William Donnermeyer fought the Germans on the deck of the USS Weber during World War II and fought for folks in Northern Kentucky’s District 68 on the house floor.
Donnermeyer has lived many lives in his almost 100 years—which he will officially turn on Sept. 19.
He grew up on Fourth Avenue in Dayton, right inside the Dayton/Bellevue line between O’Fallon Avenue and Walnut Street. Donnermeyer attended grade school at St. Bernard’s in Dayton, where his daughter-in-law Ann Marie Donnermeyer said he would occasionally get in trouble for talking too much and be sent to the rectory. There, the priest would give him a Coke and play a hand of cards with him before sending him back to class.
Donnermeyer graduated from St. Bernard School in 1938 and began attending Newport Central Catholic High School—though he said he convinced his parents to send him to Dayton High School so he could play football.
“When I played, I only weighed about 145 pounds, soaking wet,” Donnermeyer said. “I played the different guard positions, where they pulled out and blocked and got the heck beat out of you. I loved it.”
Donnermeyer was enrolled at Dayton High School when World War II started.
“I was laying on the floor in the living room (Dec. 7) 1941 when Pearl Harbor came about,” he said. “Right after that, I kept pushing them, pushing them. Finally, I talked my mom and dad when I was getting ready to become 18 to let me go and join the service.”
Donnermeyer enlisted in the U.S. Navy at a war bond sale in Fountain Square. He was sworn in right before Christmas in 1942.
It wasn’t until after the new year that he found himself at boot camp in Great Lakes, North Chicago. Donnermeyer was given a test during boot camp and told he would be a radioman.
They sent him to Northwestern University to attend radio school for seven weeks, where he learned the U.S. and German Morse codes. He found his way to Casco Bay, Maine, from Northwestern University. His group intercepted German communications to learn how their submarines operated. He was assigned to the destroyer escort division, where he helped protect troop convoys in the English Channel.
Donnermeyer said they made roughly 16 crossings with ships across the channel.
“We learned all about the Germans and how they operate the submarines,” Donnermeyer said. “What they would do, they would get ahead of you and sit down on the bottom of the ocean, then come up in between you, and then they shoot torpedoes. And you couldn’t get to them because they’re in the middle of your convoy.”
Donnermeyer said they would spend four hours on and eight hours off listening to the Germans and what they were doing.
“There was long convoys in all parts of the ocean, the lower part, mainly on up into where it was so cold, you went outside for five minutes you had ice cycles on you,” he said. “We didn’t go outside. The crew did. There was nothing but sheets of ice.”
Toward the end of the war, Donnermeyer ended up in Japan working as a senior petty officer in the port authority. He spent seven months in occupied Japan at the end of the war before he left the service.
After being released from active duty in 1946, Donnermeyer joined the Naval Reserves. He then went straight back to high school to get his diploma, where he met his wife, Shirley Mae Snyder. They married in 1948.
They raised three sons, Bill Jr., Jim and Tom, until her death from cancer at age 39 (in 1967.) His son Jim died in 2014 from pancreatic cancer.
During that time, Donnermeyer said he was playing a lot of hardball, also known as baseball. He played catcher through St. Anthony’s Parish in Bellevue. Donnermeyer recalls playing Southgate’s St. Therese Parish, where future American professional baseball pitcher and hall-of-fame player Jim Bunning played.
Donnermeyer said he played a game against Bunning behind Bellevue’s football stadium.
“He throws one of these hardballs at me, and they’re in uniforms—we didn’t have nothing but a shirt on,” Donnermeyer said. “The next one comes up (home run), and you know where it went all the way into the tennis court. Oh, he was livid. He didn’t like that at all. And then a little while later, the same thing happened again: boom, another home run, and Jim didn’t like it. You couldn’t touch that guy when he was in his prime. He was a good pitcher.”
Donnermeyer joined the pipe fitter Union Local 392 in 1949 and said he is the oldest living member.
In 1952, the Donnermeyer family bought a house on Ward Avenue in Bellevue for $5,500. Donnermeyer said he thought he would never pay it off. The family eventually moved to another house in Bellevue on Bonnie Leslie Avenue in 1966.
