John Lawrence Donoghue, who survived kamikaze attacks, helped devise plan to move Chicago’s U-505 submarine, dead at 104

John Lawrence “Laurie” Donoghue — a South Sider at heart if not always by geography — had a unusual perspective on two of the most powerful instruments of death that the Japanese and German militaries used against Allied forces during World War II.

Mr. Donoghue, a Navy engineering officer tasked with airplane maintenance, survived multiple Japanese kamikaze attacks that claimed the lives of 79 crew members of the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier in late 1944.

He never spoke of it until his 95th birthday, when he got a scale model of the Intrepid as a gift.

“Just before one of the attacks, the chaplain spoke and said, ‘Men, we’re going into battle, and some of you will react in various ways, wet your pants, cry, but bear in mind only about 2% of you will die in combat,’ ’’ Mr. Donoghue said, according to his son Larry Donoghue. “And he heard a cook behind him say, ‘If that 2% is me, that’s 100%.’ ”

The first attack involved a plane crashing into the Intrepid. Weeks later, a kamikaze pilot crashed into the flight deck. Mr. Donoghue, 25, grabbed a crewmate who’d lost a leg, helping him to a medical station. Minutes later, a second plane crashed into the spot where he’d left the injured man.

“I think of that guy. ... I didn’t do him a favor,” Mr. Donoghue said in an interview about his war experience. “If he’d have just stayed down on the flight deck, with just losing a leg, he would have survived.”

After the war, in 1954, Mr. Donoghue was a young engineer who was part of a team moving a captured Nazi U-505 submarine from Lake Michigan to the Museum of Science and Industry without tearing up Lake Shore Drive. They used telephone poles to roll the submarine out of the water, raising it onto rails to move it a few hundred feet to its new home.

For that, Mr. Donoghue was given a lifetime pass to visit the U-505.

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“He carried it in his wallet,” his son said. “He was proud of it. It was very worn.”

Mr. Donoghue died Sept. 4 from pneumonia. He was 104.

The submarine sat outside, exposed to the elements, until 2004, when another feat of engineering moved it to its current underground exhibition space.

Coincidentally, Capt. Daniel Gallery, Mr. Donoghue’s cousin, was commander of the “hunter-killer” group of Navy ships that captured the Nazi submarine in 1944.

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He was born in Chicago on Feb. 23, 1919, to George T. Donoghue, a civil engineer, and Clara Roche Donoghue, a teacher.

Mr. Donoghue grew up in Ravenswood until his father, a Chicago Park District employee, was promoted to the new position of general superintendent and moved the family to a park district-owned house in Washington Park.

Mr. Donoghue got the nickname Buck as a teenager when a classmate he carpooled with from the South Side to Loyola Academy — then located in Rogers Park — told Mr. Donoghue: “You’re just like the Buckingham Fountain — you just run on and on and on,” his son said.

Mr. Donoghue got a civil engineering degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1941 and met his future wife after the war while visiting his sister Cecily Hansen, who’d just given birth, set up a meeting between her brother and nurse Connie Craven, who was caring for her.

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They were married months later at Holy Name Cathedral, settled in Evanston and later in Glenview. But Mr. Donoghue always considered himself a South Sider and took his family to a White Sox game every year.

He spent 46 years with the engineering firm Ralph Burke Associates, working on projects including O’Hare Airport, Grant Park underground parking garages and shoreline protection in Evanston.

He was president of the company before retiring in 1992. He later opened his own business, helping owners of parking lots avoid becoming victims of fraud. He retired from that at 96.

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Mr. Donoghue was keen to share advice, especially with his kids and grandkids, like always helping someone in need, and making friends with younger people so that, if you live long enough to outlive your contemporaries, you’ll still have friends.

He once wrote a piece called “How to Know You’re in Love” for a friend’s son facing a romantic quandary, suggesting he ask himself: Are you constantly thinking of nice things you can do for her? Do you enjoy activities like playing cards with her versus paid entertainment, like seeing a movie? Have you lost interest in dating others? Are you willing to change your behavior if she asks?

In addition to his wife and his son Larry, Mr. Donoghue is survived by sons Gerry and Kevin, daughters Patti Cashman and Terry Donoghue, nine grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is being planned.