Kevin O'Donnell '47 H '80 P '84 died on February 29, 2012, after a brief illness. The Lakewood, Ohio, resident was eighty-six.
Kevin was an economics major. He was part of the Lords football team and joined Psi Upsilon. He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy Supply Corps during World War II, from 1943 to 1946. Kevin earned a master's in business administration at Harvard University in 1947. He later received honorary doctorates from Ohio Wesleyan University and Pusan University.
He became a Cleveland-area business and community leader, and he served as director of the U.S. Peace Corps.
Kevin started his career with the Steel Improvement & Forge Co. (SIFCO) and worked there for thirteen years before he joined Booz Allen & Hamilton, a strategy and technology consulting firm. He later went to work for Atlas Alloys and opened U.S. offices for the Canadian company.
Intrigued after reading about the Peace Corps in 1966, Kevin expressed interest and was recruited by the agency as the first director of the program in South Korea. Given a choice of countries, he selected South Korea because of the opportunity to establish the Peace Corps there and because the country was in the midst of a rebuilding program, according to the Plain Dealer of Cleveland. Kevin learned a new language, moved his family, and set about establishing the agency in that country.
“I've set certain standards for myself,” Kevin told the Alumni Bulletin in 1978. “When I joined the Peace Corps in 1966 it was because my job was stale. I wanted to do something of a service nature,” he said. “I worked harder in Korea than at any other time in my life. You were not just a person, you were the Peace Corps.”
In 1967, he told the Plain Dealer, “The Koreans, they're the Irish of Asia: a high-energy people, willing to work hard, learning quickly, amenable to change, possessing a good sense of humor, emotionally outgoing. Guess that's why I feel at home here.” He was awarded the Order of Civil Merit by Park Chung Hee, the president of South Korea, in 1970. After leaving South Korea, Kevin stayed with the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C., as finance director. He was named director in 1971.
Don Hess, the country director who followed Kevin in South Korea, said at the time, “He left an indelible imprint on the lives of staff and the shape of programs.”
Kevin left the Peace Corps in 1972, but only after he helped defend the agency's budget. His interview with CBS News correspondent Eric Severeid helped sway public opinion in favor of funding the Peace Corps mission, the Plain Dealer said. Although some funding was removed from the Peace Corps budget by the U.S. Congress, it was restored by President Richard M. Nixon.
Kevin's daughter Megan Patton '84 later became a Peace Corps volunteer.
Kevin returned to Cleveland and again joined SIFCO, where he became president and chief executive officer. Kevin helped reposition SIFCO to specialty services from forging and helped expand the company into Brazil, China, and Ireland. He retired from SIFCO in 1994. From 1994 to 2010, Kevin was the managing director of O'Donnell & Associates, a business-consulting firm. He served on many corporate and nonprofit organization boards, including Ferro Corporation, Union Commerce Bank, Medical Mutual, National Conference of Christians and Jews, Musical Arts Association, St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, and the Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board of Cuyahoga County.
He embraced sobriety and made the Serenity Prayer his guiding principle during the last forty-eight years of his life. Kevin was also a citizen of Ireland, where he had a vacation home.
He was a generous supporter of the College and served as the 1978-79 Kenyon Fund chairman. “I made lifetime friends at Kenyon,” he told the Alumni Bulletin.
Married in 1949, Kevin lost his first wife, Margaret Ann, in 1965. She died after suffering an aneurysm after giving birth to the couple's sixth child. Later that year he married Ellen Blydenburgh Patterson, a mother of two and widow of a friend. His second wife died in 2007. Kevin's son, Neil, died in 2010.
Kevin was survived by daughters Susan Dicken, Maura O'Donnell-McCarthy, and Megan; sons Kevin Jr., Michael, John, and Hugh; seventeen grandchildren, including Ian O'Donnell-McCarthy '13; and a great-grandson. Contributions in his memory may be sent to Ennis Court Chapel Fund, 13323 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, Ohio, 44107, or St. Malachi Roman Catholic Church, 2459 Washington Ave., Cleveland, Ohio, 44113.