A gifted athlete, he Captained the Maroon basketball and baseball teams and also played football and soccer. The recipient of the Ridgewood High School Award For Excellence In Athletics for the Class of 1942 entered military service two months after graduation and tragically lost his life at age 20 as a Navy pilot in World War II. His athletic skills attracted college recruiters for football and the New York Giants for baseball.

He should have graduated with the Class of 1941 but complications from a broken leg sustained playing football his sophomore year held him back a year. He switched to soccer when he couldn’t play football in the fall of 1941. Don was an only child and was a Boy Scout as a youngster. He took his pre-flight training at Chapel Hill, where he again played football, Squantum, Massachusetts, and was commissioned in December of 1943 at Pensacola, Florida. Flying an F86 Hellcat out of Otis Field, Cape Cod, Mass., gave him frequent opportunities to come home on 24-hour passes. He died on July 3, 1944 when the aircraft he was ferrying went down in a storm near Callahan, Georgia, 35 miles west of Jacksonville, Florida. He is buried in 12 Park, Plot E1/2 1475, Grave 1 in Valleau Cemetery in Ridgewood.