COMER A. DONNELL
July 3, 1909 - October 16, 1998
Early in the morning while it was still dark outside, Comer Donnell, son, husband, father, grandfather, and supremely and superbly a Christian gentleman quietly slipped away, his face turned toward a beautiful photograph of his brownhaired sweetheart, Mattie Walker Donnell. A scant month earlier his doctor had spoken the report: his prostate cancer, under treatment for a couple of years, had spread.
In May he attended happily the Lake Junaluska wedding of his beloved sister-in-law Mary to Jimmy Ellis. In June he once again sat in Turner Field for an Atlanta Braves game. Friends and family began to notice his increased difficulty in walking and his sometimes ashen color. One Sunday he suffered a fall at church. He continued to go to Rotary and stay abreast of community affairs. It was an election year and his son was on the ballot, thankfully unopposed. He voted at the old Post Office Building, now the Election Commission headquarters.
On September 15, he went to the doctor. Exactly a week later he fell again on the slick tile floor of his bathroom. Laura Anne Cason was there cleaning and she helped him to bed. He telephoned his son himself. He would never be alone again. After one night in the hospital he came to home to a hospital bed and sitters and family members always in attendance. The hospital bed was placed in the den under his direction, but he used it one night and then chose his own four poster, to leave it only after he was unconscious and unknowing. He came home on Thursday, September 24, and by his next doctor appointment a week later he was too weak to go. Drs. Wells and Gill decided the time had come for Hospice.
And so it went. He became even weaker; at the beginning of his last week the pain began in earnest. After the medicine was regulated to relieve him, he slept easily and then finally.
Though this seems a sad account, deep joy appeared in the many visits and sweet exchanges. Carefully he left each visitor with good memories of farewell. He told family members how proud he was of them, and his final Saturday found him at his dining room table with his Georgia grandsons, Martha, Tom, and Mary and Jimmy Ellis. His final visitor was a pledge to the future: young Vanderbilt football student-athlete Ryan Aulds came to tell him he wanted to be just like him.
He selected hymns and made other plans for his service at First United Methodist Church at 11:00 A.M., Monday, October 19, led by Gerald Noffsinger, assisted by Loyd Mabry. Betty Smallwood played the organ and Philip Tatum sang. We are deeply honored that there was a large crowd.
