Raymond James Donovan

Raymond J. Donovan, who resigned as labor secretary in the Reagan administration while facing criminal charges of having earlier schemed to defraud New York City of millions of dollars when he was a New Jersey construction company executive — charges of which he was acquitted by a jury — died on Wednesday June 2 2021 at his home in New Vernon, N.J. He was 90. Nevertheless, he resigned from the government five months after he was indicted when a judge refused to dismiss the charges. Mr. Donovan did not play a central decision-making role in the Reagan administration’s biggest labor confrontation — over an illegal strike in 1981 by most of the nation’s air traffic controllers, for which the president fired them. The Transportation Department, not the Labor Department, took the lead on the government side. Raymond James Donovan was born on Aug. 31, 1930, in the St. Andrew’s section of Bayonne, N.J., the seventh of 12 children of David and Eleanor Donovan. Both parents died by the time he was 18, leaving the older children to raise the younger ones. Ray attended St. Andrew’s School and St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, then went on to study at Holy Trinity Seminary in Alabama and the Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, graduating in 1952. Mr. Donovan was a member of the electrical workers union and also worked in the insurance business until 1959, when he joined the Schiavone Construction Company, then a small, three-year-old New Jersey concern. Becoming executive vice president in 1971 — a position in which he oversaw labor relations and negotiated with the unions — he helped expand Schiavone into a major heavy-construction company. He and the founder, Ronald A. Schiavone, owned 90 percent of its stock. Mr. Donovan later served as president of Schiavone until the company was sold in 2007. Mr. Donovan married Catherine Sblendorio in 1957. She survives him, along with their daughter, Mary Ellen Stewart; two sons, Ken and Keith; nine grandchildren; a great-grandson; and two of his siblings.