Financial woes caused by the Depression resulted in Warren High School not fielding a baseball team from 1932 to 1934.  In 1935 shortstop Donat helped lead the returning Red Raiders to the finals of the Class B playoffs, and, for his efforts, he was named All Class B.

As an end on Warren High’s 1935 Class C Football Champions, Donat was named All Class C and All State.  Then in the spring of 1936 he helped lead Warren to the Class C Baseball Championship; in the Class playoffs he hit a “foul ball home run” followed by a fair ball homer to tie South Kingstown in the ninth inning.  After the team lost in the state finals to Cranston, he was named All Class C and All State. 

His work on and off the field led to his being named the Providence Journal-Bulletin Honor Roll Boy Runner-Up.  (Soon thereafter the newspaper ceased naming a runner-up for this honor).

Donat went on to Providence College, where in his junior year of 1939 he was hitting .369 for the 11-1 Friars.  Then disaster struck.  A line drive to third base crashed through the webbing of his glove and caused him to lose his right eye.  Dominican Father Robert Quinn visited him in the hospital and told him that he now had the choice of becoming a better man or a bitter man.  He chose the former.

Providence Journal-Bulletin cartoonist Frank Lanning bestowed the title of “Captain Courageous” upon Donat Brochu.  Nobody could have described him better.

Named the honorary captain of his school’s 1940 squad, he convinced the powers-that-be to allow him to try out for the team.  He became the starting left fielder, and, as Frank Lanning said, “Brochu rates the front page in our book of courage; boy, you have what it takes.”

Donat hit .333 in twenty Warren versus Bristol Baseball Little World Series games between 1934 and 1947.  In the Warren Twilight League he was a three-time All Star, the Most Valuable Player Runner-Up in 1934, and a member of the 1937 Champions Rough and Readys.

Following military service in World War Two (yes, with one eye!), Donat was Warren High School’s head basketball coach and assistant baseball and football coach during the 1940s and 1950s.  He helped lead the school’s baseball and football teams to championships in 1956.

Later he became principal of both Warren and Burrillville High Schools and the superintendent of the Burrillville School System.

In 1956 Warren High’s football team needed to defeat Burrillville, a team that the Redskins hadn’t downed since 1936, to become co-champions.  A number of the players visited churches prior to the game to “pray for victory.”  Monday morning, with the title firmly in hand, Donat raised the subject in class and asked how many of them had returned to those places of worship to “give thanks for the win.”  Sadly any teacher doing this in the Twenty-First Century would be called on the carpet.

Picture from Hall of Fame archives (Providence Journal-Bulletin)