Heather Beasley Doyle
By Heather Beasley Doyle, Belmont Voice correspondent
When Joe O’Donnell’s family walked into Harvard Memorial Church for his celebration of life service last month, it wasn’t a typical funeral scene.
“Seven hundred people [were] there eating candy bars in front of us,” O’Donnell’s older daughter, Kate O’Donnell, said. “Which he would have gotten such a kick out of.”
Kate said the candy bars, Hershey’s milk chocolate with almonds, were O’Donnell’s calling card. Her father always had an abundant supply and was always sharing it.
“If you went to his office, you couldn’t leave without it,” she said.
His family placed a Hershey’s bar with almonds on every seat at Memorial Church. It’s easy to imagine his most immediate survivors — his wife Kathy, Kate, and younger daughter Casey Buckley — enjoyed seeing O’Donnell’s signature gift creating happiness one more time.
O’Donnell, 79, died Jan. 7 from pancreatic cancer.
‘The Heart of the Town’
Belmont resident Diane Miller said the Hershey’s bars felt right, reminding her of the 2013 Joey’s Park rebuild at the Winn Brook Elementary School. Miller and Ellen Schreiber, then Friends of Joey’s Park Committee co-chairs, first met Joe and Kathy O’Donnell as they planned the rebuild in 2012.
First built in 1989, the playground was created in memory of the O’Donnells’ 12-year-old son, Joey, who died from cystic fibrosis in 1986. Joey’s friends wanted to do something to remember him, and the O’Donnells worked with the entire community to raise money and build Joey’s Park.
“It would have been very easy for them to leave because of all the memories, but they knew it was an important place,” said Kate, born three months after Joey’s death.
Her earliest memories are of the first park build when she was three.
“Joey’s Park is the heart of the town for our family,” Kate said, adding the playground became a sacred spot for her parents. “It was a place they could go to remember him in a really joyful way.”
People who hadn’t known Joey also flocked to the “destination playground” and loved it enough that when it was condemned in 2011, they wanted to rebuild, Miller said.
Among the co-chairs’ first steps in the project was meeting the O’Donnells.
“We needed to get to know them, and they needed to get to know us,” Schreiber said.
The four shared a vision of a playground created in the spirit of the original: for and by the community. O’Donnell was by then positioned to support the committee’s efforts connecting them with contractors and others, many offering in-kind donations. O’Donnell spent days at the site in person.
From Business Acumen to Philanthropic Good
O’Donnell earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1967 and his MBA from Harvard Business School four years later. Success followed. As O’Donnell’s business achievements multiplied, so did his philanthropic reach. His contributions to Harvard, including financial donations and serving at its highest governing levels, earned him the Harvard Medal in 2020.
Defying the Odds
O’Donnell and Kathy defied the odds, staying together after Joey’s death; their relationship became “almost stronger,” Kate said. In the wake of their son’s death, they asked: “What can we do to fix this?”
Their answer was to establish The Joey Fund. Since 1986, the fund has raised money for cystic fibrosis research. O’Donnell was a force in that role, “personally responsible” for raising some $500 million, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, a partner of The Joey Fund.
The funds facilitated the advent of treatments, which have helped increase the life expectancy of people living with the disease to 48.4 years in 2019, up from 11 years in 1978.
The Joey Fund connected O’Donnell to a new sphere of people and relationships that energized the extroverted O’Donnell.
“People just fascinated him. Everyone!” Kate said. “He read people better than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Mucking It Up, Not Keeping Score
“He could hold court with the President of the United States … and then he could get down and muck it up with anybody. It was a gift,” said Dante Muzzioli, whose landscaping company D. Muzzioli Associates, has cared for Joey’s Park since 1989.
O’Donnell gave people nicknames. Muzzioli was “Muzzy” (a name that stuck and now is the name of his ice cream shop). A Star Wars fan like his son, O’Donnell had a nickname of his own: “Yoda.”
He coached his daughters’ sports teams. Kate said he was partial to the word “tremendous” and was “outrageously present” in his daughters’ lives.
Muzzioli considered O’Donnell a tough, salt-of-the-earth Everett guy who had climbed to such prestige that he could score Bruins playoff tickets on request — with some gentle teasing.
“‘You’re beautiful. Everybody else calls up; they want two. Not Muzzy, he wants six,’” Muzzioli recalled him saying. “And he’d laugh. And he would do it.”
As parents, the O’Donnells encouraged such gratitude-based generosity.
“They made it very clear to us at a young age that privilege comes with a responsibility to your community,” Kate said.
In October 2013, that meant showing up daily as a family for the nine-day Joey’s Park rebuild. O’Donnell’s crucial contribution was moral support, Miller and Schreiber said, especially at moments of turmoil managing some 2,000 volunteers.
“He made sure we had candy bars for every volunteer,” Miller said.
The O’Donnells moved to Boston in 2014, but each October, they returned for the Joey’s Park rebuild reunion. Last fall, O’Donnell began organizing a permanent Friends of Joey’s Park organization.
“It felt really good to be getting re-engaged with him on a regular basis,” Miller said. “Going forward without him … is going to be very hard.”
People might wonder how O’Donnell was able to contribute so much of himself throughout his life. But his words at a 2011 Harvard Athletics reception in his honor give insight into how he kept giving.
“Let’s get this straight,” he said, “Whatever I’ve given to Harvard, I’ve gotten back 50 times, 100 times. As you know, we don’t keep score with the things we love.”
