Donny May (1923–2011) packed a genuinely remarkable amount into one life — wartime naval service, championship motorcycle racing, and decades running Portrush’s hotel trade.
A teenage lie that led to D-Day
Raised near Dunadry, close to the Dundrod Ulster Grand Prix circuit, Donny developed lifelong passions for fishing and motorcycling as a boy. At just sixteen, he lied about his age to enlist in the Royal Navy before the war had fully broken out. Posted to Portsmouth ahead of the Normandy invasion, he rescued two trapped members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service from a burning boat — an act that went formally unrecognised at the time, due to wartime press restrictions.
During the Normandy landings, Donny crewed a converted Thames barge ferrying munitions and fuel to the beachhead. The barge was later sunk by a mine; he lost friends in the sinking, including a crewmate nicknamed “Stripey,” rescued alongside Donny by an American vessel after — as Donny told it — finding God while drowning. Later in the war he served aboard HMS Woodstock on minesweeping duty in Japanese-controlled Pacific waters.
From the Navy to the racetrack
After the war, Donny worked at Shorts (the Belfast aircraft manufacturer) before becoming a serious motorcycle road racer, debuting at the 1948 Ulster Grand Prix on a Triumph Tiger and racing until 1959 across Triumph, AJS, BSA, Norton and NSU machines. He won the North West 200 main handicap in 1955 — the same year he moved to Portrush to work at his sister Elsie and brother-in-law Jack Fawcett’s hotel.
A Portrush life
Donny married Josephine “Jo” McBurney of Ballymena, settled on Main Street, and became general manager of the Fawcett Hotel Group — including the Lismara and the Strand in Portstewart — until retiring in 1972 to open a Main Street off-licence. In later life, despite a rare neural disease affecting his movement, he continued attending Remembrance Day parades on an electric scooter, medals displayed. He died in February 2011; at his graveside, a French relative offered thanks for the part he’d played in liberating France on D-Day — a fitting close to a life that started with a sixteen-year-old’s lie to get into uniform.