More than a century before the O'Donovan Brothers and their "pull like a dog" heroics, there lived a young sportsman called William Donovan, also a son of Skibbereen (two generations removed), whose ferocity in competition earned him the nickname "Wild Bill".
He too was a rower, good enough for his university team at least, and a cross-country runner to boot. But the nickname arose from his exploits in American football. And his repertoire of skills extended well beyond sport. Like his near-namesakes, the Olympic silver medallists, he could also talk a good game. In Wild Bill’s case, it won him his college’s silver medal for oratory.
Donovan’s grandfather still had the patronymic “O” when emigrating in the late 1840s.
He lost it somewhere in Buffalo, New York, around the same time he was shedding his impoverished origins.
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Thereafter, the dynasty he and his wife (Mary Mahoney) founded was a classic illustration of the American Dream.
Within three generations, the Donovan patriarchs rose from manual work, to rail-yard management, to a Columbia University law degree. Law was Wild Bill's eventual vocation after the usual option, priesthood, had been ruled out.
It may be relevant to note that the first two men were teetotallers, and Wild Bill never drank much either. In any case, by 1914, the 31-year-old Donovan was already a successful lawyer (his prospects not hurt by marriage to the daughter of Buffalo’s wealthiest man).
When the US belatedly joined the first World War, however, he was quick to volunteer, becoming an army major and helping organise an updated version of the famous New York-Irish brigade, the "Fighting 69th", whose doomed civil war heroics were so admired Robert E Lee.
Donovan's military medal collection would put his sporting career to shame. According to Arlington Cemetery, where he is now buried, he remains the only soldier to have achieved all four of his country's highest military awards. One, the Distinguished Service Cross, was earned for his part in a 1918 battle at the river Ourcq (nicknamed the "O'Rourke"), east of Paris, during which his unit held out for three days against massed German machine guns. Poet Joyce Kilmer was one of the many who died. Donovan was wounded, but survived to be promoted lieutenant colonel.
After the war, resuming law in the role of state attorney, he had the distinction – interesting for an Irish-American – of being a determined enforcer of prohibition. That too carried the risk of death, by bullet or dynamite.
But not even his own social club, where the well-heeled of Buffalo thought they were above the law, escaped his zeal. His agents raided it with sledgehammers, to the outrage of his Wasp peers, who regretted the upstart’s admission to their ranks.
Later he ran for politics, unsuccessfully, since his wealth and republicanism did not sit easily with the New York Irish base.
But even then, his absurdly eventful life had not peaked. In 1941, by which time he was a confidant of President Roosevelt, he was tasked with his defining role – establishing a centralised intelligence service, the CIA in embryo.
While still so engaged, on June 6th, 1944, he joined US troops landing at Normandy, in defiance of his superiors who didn’t want their spymaster general anywhere near enemy lines. He collected another war wound in the process, when his local head of covert operations fell on him, under fire, cutting Donovan’s throat with the edge of a helmet.
But he survived that too. Nor did he and his fellow spy have to resort to their drastic back-up plan in the event of captured.
They had forgotten to bring their suicide pills, anyway. So as the colleague recalled years later, Donovan suggested they use bullets instead, and explained apologetically that, as commanding officer, “I’ll shoot you first.”
Outliving that too, Wild Bill went on to be part of the prosecution at Nuremberg and was later US ambassador to Thailand. He died, in 1959 aged 76, of natural causes.
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If Donovan is not spinning in his grave at recent events, he may nevertheless be still busy.
On that same occasion in Normandy, he asked his covert ops colleague whether the latter had booked a grave in Arlington yet, as he himself had done. When the man said he had not, Donovan suggested they have neighbouring plots. “Then we could start an underground together.”