Vincent C. McDonald

After a long and rich life, Vincent C. McDonald passed peacefully on January 11, 2026 at the age of 93. He has now joined his loving wife Ann (née McBride) and their two sons Vincent and Stephen in Eternal Life.

Born at a Brooklyn hospital on April 12, 1932, Vince was the son of the late Nora (Nally) and Vincent McDonald. At the age of only 3 years old, he lost his father. Through the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war era, Vince and his younger sister Patricia were raised by their mother Nora in New York.

Although admittedly not a great athlete, Vince first started boxing in the Police Athletic League when he was 16. In all, he had about ten fights and lost only one of them. When he was 17, he had his first and only bout in the New York Golden Gloves. In the second round, he earned a technical knockout over his opponent Franklin Edwards. He was so excited after this win that he forgot to shake Edwards’ hand, which he always regretted. The next day, a photograph of the bout appeared in the New York Daily News. After that Golden Gloves fight, his mother asked her son to stop boxing and he agreed to do so.

Vince graduated from Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, New York in 1950. After graduation, Vince enlisted in the Army with his two best friends – “Red” Miller and Eddie Bennett. They survived their basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey and served in Worms, Germany during the time of the Korean Conflict. Following an honorable discharge from the Army, Vince matriculated at St. John’s University and, after earning his undergraduate degree, he went onto St. John’s University Law School and received his law degree.

When asked how he was able to go to law school, work a full-time job, and be married with a baby, Vince’s predictably sardonic response was, “I didn’t study much.” The truth was that it was in law school where Vince became a serious and diligent student for the first time.

In the summer of 1956, at the age of 24, Vince met the love of his life Ann Noel McBride at a mutual friend’s engagement party. They got married the following year on August 24, 1957 and welcomed their first child Vincent in

1959. They were then blessed with three additional children: Stephen Barrett (1961), Kerry Ann (1962), and John Kennedy (1964), who were all born in New York.

Ann assured Vince along the way that he never had to worry about her being unfaithful to him, but teased “with the possible exception of Frank Sinatra or JFK….”

Vince and Ann were married for 42 years before Ann’s untimely passing on December 27, 1999 from metastatic breast cancer. After Ann’s cancer diagnosis, Vince and Ann made the pilgrimage to Lourdes on two separate occasions, seeking the healing properties of the water and looking for their miracle.

In Ann’s memory, Vince and his adult children established a Scholarship Fund at the Shrine of St. Jude’s in Rockville, Maryland for high-performing but under-resourced students and also co-founded an annual fundraiser – the “Ann N. McDonald Memorial Basketball Tournament,” which has taken place every year for the last 25 years and has raised almost $500,000 for breast cancer causes. In November of 2025, the McDonald and D’Ascoli Families were honored with “The Community Vision Award” from Living Beyond Breast Cancer for its 25 years of fundraising.

After getting his law degree from St. John’s, Vince entered into the Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State, where he spent his entire career. Over an almost 30-year career in the Foreign Service, Vince served in the American embassies in Beirut, Lebanon; Nairobi, Kenya; Frankfurt, Germany; Geneva, Switzerland (where he was part of the U.S Delegation for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II)); and The Hague, Netherlands.

His career in the Foreign Service enabled Vince to show his children the world. The four of them assailed the Berlin Wall with fake machine guns at “Checkpoint Charlie”; saw Hemingway’s Spain and the “running of the bulls” before later reading about it in his books; rode camels between the pyramids in Egypt; got sunburned on the beaches of the French Riviera; and saw first-hand the horrors of Nazi Germany at the concentration camp at Dachau.

Vince loved watching all four of his children play basketball (and then critique their play on the way home from the games). He also had a lifelong passion for St. John’s basketball, the New York Giants, and the New York Knicks. As a kid, Vince was an avid Brooklyn Dodgers fan, but when they moved to Los Angeles in 1957, he never embraced another New York baseball team despite the fact that his mother Nora became the New York Mets’ biggest fan when they arrived in Queens in 1962.

Vince and his wife Ann loved to travel and explore, find good restaurants all over the world, drink a good bottle of wine, and go to the race track where they both developed into capable handicappers. Their favorite city in the world, second to New York, was Paris, where they visited many times.

In 1979, at the age of 47, Vince suffered the first of his heart attacks. A chain smoker at the time, on the way to the Emergency Room that fateful day, Vince sat in the front seat of the car and smoked all the way to the hospital, commenting to his son Steve, “Either way, these are my last cigarettes.” He was right – he never smoked another cigarette after that day.

A life-long Democrat with a shrewd legal mind, Vince believed strongly in the rule of law, civil rights, social equality, and in diversity and inclusion, among many other intractable views on the political, social and religious issues of the day. First and foremost, he looked for character and integrity in the public servants that he supported.

Without a doubt, Vince’s greatest sources of pride over the last 30 years of his life were his six amazing grandchildren – Vince and Natalie’s daughters Norah and Noelle; Kerry and Gerry’s children Kelsey and Gerry; and John and Kristin’s children Jack and Annie. On any given day in the nursing home, you could hear him bragging about them to the other residents.

While Vince will be deeply missed, his strong opinions, quick wit, and an occasional sharp tongue will remain with all who knew him. Thank you all for being part of Vince’s life and for making his 93 ½ years truly blessed.

Vince is survived by his sister Patricia; his children Kerry D’Ascoli (Gerald) and John K. McDonald (Kristin); his daughter-in-law Natalie (Clarke) McDonald; grandchildren Kelsey (Jeremy), Norah (Luke), Gerry (Sara), Noelle, Jack, and Annie; and his nieces and nephews Jamie, Loretta, Ann, Sharon, Peter, and Tom. And many other family, friends, and caretakers that loved and supported him in his final years.

A Celebration of Vince’s life will be on January 28, 2026 at the Shrine of St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church, 12701 Viers Mill Road, Rockville, MD.

11:30 am – Visitation at the Shrine of St. Jude’s

12:15 pm – Funeral Mass at the Shrine of St. Jude’s

2 pm - Burial at Gate of Heaven (13801 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring, MD)

2:30 pm - Reception to follow

In lieu of flowers, please consider a memorial remembrance to the McDonald Family Memorial Scholarship Fund, which provides academic scholarships to high-performing but under-resourced students at the St. Jude Catholic School in Rockville, Maryland. You can write a check to “St. Jude Regional Catholic School” and earmark it for the “McDonald Family Memorial Scholarship Fund” and send to:

Jeanne Donatelli, St. Jude Regional Catholic School, 4820 Walbridge Street, Rockville, MD 20853.