NEWS HONORS HERO COP’S FAMILY
McDonalds shining lights for NYPD, city
McDonald and a partner tried to question Jones and when they did, Jones shot McDonald three times. The third bullet was fired into McDonald’s spine and left him a quadriplegic for the rest of his life — until a massive heart attack finally took that life two months ago.
He was 29, not yet 30, his son’s age now, that day in Central Park. Out of the tragedy, of course, came the triumph of Steven McDonald forgiving Jones at Conor McDonald’s baptism in 1987.
“I didn’t just learn about my father by watching the way he lived his life,” Conor McDonald recalls. “I learned it by the stories people told me about him. But that’s one of the things I’ll always remember best about my dad: Even as people told you time after time how inspiring he was, the life he led after he was put in that chair, he never acted like he knew how important he was.”
On the occasion of the Daily News once again honoring Steven McDonald and his family, his son says: “My whole life, my dad never showed any anger towards (Jones), or his family. He told me constantly that anger was a wasted emotion.
“He believed and my mom believed that if he hadn’t been able to let go of his anger about what happened to him, he wouldn’t have lived as long as he did. The doctors gave him three to five years. He lasted 30.”
Steven McDonald’s widow, Patricia Norris-McDonald, would later become mayor of the Long Island village of Malverne. She was pregnant with Conor when her husband was shot by Jones, who died in 1995 from a motorcycle accident, after serving nine years for the shooting.
When Conor McDonald finished high school, before going off to Boston College, he took the civil service test. “Just in case,” he says now. After he graduated college in 2009, he went out to Colorado to do volunteer service for AmeriCorps.
It was when he was there that he called home with this news: “I’m up for the academy.”
In the McDonald family, of course, part of the family of the NYPD, there was only one academy he could be referring to.
Conor says news about the Police Academy “took” his mother a little bit. But he says she understood. His father understood better than anyone. The NYPD had turned out to be the family business after all.
“She said, ‘It's where you’re supposed to be,’ ” he says now.
So, his father’s story as a young cop in the city had become his story. Conor first worked out of Midtown South, spent a lot of time, as he says, “on foot in Times Square.” From there he went to the Queens Warrants Squad from 2013 into 2016.
“Got a lot of knowledge there,” he says. “A lot. And ended up getting my detective’s shield.”
It was Commissioner Raymond Kelly who had put Conor McDonald in Queens Warrants. It was Commissioner Bill Bratton who later gave Conor his shield, the same as Bratton had once done for Steven McDonald, 20 years earlier and 10 years after he had been shot.
“Passing the sergeant’s test,” Conor says, “getting promoted to sergeant, that was a big thrill for me. But I swear it was a bigger thrill for my dad. He’d had so many dreams for himself once, so many aspirations, and had done a lot in a short time. But God gave him a different path.”
He pauses, then says, “That day, when I got that shield, that was an emotional and proud day for both of us, me getting it in front of him.” He pauses again and says, “Three months later, he’s gone.”
I ask him about his mother then, about her example, and her own courage. She was 24 years old when her husband was shot. And stayed.
“My mom is the toughest lady anyone will ever know,” the son says. “She comes out of a small village in Long Island, but I swear, it’s like she was brought up in the toughest area of New York City.
“After my dad was shot, she took it all on. She made sure he lived the best life he could live. Never let anyone get in the way of that. Never wavered. And when my dad passed, she never let anything get in the way of running her town. A lot of people in my mother’s situation might have left. She never did.”
Now, even as a mayor from Malverne, she is a permanent part of the royalty of our city. So, too, is her son. Another Sgt. McDonald who honors the shield the way his father did, and the job.