Cathlin Donnell (1946-2004)
| Publication year | 2011 |
| Pages | 39 |
2011, July, Pg. 39. Cathlin Donnell (1946-2004)
July 2011
Vol. 40, No. 7 [Page 39]
About the Authors
Elizabeth A. Bryant is an estate planning and probate attorney and a member of the Board of the Donnell Initiative Fund-(303) 398-4000, ebryant@eablaw.com. Pamela A. Gagel is Assistant Director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver and a member of the Board of the Donnell Initiative Fund-(303) 871-6602, pgagel@du.edu. Diana M. Poole is Executive Director of the Legal Aid Foundation and the Colorado Lawyer Trust Account Foundation and President of the Board of the Donnell Initiative Fund-(303) 863-9544, diana@legalaidfoundation.org.
We can change this profession and we should. I believe in taking some risks.
-Cathlin Donnell(fn1)
Mourn not the dead who in the cool earth lie ... But rather mourn the apathetic throng The cowed and the meek Who see the world's great anguish and its wrongs And dare not speak.
-Rebecca Love Kourlis, quoting Ralph Chaplin at Cathlin's memorial service(fn2)
Cathlin Donnell's friends and colleagues often use the word "fearless" to describe her. Whether navigating her solo raft down Lava Falls Rapids in the Grand Canyon, confronting power and influence, or advocating reform, Cathlin was not afraid to take risks and to push the envelope-her own and everyone else's. "Have courage," she said. "Our lives are short."(fn3) Cathlin died of breast cancer on October 5, 2004, at the age of 58.
The Adventurer
Cathlin Donnell was born in Waterloo, Iowa, on April 21, 1946, the second of five children born to John and Florence Donnell. Her family was active, and the seeds of Cathlin's lifelong passion for adventure and the great outdoors were planted early and nurtured well. As a child, she found herself canoeing the Cedar River, exploring the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, and picnicking outdoors, winter and summer alike.
Nearly every summer, Cathlin's family would pile into the car and head west, mostly to Colorado, to camp and to hike. It was during those trips that Cathlin fell in love with the rivers and canyons of the West. Years later, during what became Cathlin's permanent sabbatical from the law, Denver lawyer Barbara Salomon introduced her to kayaking, and she took to it immediately. It required the strength, courage, and intensity that Cathlin had in abundance, and allowed her to explore the West in a whole new way. She loved to run the rivers of Colorado, Utah, and Idaho for up to 100 miles at a time, oftenby herself. She also took flat water kayaking trips in the Everglades and in Alaska.
It was the same taste for adventure, along with an insatiable curiosity about the world, that took Cathlin around the globe. After her first year of law school at the University of Chicago-an experience she found "extraordinarily narrow"-Cathlin decided to take a break from school.(fn4) For the next three years, she traveled extensively, finding work to support herself wherever she went. Her travels took her from Indiana to Indonesia, and from Alaska to Australia. She worked in bars, schools, and factories, learning during these years just how self-sufficient she could be.
One of her most interesting work experiences was in an Alaskan salmon canning factory, where she worked as a "slimmer," degutting the fish, often in twelve-hour shifts. In what was to be the first in a long series of firsts for Cathlin, she and a friend were the only women promoted to roe harvesters. Cathlin had driven to Alaska with that friend and their two dogs, living in their car on the way. Once there, they upgraded to a rustic cabin, where, in a typical show of self-reliance, Cathlin installed the phone line herself. Looking back, that primitive Alaskan cabin was a precursor to the cabin Cathlin built years later in southern Colorado on what she always proudly referred to as "my land."
For her entire life, Cathlin continued to travel-from the Arctic Circle, Greenland, and Iceland, to Australia, Indonesia, and the Middle East, to Africa and Costa Rica. Not satisfied with having climbed fourteeners in Colorado, she climbed Mt. Kenya in Africa. Right up until she was too ill to travel, she was planning a trip to Afghanistan, anxious to know for herself this faraway land that had become an epicenter of concern following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and eager to find a way to help Afghani women.
Cathlin wanted others to embrace the same sense of adventure that she so enjoyed, and here too, she was fearless. On one occasion, she invited Denver lawyers Diana Poole and Steve Lass to accompany her on a raft trip with their three young children. The raft could hold only a certain number of people, so everyone (no exceptions) took turns paddling inflatable kayaks called "rubber duckies." Cathlin quickly dismissed her guests' parental timidity and turned her full attention to the earnest youngsters, directing them, in...
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