‘His heart was in it’: Reporter covered Navajo for five decades

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Bill Donovan, a prolific journalist who covered the Navajo Nation for five decades at newspapers in New Mexico and Arizona, has died. He was 76.

Donovan recently was hospitalized with pneumonia and died, Saturday night, at his home in Torrance, California, surrounded by loved ones, said his daughter, Kelly Cunningham.

Donovan was an institution on the Navajo Nation, a reporter who quickly could recall moments in Navajo history and phone numbers. He worked for the Gallup Independent, the Navajo Times, the Arizona Republic and other small publications — sometimes at the same time.

Donovan wrote about a longstanding land dispute between Navajos and Hopis, a hospital takeover, politics and efforts to reform tribal government. No story was more memorable — or scary — than a 1989 riot in the tribal capital of Window Rock that turned deadly in a political power struggle, he said, days before he died.

And no reporter knew more about former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald, who was convicted of inciting the riot, or about what led up to it than Donovan. He drew from decades of reporting to add rich context to his stories.

“One of the most prized qualities that a writer can bring to a story, other than the ability to write well, is institutional memory,” Donovan wrote in a December 2018 essay in the Navajo Times.

Donovan moved to California, in 2018, to be closer to his children but continued writing under a Los Angeles dateline for the Navajo Times, an outlet he was fired from several times over stories he wrote critical of the tribal government. He had two children: Cunningham and Richard Donovan, and two grandchildren.

Cunningham said her father showed her the importance of quick wit, patience and kindness. She recalled a magic show that went awry when she was in grade school in Gallup, New Mexico, and Donovan was part of the act. Her dad saved her the embarrassment by doing an impromptu comedy show in front of the whole school, she said.

“Dad always lived in the moment in the best way,” she said. “I have never ever seen him angry, judgmental or stressed.”

Raised in Newport, Kentucky, Donovan attended nearby Georgetown College. He was working the police beat at the Lexington Herald in his early 20s when a sergeant who was Navajo recommended that he go to the Navajo Nation nearly 700 miles away and be a reporter.

Donovan first was hired as a sports editor at the Gallup Independent.

“He didn’t know a damn thing about sports,” said the paper’s publisher, Bob Zollinger. “He didn’t know what a baseball bat was versus a golf club. So he read a few books and started writing sports.”