M. John O'Donoghue, 89, died on January 22, 2010 in Princeton, New Jersey.


Born September 26, 1920, the youngest of five children of Patrick and Elizabeth O'Donoghue, he grew up with his extended family in Philadelphia during the Depression. He was an excellent student who graduated from St. Joseph's Preparatory School and attended Yale University on a scholarship, but left college after his freshman year and had no other higher education apart from his participation in the Advanced Management Program of the Harvard Business School in 1974-75. During World War II he worked in defense manufacturing facilities and then entered the U.S. Army, serving as an officer with the postwar occupation forces in the Netherlands and Germany. He had a broad-based career as a business executive with companies headquartered mainly in New York City, concluding his career as a senior executive of Springs Industries. He also served as a member of the board of directors of the Palm Beach Company and several private companies. After his retirement in 1986, he was active in non-profit agencies in Princeton, N.J., to which he moved in 1950 and, except for four years in northern California, spent the rest of his life.


He married Joan Watson in 1949 and they had five children, Mark, John, Philip, Carol and Elizabeth. After Joan's death in 1992, he married Polly Pratt Green, also of Princeton. He is survived by his wife, his children and their spouses, and six grandchildren (Anna, Tim, Aidan, Noah, Lily and Claire).


He was a man of good cheer and humor who had a genuine interest in and warmth for others and a photographic memory for names, stories and jokes. He loved to burst into song at the drop of a hat, and up to his death could recall the words of virtually every lyric of the American songbook. Parkinson's disease and macular degeneration ravaged his health in the last decade but he was a determined man who did not complain and remained intensely interested in the joys of life.


His funeral service will begin at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 26, 2010, at St. Paul's Church, 214 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ.


In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Partners in Health (http://www.pih.org/where/Haiti/Haiti.html).