<\/p>\n
“You talk about something that completely turns your life upside down,” he recalled. “Imagine being my dad with five kids, I was the youngest of five, he basically sat down with us and said you know, we’re going to get through this, we’re going to be fine.”<\/p>\n
He also noted that the family’s Catholic faith helped them recover from their loss.<\/p>\n
“It was very important,” he said. “I knew it when I was 40 [my dad] said to [one of his friends] if I didn’t have my Catholic faith, I don’t know how I would have gotten through it, so that’s how important it was.”<\/p>\n
Donnelly was born in Long Island, New York, and moved to Indiana as a teenager. A job with the Yankees never worked out: “I didn’t hit as well as I needed to and I didn’t pitch as well as I needed to, so it never quite worked out,” he told Flynn, laughing.<\/p>\n
He attended the University of Notre Dame and graduated from its law school in 1981. He worked in a family printing business and practiced law before becoming involved in politics, first on a local school board, later as a US representative from Indiana.<\/p>\n
While in Congress, Donnelly was known as a moderate pro-labor, pro-life Democrat who changed his position on marriage in 2013, CNA reported at the time of his ambassador nomination.<\/p>\n