Shenandoah Community Homes

THE WINCHESTER STAR

April 29, 2009

HISTORY FOR FUN by Adrian O’Connor

"I think it's important for them to know what happened here before us."

- Col. Timothy H. Donovan , U.S. Army (Ret.)

Double Tollgate - No sooner had Tim Donovan called to fill me in on the history "club" he put together at the Shenandoah community on Lake Frederick than I knew this was my kind of group.

And a delightful 90 minutes spent with Tim and his history-minded neighbors discussing the early life of Stonewall Jackson a week ago Tuesday night simply reaffirmed this initial impression.

They call themselves "History for Fun" - and the moniker definitely applies. Starting in June 2008 with but five or six in attendance, the group has met the third Tuesday of every month since then to bat around topics of local history. The mailing list now numbers 37.

Tim, a retired Army officer and educator, has been the principal "lecturer" and the club's originating force. He and his wife Jackie had just moved into Shenandoah last May when he was asked to initiate these informal gatherings.

There was definitely a need - or, better yet, a desire - for such education, in that so many of the Shenandoah folk are "come-heres." HFF members hail from all points on the compass - from as close as Arlington to as far away as California and the Virgin Islands. They are united by a thirst for knowledge of their new home.

And that knowledge Tim, who taught history at West Point for three years in the mid-'70s, has been only too happy to provide. In its monthly sessions, the club has not only covered Civil War topics - the cavalry skirmish at Double Tollgate, for instance, and the Battle of Cedar Creek, complete with a mock-up of the October 1864 fight on a long table in the Shenandoah visitors' center - but also native Indian tribes and a series on the early life of George Washington.

"It's very informal," Tim says. "There are no rules of order."

Tim is a story in himself. Raised in Bristol, Conn., he attended Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., which he proudly reminded me is "the oldest private military college in the country." An English major, he graduated from Norwich a newly commissioned officer in 1962.

Tim served two combat tours in Vietnam. Before leaving for his second, in 1969, he had been identified to pursue graduate work and then teach at West Point. But an extended detour, called war, delayed these plans.

On Nov. 1, 1969 - All Saints Day, as he is quick to recall - Tim sustained life-threatening wounds fighting in the Ia Drang Valley near the Cambodian border. So severe was his battlefield condition that he received the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church.

Tim survived, and after a year spent rehabbing at the Boston Naval Hospital, he was off to Rice University, where he studied at the foot of noted Southern and Civil War historian Frank Vandiver.

Come 1973, Tim finally made it to The Point for his teaching billet. While on the Hudson, he co-authored "The American Civil War," part of the West Point Military History Series.

Tim 's last "tour of duty" was as commandant of cadets and professor of military science at his alma mater, Norwich. He later worked for a defense firm in Herndon before retiring to Frederick County.

"We came down, looked (Shenandoah) over, and fell in love with it," Tim says, adding that being "a history buff" had much to do with the decision to relocate here.

As I learned last week, Tim is more than a "buff," but a true scholar and a worthy disciple of his mentor, Vandiver, whose seminal work was - you guessed it - a biography of the great Jackson, "Mighty Stonewall."