The worst in this country is the best in most other countries. People in this country don`t realize how good they have it. ''Then, I love this country very much, and I put my money where my mouth is. Some people mistake that for a death wish, but it isn`t that at all. ''I guess if I had to put a label on myself, I`d say I am an idealistic adventurer. ''I need adventure like an alcoholic needs a drink,'' he said. What does separate Donovan from most of his fellow citizens is what he calls a need for adventure. I am an elder in the Presbyterian Church and I don`t drink to excess or chase women.'' I have a wonderful wife that I just adore, and I am very proud of every one of my children. ''I`m not trying to prove anything to anyone,'' Donovan continued, ''and I`m way past the point where I have to prove anything to myself. We put on all our medals and we stand at the bar and drink beer out of the mugs that are made out of human skulls. But they expect us to act in a certain way and so we do it. ''Some of the people who come to the SOF conventions regard us as heroes,'' he said. ''Sometimes I will do things just to see the reaction it gets from people,'' Donovan acknowledged. Is he for real, or is he performing a big put-on for the world? Just how much of Donovan`s life is for show is a question that must occur to people who have contact with him. ''He`s the kind of guy I`d like to have on my right hand during a firefight.'' ''I would go anywhere in the world with him,'' Brown said by phone from Colorado. But I get some of my expenses paid on the trips we take, and I get into some very interesting parts of the world.''īrown describes Donovan as intelligent, blunt and very reliable. ''Brown has given me a certain amount of fame, but no fortune,'' Donovan said. In 1975, Brown began publishing Soldier of Fortune in Boulder, Colo., and asked Donovan to be a contributing editor. 8, 1982, issue of People was headlined ''Soldiers of Fortune Invade Charlotte, N.C., To Find Adventure, Love and Death.'' Donovan was quoted as saying, ''This is the most important day of my life because this is forever.'' Donovan and his wife, who grew up in Peoria, have one child.ĭonovan met Brown when making a parachute jump in 1972. The story of his wedding to Pam Sullivan in the Nov. ''Brown was my best man and there were 1,500 people there,'' Donovan said. His mother, a former French teacher, is bookkeeper for the demolition company.ĭonovan was married for the second time-the first marriage ended in divorce-in 1982 at a Soldier of Fortune convention in North Carolina. In an adjoining room, Donovan`s father worked at a woodworking project. One of Donovan`s six children, 19-year-old Matthew, listened as his father talked. Over the spring and summer, Donovan says, he had knee surgery, attended a rattlesnake roundup in Texas, conducted a school on demolitions identification in South Carolina and was in South Africa for six weeks, where he played himself in a film about soldiers of fortune. McCarthy said Donovan once handled a bomb that turned out to be a phony at the prison in Pontiac, and has also conducted classes and demonstrations for law-enforcement officers. The Illinois State Police has in the past had Donovan under contract to help with bomb disposal situations, according to Capt. ''We also take down a bridge now and then,'' Donovan said. The ''shooting'' or blasting is done in a pit in the middle of the Donovan farm. ''We work with companies that make such things as railroad switches.'' ''We make most of our money using plastic explosives to change the molecular structure of manganese steel,'' Donovan explained. It focuses its attention on people not unlike Eugene Hasenfus of Marinette, Wis., a civilian who recently was sentenced to 30 years in a Nicaraguan prison after being captured when a cargo plane carrying supplies to rebels fighting the Sandinista government was shot down. The magazine, which claims a circulation of 200,000, runs articles of interest to mercenaries and would-be mercenaries, though it no longer carries help-wanted ads for mercenary-type activity. And since the inception of Soldier of Fortune magazine in 1975, Donovan has been its explosives-demolitions editor. or Rhodesian governments.ĭonovan is a Chicago-born Illinois farm boy, successful businessman and proud father of six who will assume a commie-killer role at the drop of a spent cartridge in a foreign land. And killing him, he says, was just part of doing his bit for America when he was in Rhodesia in 1977 as a ''participating journalist.'' He says he had with no affiliation with either the U.S. Donovan, 44, says the dead man in the photo was a communist.
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