Without a long-ago classroom encounter, Ida and John O'Donoghue could not have hosted their recent gala celebration of several milestones, including their 34th wedding anniversary and Ida's retirement. But that's getting ahead of the story.
John, the seventh of thirteen children, was born in 1929 into a fieldstone home with two staircases, central heating, refrigerator and telephone, a pony and maids and a touring car. Seven years later, his depression-stressed parents relocated his six older siblings with family members; John, at age seven, became the "oldest" of seven brothers and sisters. In a small, one-bedroom house, he was responsible for bringing buckets of water and milk from neighbors' homes, chopping wood to keep the stove going, emptying the washer and hanging the laundry, budgeting and grocery-shopping for canned vegetables and soups, potatoes and rice. He comments, "I guess this was my first exposure to accounting." From 1949 to 1959, around a three year stint with the Marines in the Korean War, he went to night school from 1949 – 59, finishing first in his class, the only graduate to become a CPA, a married man with four of his eventual family of eight children. John had read in a matchbook cover, "Become an accountant," and so he did, with a career including roles as controller, treasurer, CFO and VP of Finance and Administration. Far different from his first job when he "left home" at age 12 to work on a dairy farm "full time" at $2.00 a week!
When Ida was eighteen months old her mother died, and her father took her to Burbank where they lived with family. She graduated from Cal State Northridge, majoring in Spanish and minoring in English. After teaching Spanish for five years, a golden opportunity led to her career in English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction. She devotedly nurtured her students, from the world's cultures and speaking many languages. Ida compares it to being a triage nurse - "stopping the bleeding" of culture transplant, helping kids acclimate to American ways, producing grateful, emotionally healthy, self-confident citizens for thirty-five years, until her retirement this June.
Oh, about that classroom encounter...Ida's first year of teaching brought a very special student into her life. At back-to-school night Ida met Michael O'Donoghue's widowed father, and eight months later John and Ida were married – immediately making Ida the mother of eight and a grandmother at age twenty-seven!
Still adjusting to retirement, Ida is surveying opportunities for involvement at University Village. John gives of himself as the Building Representative of Villa area 5, as a member of the Budget & Finance and Activities Committees, leading UV hikes, starring as a Garden Club tomato producer, and offering his helpful expertise wherever it is needed. Both Ida and John are appreciated as Noteworthy Neighbors, indeed!