Of the five people who have occupied the ground floor athletic director’s office at the University of Hawaii, none has wanted to be there more than James J. Donovan III.

None has gazed out its windows overlooking the facilities with higher expectations.

Donovan, a two-year starter on the offensive line (1981-82) for the then-Rainbows of Dick Tomey and holder of two degrees from the school, was the first UH alumnus athlete in its nearly 40-year history of Division I sports to return as athletic director.

And when that morning, March 24, 2008, dawned, his wife joked he wouldn’t need an alarm clock to get up. He didn’t.

"This is a good day — I wish they could all be like this," Donovan buoyantly told the media in his office that morning.

Four years later, his face splashed across the news as a visible figure in the Stevie Wonder concert controversy, Donovan awaits the results of a school-ordered investigation to see if he will be allowed to return from an indefinite administrative leave to fulfill the eight months remaining on his contract.

In the meantime, Rockne Freitas, a UH vice president, moves from Bachman Hall to run the state’s only major college athletic program on an interim basis.

The 52-year old Donovan is apparently under orders not to tell his side to the media and contact with the school has been officially limited until the completion of the investigation. These are bitter blows, friends say, for a man who had long looked forward to the early-morning commute from his Kalama Valley home. That he could do it in 18 minutes or less was testament not only to a heavy foot on the gas pedal but an eagerness to get a fast start on the challenges that inevitably awaited him.

It was his dream job

Being athletic director at UH, Joe Kearney, late WAC commissioner (1980-94), used to say, was "the most difficult AD job in the country."

Kearney, who had been AD at Michigan State, Washington and Arizona State, nearly took the UH job in the late 1970s and would later say he made a wise choice given the obstacles to operating a successful program out in the Pacific.

When Hugh Yoshida became AD in 1993, among the gifts piled amid the flowers and balloons on a table in his office was a bottle of quality scotch, a bottle of aspirin and an inspirational book. The man who put the last three items there was Donovan.

In working up through the ranks at UH as manager of Les Murakami Stadium, athletic marketing director, assistant AD and associate AD, Donovan had seen what the job could do to a man. One of his mentors, Stan Sheriff, died on the job of a heart attack.

Yet almost from the time he went to work in the athletic department in 1983 as a graduate assistant football coach, Donovan’s goal was clear and unwavering: become AD.

When Yoshida retired in 2002, Donovan went hard for the job but was passed over for Herman Frazier. The hardest part, Donovan said, was that he didn’t even get an interview for what he feared might be the only shot at his dream job.

He had done up a glossy notebook master plan to show the committee, but what he had really wanted them to see was what was inside him, the passion for the school his children would eventually attend.

hawaii became home

Donovan, a junior college transfer from Santa Ana, Calif., has said that when he came to UH on his recruiting trip, he never imagined spending the rest of his life here.

But he was taken in by what he would call his hanai family, formed lasting bonds with fellow offensive linemen, including current Kauai mayor Bernard Carvalho, and met his wife Tracy in the athletic department. "I knew," he would say later, "this was home."

So much so that when he was passed over for AD in 2002, as much as he wanted to stay in athletic administration, he never really put his heart in the pursuit of a job on the continent. Instead, he went into business and ran the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl for ESPN Regional TV, remaining an avowed supporter of UH and an active officer in the school’s Letterwinners’ Club.

When Frazier was deposed after the 2008 Sugar Bowl, Donovan applied again. When Manoa Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw went to offer him the job there was scant negotiation on its terms. His first day in office he savored the mundane task of opening the mail on his desk, delighting when he saw the address: "Jim Donovan, athletic director University of Hawaii …"

The financial, physical, personnel and geographic challenges left him undaunted. "The buck stops here," Donovan said back then, double-jabbing an index finger into his desk to make a point.

Tuesday, 4 years and four months into the job, Donovan was a distressed, solitary figure at the podium for a press conference announcing the cancellation of the planned Aug. 18 Stevie Wonder concert and refunds for the 6,000 tickets that UH said had been purchased. A day later it was announced he had been placed on indefinite paid administrative leave.

Donovan has declined comment and has told people he has been instructed not to speak to the media. He has told friends he was only marginally involved in the concert. They say he told them he and arena manager Rich Sheriff wanted something to benefit the financially strapped athletic department and were led to believe this was it. But, Donovan has said, he understands he is "the captain of the (athletic department) ship" with the responsibility it entails.

They quote him as saying he is "optimistic" about keeping the job once the investigation has run its course.

Even in a bitter, enforced exile, the dream persists.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.