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Elizabeth Donahue, fourth-grade teacher in Cherry Hill

In the years before the interstate highway system was built, coast-to-coast car travel could be exhausting. But when Elizabeth Thorpe Donahue accompanied her husband, Frank L., from South Jersey to his 1942 Navy assignment in California, they drove.

Elizabeth Thorpe Donahue
Elizabeth Thorpe DonahueRead more

In the years before the interstate highway system was built, coast-to-coast car travel could be exhausting.

But when Elizabeth Thorpe Donahue accompanied her husband, Frank L., from South Jersey to his 1942 Navy assignment in California, they drove.

And when he was assigned to operate a patrol boat off Hawaii, her son Frank L. Jr. said, "already pregnant with my sister, she drove alone back to New Jersey."

On Friday, Jan. 29, Mrs. Donahue, 95, of Medford, a fourth-grade public-school teacher in Cherry Hill from 1959 until she retired in 1986, died at the retirement community Medford Leas.

Mrs. Donahue grew up in the Braddock neighborhood of Hammonton, N.J., graduated from Haddon Heights High School, and earned a bachelor's degree in education at what is now Rowan University.

She taught seventh- and eighth-grade classes in science and music in Clementon and, her autobiographical notes report, "in 1942 she married her boss, the superintendent of schools."

Doris Salati, a neighbor at Medford Leas, said in an interview that she had known Mrs. Donahue well - "about 93 years."

"We grew up next door to each other," Salati said, and "for the first four or five years, we went to a one-room school in Braddock."

As personal decisions were hastened when the nation entered World War II in December 1941, the Donahues didn't waste time with theirs.

"After he signed up for the Navy," Salati said, "three dates and they decided they were meant for each other."

When the war ended, Mrs. Donahue wrote, her husband "resumed his job as superintendent of Clementon schools, and she taught second and third grades in Clayton for two years."

"In 1959, they moved to Cherry Hill when her husband became superintendent of Lower Camden County Regional High School," she wrote, and she began her Cherry Hill teaching career.

For the Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, she was a state membership chairman and state convention chairman. The organization's website states that it "promotes professional and personal growth of women educators."

Besides her son, Mrs. Donahue is survived by three grandchildren and a great-grandson. Her husband died in 1966, and their daughter, Carol Donahue-Tavares, died in 2004.

A viewing was set from 9 to 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 6, at Trinity Presbyterian Church, 499 Route 70 E., Cherry Hill, where she was a deacon and elder.

A 10 a.m. funeral service was set there, with interment in Locustwood Memorial Park, Cherry Hill.

Donations may be sent to Medford Leas Residents Association, 1 Medford Leas Way, Medford, N.J. 08055.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.murrayparadeefh.com.

wnaedele@phillynews.com

610-313-8134@WNaedele