Late UCLA football coach Terry Donahue honored at KidWorks luncheon
A quote attributed to late UCLA football coach Terry Donahue was repeated Thursday at the annual KidWorks Foundation for Success luncheon.
“Opportunity is a precious gift,” Donahue said. “How often we give it to others, and how we respond when it is given to us, can define our lives.”
Donahue, a longtime Balboa Island resident, gave James Washington an opportunity when he stepped foot in his grandparents’ home in Watts in the early 1980s. He also seized an opportunity for the Bruins.
“I was about to sign with Washington, and somehow UCLA got wind that I was going to sign there,” said Washington, a safety who went on to win two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys. “This was when they used to come to your house. Coaches were sitting outside of my home, and coach Terry Donahue walks past the head coach of Washington, the head coach of Arizona State and walks right into the house.”
By the time Donahue left, Washington said his grandmother was moved and convinced that he should become a Bruin.
“Two coaches got fired from Washington,” he added with a smile.
Donahue, the winningest football coach in UCLA and Pac-12 Conference history, died in July 2021 at age 77 after a two-year battle with cancer. Thursday’s 16th annual Foundation for Success luncheon at the DoubleTree Santa Ana hotel, the first for Santa Ana-based KidWorks since the coronavirus pandemic began, served as a major fundraiser but also a chance to honor an avid supporter of the organization.
Donahue’s wife, Andrea, was there, along with his three daughters, Nicole, Michele and Jennifer and numerous grandchildren. UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond and several UCLA football alumni also attended. Donahue’s youngest brother Pat led a panel including Washington, former linebacker and assistant coach Frank Stephens, receiver and now Judge Cormac Carney and quarterback Wayne Cook.
Cook, now a radio broadcaster and sideline analyst for UCLA, never lost to USC during his time from 1991 to 1994. But some remember him for failing to spike the ball in the closing seconds of an upset Rose Bowl loss to Wisconsin.
“[Terry Donahue] was in six total Rose Bowls,” Pat Donahue joked, addressing Cook. “If Mr. Cook would have spiked the ball with 13 seconds left, he would have been undefeated. I have nightmares about it, I don’t know how you live with it.”
The Donahue family remains avid supporters of KidWorks, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year. The nonprofit has programs that support at-risk children throughout their educational path.
When Terry’s other brother Dan passed away unexpectedly in 2002, friends raised more than $1 million. Three years later, KidWorks opened its main building, the Dan Donahue Center.
Terry Donahue served as a member of the Board of Directors, and later the Advisory Council.
“Everything to him was about opportunity and giving back,” Andrea Donahue said. “He loved all of this. That’s what he was about. He had been given an opportunity, and to pay it forward.
“The most fun was coaching [his players], but the best part was once they got out of school, watching what they’d become and how they’d grown. And becoming their friends.”
That was just another opportunity to Donahue, who played defensive tackle at UCLA before serving as head coach from 1976 through 1995. He was later general manager of the San Francisco 49ers, from 2001 to 2005.
“If all of his players were in this room today, and I asked them to stand up if Terry Donahue knew them as a person, every single one would stand up,” Stephens said. “That’s the way that Terry was. He left no stone unturned, and he treated every single individual player as if they were his son.”
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