Donnan, Robert Calvin Robert Calvin Donnan Mr. Donnan, 86, of 501 Scofield Road, Charlotte, passed away on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at Carolinas Medical Center. A graveside service for Mr. Donnan will be held at Evergreen Cemetery in Charlotte on Saturday, May 13 at 2 PM. The Reverend Susan Roddey of the First Presbyterian Church will officiate. Mr. Donnan was born in 1919 in Greenville, SC. He was the son of Robert Clarence Donnan and Ellie Josephine Trammel Donnan. Mr. Donnan attended public schools in Greenville and Shelby, NC, as well as the New York Military Academy at Cornwall on the Hudson, NY. He was a 1941 graduate of The Citadel in Charleston, SC. While attending The Citadel, Mr. Donnan took private flying lessons from Martin Jensen, the nationally renowned aviator then headquartered at an airfield on James Island. Over time, he developed both an enduring passion-and significant skill-for flying airplanes. During the Second World War, Mr. Donnan served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a Spitfire fighter pilot with the 52nd Fighter Group. For successful missions flown in the North African campaign, he received the Oak Leaf Cluster, which was presented by General Jimmy Doolittle. After the war, Mr. Donnan studied accounting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He launched his professional career as a certified public accountant with Haskins and Sells in Charlotte, NC. In the late 1950s, he joined the Gaston County Dyeing Machine Company in Stanley, North Carolina, where he was a controller and later a vice president. Mr. Donnan was devoted to his family. He is survived by his wife, Anita Kenney Donnan; daughter, Elaine Donnan of Greenville, SC; son, Robert Donnan of Carrboro, NC; his sister, Sybil Peters, and his brother-in-law, John Peters, both of Columbia, SC. Throughout his life, Mr. Donnan greatly appreciated listening to and playing music. His mother played Baptist hymns on the piano for church services throughout her life, and he inherited her musical gifts. As a young man in the 1930s, Mr. Donnan played the violin in a small dance band that performed for weekly dances at Civilian Conservation Corps camps in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Later in his life, he found relaxation by playing both those familiar Baptist hymns as well as popular songs played in a stride piano style. Mr. Donnan was a long-time member of the First Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to support the church’s television broadcast ministry, which airs weekly on WSOC-TV. Those contributions may be sent to: The Television Fund, First Presbyterian Church, 200 West Trade Street, Charlotte, NC 28208-1623. Arrangements are in the care of Hankins & Whittington Dilworth Chapel, 1111 East Boulevard, Charlotte, North Carolina. online www.hankinsandwhittington.com
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