Mike Donahue dead and obituary, journalists ever in Portland during a 44-year

The family of Mike Donahue, who became one of Portland’s most trusted reporters during his 44-year career with KOIN 6 News, has passed away, the family has confirmed. He is 77 years old. He passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer and was with his family until the end. Mike Donahue’s career at KOIN began with the formation of DEQ in Oregon in 1968. It all came to an end in 2012 when he announced his retirement on a midday news show.

“Everyone, everyone who works, retires at some point. Because of the relationship we’ve built over the years, I’ve reached this milestone and today I’m announcing my retirement,” he said that day. But decades ago, he was an obscure 22-year-old reporter writing a story about the fledgling Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

“I used my Chevrolet because it had a hole in the muffler that would never pass the DEQ test,” he said. Over the decades, Mike traveled the world and was sent abroad on numerous missions, including Somalia. But one of the most memorable stories of his career was the eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980.

“What I’ll never forget is when Jimmy Carter came to see the disaster, we all piled into a Chinook helicopter and followed him,” Mike recalls. “He called it a ‘lunar landscape’ … there was nothing there, everything was shrouded in gray.” There were also some bright moments in the eruption reports. During a live TV broadcast, a passing dog grabbed Mike’s microphone.

“We just lost the microphone,” he said. “So I’m speechless about the Mt St Helens update, I’ve been attacked by nature, dogs and everything.”