Reno lost an eminent photographer when Don Dondero, 83, died Friday. His wife of 58 years, Liz, died two weeks earlier on May 16.
Don was my friend. I’m going to miss him a lot. I met him back in ‘94. For a short time, he was the staff photographer of this paper. I was fortunate to get to know him well; he was in his 70s when I met him. I think most people probably know him as the man who shot celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra, when Reno was in the national spotlight half a century ago.
I knew him as a guy who was incredibly full of life, more full of piss and vinegar than anyone that age I have ever met. His sense of humor could be profane and pretty biting, especially toward politicians, and I spent a lot of time laughing when he was around.
Dondero was also a guy who could take pleasure from the pleasure of others. He quit smoking and drinking some decades ago, and he used to get me to drink a few beers when we were out working on stories together because he missed sitting in bars.
Don liked the smell of cigars, so sometimes we would buy a cigar and drive around with his car windows rolled up while I smoked it. He said it made the car smell like money. He’d leave the butt in the ashtray until his daughter Debbie would throw it away.
Don, who was a pilot in World War II—shot down over the Philippines—never really got over the fly-boy attitude. I remember one time, it must have been seven or eight years ago, when the area around Verdi was on fire, and the cops were turning traffic around on I-80. Don knew some Jeep trail, and he drove us on rutted trails almost all the way to Verdi. I don’t remember which car it was, but I do remember thinking the blaze was going to get behind us, and we were going to die. But I couldn’t really say anything, could I?
Dondero never stopped trying to learn. He bought an Apple iMac computer, so he could learn how to get e-mail and surf the Internet. I don’t know how far he got, but he made me give him another lesson in how to type in a URL almost every time I came over, and he never responded to a single one of my e-mails.
Don gave me a car a few years ago, a 1964 Mercury Park Lane. It was his dad’s, but he couldn’t get it to start and he wanted it off his driveway. I guess that car kind of symbolized Don for me. It was old, but once it started, it rarely stopped. I put 40,000 miles on it before I parked it two years ago, and last week, when my girlfriend needed to borrow my new car, I drove that Merc all over town. It never failed to start. It never let me down.
A celebration of the lives of Don and Liz Dondero will be held at the California Building in Reno’s Idlewild Park from 1 to 3 p.m. on June 6.