Donald M. Wilkinson, Jr.

A Life Devoted to Service–and History

BY JOHN M. COSKI

In January 1998, when I was in charge of The Museum of the Confederacy’s Eleanor S. Brockenbrough research library, I received a call from the Museum’s front desk to let me know that there was a “nice man” at the desk who wanted to talk with me. The man proved very nice indeed, impeccably dressed, and very apologetic about dropping by without an appointment.

His name was Don Wilkinson, and he explained that he lived in New York and was only in town for a short while. Knowing that I had written a book on the Confederate Navy, he wanted to talk with me about his own research on his collateral ancestor, the famed Confederate blockade runner captain

John Wilkinson. He showed me a large binder containing his substantial research. I told him that our collections had little or nothing on John Wilkinson except his memoir and other widely available published materials.

A few days later I received a kind letter from Mr. Wilkinson, “enclosing a brochure about my day job” and thanking me for “patiently listening to my project on John Wilkinson.”

Don Wilkinson and Waite Rawls (above) peruse the official program for the opening of the Museum’s 2005 exhibition, The Confederate Navy, which Don Wilkinson underwrote.

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Six years later I found myself in the Museum lobby meeting Don Wilkinson again, this time introduced by the Museum’s new executive director, Waite Rawls. The two men both were graduates of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business; they knew each other from those school’s boards and from the New York City financial world. Both were proud native Virginians who had spent most of their careers outside the Commonwealth but never lost touch with Virginia.

Those first encounters with Don Wilkinson revealed much about a man who became and long remained a generous friend of the Museum and of other educational and historical institutions until his death in April 2020.

Don Wilkinson was passionately interested in the life of his ancestor, in Civil War history, and in American history generally. But he had to fit his historical reading and research into the interstices of a very busy life. His “day job” was chairman of Wilkinson O’Grady, a global asset management firm. He served on the governing boards of VMI, the Darden School, the Virginia Historical Society, and the American Civil War Museum (and, before their consolidation, with both the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar and The Museum of the Confederacy).

His passion for the subject led him to underwrite the 2005 exhibition and book project, The Confederate Navy. “My objective in supporting the Museum of the Confederacy,” he explained in a 2006 article in this Magazine, “was to help shine a spotlight on this rich and too-seldom-celebrated history which includes great bravery, ingenuity and professional accomplishment against overwhelming odds.” He also donated and loaned several John Wilkinson-related objects for the exhibit and, years later, donated original portraits of John Wilkinson’s postwar business partner, Cdr. John Taylor Wood and his wife, Lola Mackubin Wood (See Summer/Fall 2018 issue). Don Wilkinson’s desire to shine a spotlight on the underappreciated accomplishments of Civil War naval officers such as John Wilkinson and John Taylor Wood also motivated him to endow the plaza space outside the new American Civil War Museum at Tredegar Ironworks.

Don Wilkinson wanted the Wilkinson Plaza (located directly in front of the James C. Rees Archway) to pay tribute to John Wilkinson and other officers who served in both the United States and Confederate navies

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His own patient research came to fruition in June 2005 when he delivered a prestigious Banner Lecture at the Virginia Historical Society entitled The Most Good for the Confederacy.

When he died 15 years later, he was putting the finishing touches on his John Wilkinson biography. Rather than retire at 65 or even 75 so that he could work full-time on the project, Don Wilkinson had continued to manage his business and devote much time to the institutions and causes in which he believed.

He attributed his commitment to service to his formative years at VMI. “The reason I have served VMI,” he explained when he accepted the school’s Distinguished Service Award in 2010, “is because I think VMI’s tradition of emphasis on the universal values of integrity, service, duty, responsibility, resolve, honor and patriotism are crucial to the preservation of our way of life as a society, our Constitutional Democracy, and our personal freedom.”

For more than a generation, the American Civil War Museum was the beneficiary of Don Wilkinson’s leadership and generosity – an expression of his commitment to education and to the study and preservation of American history. We are all the richer for it.

John M. Coski is author of Capital Navy: The Men, Ships, and Operations of the James River Squadron.