Charles E. McDonnell, 93, died on March 15, 2025, peacefully at home after a brief sojourn under hospice care. Locally, he served as Chief of the Medical Administration Division (MAD, a.k.a. MAS for Medical Administration Services) at the Lebanon, PA Veterans Administration Medical Center from June 1971 to the mid-90s.
Born on Sept. 19, 1931, in Altoona, PA, Charles was a fraternal twin to Charlotte. After the difficult delivery, their mother, Tressa Marie McDonnell—who worked as a professional fortune teller!—asked the doctor about her twins’ survival chances. She was told, “The little girl is fine, but the little boy won’t live to wear kneepants.” Hauntingly, two months later, one twin died. But, of course, it was Charlotte.
Charles, nicknamed “Mac,” graduated from Altoona High School in June 1949. Because he was underage, just 17, his mother, Tressa, had to sign a permission slip allowing him to enlist. He joined the Army that summer, trained at Fort Dix, NJ, and was promptly dispatched overseas to West Germany. Eventually a Sergeant, Mac served there during the Korean War as a clerk-typist/assistant in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
Mustering out in 1952, Mac returned to PA and joined the Altoona VA Hospital. It was the start of a four-decade-long career with another government organization, what is now called the Department of Veterans Affairs. He began in Altoona as a night shift admissions clerk, later completing a VA assistant director/executive training program in Dayton, OH.
Subsequently, in 1960, he transferred to Fort Bayard, NM (and its historic former Army Hospital built in 1866 and transformed into a VA Hospital in 1922), becoming Assistant Director, MAD. In 1963, Mac moved on to Big Spring, TX, and its VA Medical Center, where he was promoted to Director, MAD.
In 1970, it was off to Los Angeles, CA, with Mac becoming Director, MAD at the San Fernando (Valley) Hospital in Sylmar. Sadly, on Feb. 9, 1971, a deadly, massive earthquake utterly destroyed that hospital complex (built in 1925, it was the first VA facility on the West Coast). Mac led the heroic effort to relocate live veterans (and bury the dead), reunite patients with missing belongings, and rescue still-viable equipment from the rubble. He spent four months on those missions before transferring out of a hospital that no longer existed and returning East. Mac completed his career with two decades at the Lebanon, PA Medical Center as Chief, MAD (and occasional fill-in as overall hospital Director).
Sharing his life and the endless odyssey of VA moving days was Margaret/”Peggy” (Young) McDonnell. They met on a blind date arranged by close friends in 1954, eloped to Winchester, VA, in June 1955, and raised two sons, David and Russ, both of Lebanon, who survive them and miss their parents sorely. Peggy and Mac were together for 70 years until her October 2024 death. Mac yearned to join her, predicting that he would do so in about six months. And he did, dying, perhaps, of a broken heart.
Also predeceasing him were his mother, Tressa; twin, Charlotte; older sisters, his favorite Clara, Pearl, Honey, and “Maddie”; older brothers, “Bud” and “Sonny”; various in-laws and a batch of nephews and nieces (“Buddy,” Larry, Bonnie, etc.).
Viewing will be on Thursday, March 27, 2025, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at the Thompson Funeral Home, Inc., 126 S. 9th St., Lebanon, PA 17042. Hearse and motorcade depart there circa 12:30 p.m. Interment with Full Military Honors follows at 1:30 p.m. at the Indiantown Gap National Cemetery, RR2 Box 984, Indiantown Gap, Annville, PA 17002.
Contributions to his memory can be made to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, 322 8th Ave., 16th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Remember him.
