When the family lived in Talmage, Ned would work on the farm, ride horses and ride around a favorite site called "Big Hollow". Ned liked to carve his name in rocks with his friend Keith McDonald. Ned loved all winter sports and taking his sister Dora to dances.
Ned attended school in both Carbon and Duchesne Countys and didn't like it very much in either, so when he was seventeen, he talked his father into signing the papers so he could join the Navy and see the world.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, Ned left his cousin May's home and returned to his ship, the USS Arizona anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. May wanted Ned to delay in returning to the ship for his duty assignment at 8:00 a.m., so that he could attend church with her and her husband that morning. But Ned insisted that he return to the ship for duty because he had never been late for duty, and wasn't going to be listed as AWOL (Absent without Leave). May believes that Ned probably would have just arrived at his duty station in the boiler room of the ship when he was killed.
Ned's mother never got over the fact that Ned had been killed. She would always be looking for him to come home, and each time a knock would come to the door, she thought it would be him, coming home.
Ned's name is listed on the USS Arizona Memorial located over the partially submerged battleship USS Arizona. A monument to those who died in the attack, stands at Memory Grove in Salt Lake City, Utah, and there is a cross bearing Ned's name in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
The fact that no memorial of any kind in Ned's hometown of Talmage, Utah, has always bothered Jess Christensen, who knew Ned as a boy. One day Jess found an unusual, big, and heavy rock in the mountains. Thinking that it looked a bit like a headstone, Jess loaded it in his truck and took it home.
At some point, Jess, who has spent many years looking after the Talmage Cemetery, came up with the idea to use the rock as a memorial to Ned. Jess, along with Johnny Rowley, have been inscribing Ned's name and vital facts on the rock along with a pretty good likeness of an American Flag and are looking forward to having the project finished very soon.
(Source: At 'Em Arizona Newsletter, June 2003)
For more about Ned Burton Donohue,
please see Rebecca Johnson's Memorial Site
Gone But Not Forgotten
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