Donnermeyer dipped his toes into politics as a Bellevue City Council Member, where he served for six years. Years later, in 1986, Bellevue named “Donnermeyer Drive” in the city after him for his years of service.
In 1969, he decided to run as a Democratic candidate for the 68th District of the House of Representatives.
He went door-to-door canvasing with his son Bill Jr.
“Some people I never put in the middle, I’d say, ‘Will you vote?’ Then I’d say, ‘all I ask is you give me your consideration,” Donnermeyer said.
He said it was difficult to start winning Fort Thomas, which tended to vote Republican.
Donnermeyer met his second wife, Mary Ruth Hill, in April 1970 through a friend he worked with at the pipefitter’s union. The couple welcomed their daughter Theresa in November 1971. Mary Donnermeyer died in 2017.
Donnermeyer was elected as a state representative in 1969. At the time, Louis Nunn was governor. He would go on to have a 25-year career as a state representative.
Ann Marie Donnermeyer said one of the biggest things she has learned from her father-in-law is to be kind and honest and help people when possible.
“I would like to vote for him for president if I could,” Ann Marie Donnermeyer said. “He’s the kind of guy you would want there.”
She said it was a nice benefit to marry his son and get such a nice family.
One particularly memorable moment Donnermeyer remembered from his time as a representative involved former state representative Dottie Priddy, who represented Jefferson County in the 45th District. He said at the time, there were problems with people making threats, starting fights, etc. Donnermeyer said Priddy was being threatened, so the fraternal order of police got her a gun.
“She would wear long pants, and she would wear it (the gun) down in her stocking,” he said. “She sat across the aisle from the speaker, Bobby Richardson. He would say the usual, put the bill up for a vote, and he turned around, and without thinking, with the mic still on, he said, ‘Dottie, pull your pants down.’” Donnermeyer laughs as he tells the story.
Another moment he looked back on was when a bill was going to the General Assembly. There were 45 minutes of people voting, getting up and explaining their vote. Donnermeyer said he was sitting next to former state representative Bill McBee. Donnermeyer told McBee he was going to sing his vote.
“He (McBee) said, ‘You won’t do it. I said, ‘I won’t?’ I put my hand up,” Donnermeyer said.
Donnermeyer said he was given three minutes by House Speaker Bill Kenton.
“Speaker Kenton didn’t like anybody singing on the floor. No way. He hated that. So, I started singing, ‘God Bless America.’ I sang that whole song and had them all singing with me.”
Afterward, he said Kenton came chasing him down the hall.
Donnermeyer also served as chair of the Business Organizations and Professions Committee, which had jurisdiction over northern Kentucky’s important tourism and hospitality industries. He was appointed to the Northern Kentucky Convention & Visitors Bureau board in the 1970s.
Bill Donnermeyer Jr. said he has learned from his father to be honest and fair and to follow the rules. An example of this that he pointed to was a sting dubbed “Operation Boptrot” in the Kentucky General Assembly while Donnermeyer served as a representative.
It involved legislators who accepted bribes and other illegal inducements to support horse-racing legislation in Kentucky. Between 1992 and 1995, more than a dozen legislators were convicted.
“He was always above the board, honest and followed the rules,” Bill Donnermeyer Jr. said.
Even as he nears age 100, Donnermeyer maintains his playful nature. He said he likes to sing to the nurses and aides at Carmel Manor, where he currently lives.
He also likes to play jokes.
“I used to scare these people,” Donnermeyer said. “They come into the room for the first time; they do a little work for me and everything. I kid them back and forth. Finally, I looked at them and said, ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you I got aids.’ And they’d scoot back and say, ‘oh my gosh, aids,’ and I’d say ‘yeah, hearing aids.”
Donnermeyer’s daughter-in-law, Debra Donnermeyer, said she lost her parents 35 years ago and is so grateful for the Donnermeyer family.
“He’s just been the best thing for 45 years I’ve been in the family,” she said. “He’s been like a dad to me, a very loving grandfather and a wonderful father.”
