as the Sun Health Foundation. It allows donors, like the Donohues, to make a contribution to the fund, get an immediate tax benefit and then have the ability to recommend grants from the fund over time. Dee says this type of fund is a great way to give back.
“You can donate whatever you choose in any given year and take your tax deduction,” Dee says. “You can also distribute it over a few years, whatever you need to do that is best for you.”
The distributions to Sun Health Foundation are just one way the Donohues support health care in the community.
Dorothy is a former nurse and still helps out those in need just about anywhere and everywhere she can. The pair recently attended the opening of the new Progressive Care Unit at Banner Del E. Webb Medical Center to show their support. “I was very impressed with it,” Dorothy says. “You have everything you need right there.”
In fact, it was Dorothy’s passion for health care that brought the pair together in the first place. Despite knowing about one another in high school, Dee and Dorothy rarely crossed paths. It wasn’t until Dee’s father was hospitalized at the same place Dorothy was working as a nurse that the couple reconnected and later fell in love. “He heard my name over the intercom system at Nebraska Methodist Hospital,” says Dorothy, who was the hospital’s house supervisor. “His dad reminded him that he knew who I was. I went to visit the room and that was the beginning.”
The couple married in 1957 and followed Dee’s career with Dun & Bradstreet, which took them from Omaha to a number of locations including California, Colorado, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. He retired as a senior vice president in 1988. Despite all the moves, the pair has never forgotten their Nebraska roots and even established the Delaine R. and Dorothy M. Donohue Excellence Scholarship Fund that provides full tuition for a student at the University of Nebraska Omaha College of Business Administration.
But giving back to the communities they care about is just one of the couple’s favorite things to do. Spending time with family is another. They have two daughters, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. “We have family all over the country – a daughter in Atlanta, one in California, grandchildren spread out, including in Arizona, California and New York,” Dorothy says.
As for how the couple ended up calling Arizona home, that is also related to family. After retirement in the late ‘80s, the couple was splitting time between Pennsylvania and where their parents were living in Iowa. They moved to Iowa in 1994. “At first, we started coming to the Valley as snowbirds,” Dee says. “That turned to six months here and we spent a couple of years in Pebble Creek. Then, we looked around Sun City West and decided it had all the amenities we needed and we bought our first house here in 1998, moving full time after our parents’ deaths in 2004.”
For both Dee and Dorothy, the longevity of life lies in all the things they spend their energy focusing on — community, philanthropy and family.
“The key is if we can help someone else who needs help, we want to do that,” Dorothy says. “There are so many areas we can help, so we do what we can.”
