City skyline is a display of Donald McNamara’s work
Donald G. McNamara was a man of humble birth. But if you want to see his legacy, look up.
Milwaukee City Hall. Both the federal and the county courthouses. The Basilica of St. Josaphat. The Bradley Center. The skyscraper at 100 E. Wisconsin Ave. Chase Tower.
Their roofs, and the roofs of many other Milwaukee-area landmarks, are the work of F.J.A. Christiansen Roofing Co. Inc., which was more than a century old when McNamara — who supported his young family and worked his way through Marquette University and Marquette Law School as a selftaught butcher — became its president and majority owner in 1967.
McNamara, surrounded by family, including Valerie, his wife of 62 years, died last Saturday. He was 81.
McNamara grew up in Ferndale, Mich. His father, George, suffered from tuberculosis. To help make ends meet, McNamara, who was 9, and his brother, Tom, began spending their summers working on an uncle’s ranch in the rugged Missouri Breaks of Montana.
There he developed a taste for hard work and, after almost being bucked from a horse that had been spooked by a rattler, an abiding dislike of snakes.
With an undergraduate degree in accounting, he graduated from law school in 1961. He was a tax attorney at what was then Touche, Ross, Bailey and Smart when, in 1967, he decided to buy into F.J.A. Christiansen, working side-by-side with the founder’s grandson, Robert Christiansen.
McNamara took full control of the business when Robert Christiansen retired in 1990 and expanded the company to Chicago.
McNamara retired in 1995. It was a brief hiatus. Roofing companies across the country were consolidating, and McNamara’s business savvy was needed to form, in 2000, Tecta America Corp., a national corporate partnership of 10 roofing companies.
McNamara’s son, Robert McNamara, is president of F.J.A. Christiansen. He said his father had a presence that inspired trust and confidence.
He remembered that when flying with his father, an accomplished pilot, how “you just felt extremely safe with him. You were in good hands.”