THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 9, 1996 TAG: 9602090452
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
When Donald Gonzales was a boy on a farm at Elmwood, Neb., he would look up at an airplane, remote in the blue, and dream of seeing people in far places.
As a prize-winning reporter for the United Press and the Associated Press and later as an undersecretary of state in the State Department, he realized that dream.
Then, working as the right-hand man to Carl Humelsine, president of Colonial Williamsburg, he was often in the company of dignitaries, from Winston Churchill to presidents of the United States.
But then to Don Gonzales everybody was somebody.
At recent funeral services for Gonzales, who was 78, a tribute by a colleague, Norman Beatty, caught Gonzales' full scope.
Once, unshaven, clad in an old pair of Bermuda shorts and a beat up shirt, Gonzales dropped by the Visitors Center on an errand.
There he encountered a family in distress. It was late and the motels were filled. Gonzales offered the family free lodging at his house.
Husband and wife looked at each other as if to say, ``What choice do we have?'' and were amazed when they wound up at the historic Robert Carter House on Palace Green.
That open-handed hospitality was habitual with Don and Mary, his wife. There home was like a hostelry, Beatty said.
Over the years, more than 2,000 students from the College of William and Mary found a meal or a haven with the Gonzaleses.
As children in Elmwood, the two skipped hand-in-hand and their partnership continued at the University of Nebraska where she majored in music and he in journalism.
They were the first couple to win William and Mary's Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award for helping the college and the community.
They bridged the time warp between the 300-year-old restoration and the growing city of Williamsburg where Mary could be found playing the organ in churches and helping music students at the college and Don discussing civic needs at the Rotary Club.
Gonzales and Humelsine set in place a sense of professionalism at the restoration. Under their guidance, Colonial Williamsburg tripled its endowment, added six exhibition buildings, expanded teaching, raised annual attendance from 300,000 to one million, initiated private fund-raising and won a $14 million gift for the DeWitt Wallace Gallery, earning worldwide renown yet preserving the restorative air for visitors, from tourists to kings.
Little escaped Gonzales' direct blue eyes. When his staff members tended to drift together during events, he would tell them to ``break it up'' and mingle with the guests.
When people thanked Gonzales for his help, he smiled and said, ``Pass it on!'' He and Mary passed along that priceless legacy to four splendid children and a multitude of others whose lives they touched. ILLUSTRATION: Don Gonzales was often in the company of dignitaries, from
Winston Churchill to presidents. But to Gonzales, everybody was
somebody.
by CNB