At the reception celebrating his wedding to Tracy Orillo, another University of Hawai'i athletic department staffer, 19 years ago, Jim Donovan talked about family and dreams.

The family he was starting, the one he already belonged to as a former UH offensive lineman, and where they might go together.

Someday, Donovan said, a gleam in his eye, he aspired to be the athletic director.

That day could be as close as Thursday, when the UH Board of Regents is expected to approve Manoa Chancellor Virginia S. Hinshaw's recommendation of Donovan as its AD.

It is becoming an all-in-the-'ohana department with UH graduates and former athletes moving into visible positions. Eleven months ago Bob Nash, of Fabulous Five fame, was named the men's basketball coach. Now, Donovan is poised to head the 19-sport department and oversee its $26.6 million budget, the first former UH athlete to run the place in the more than 30 years of the Division I-A membership.

If a school is judged by the graduates it produces, Nash and Donovan will, in time, say a lot about the success of UH's major college era. For they both will soon have major hands in determining it.

Both have been snugly bound to a place in which they have not only a rooting interest but considerable equity. For them, the positions they hold are more callings than mere jobs.

Nash married a cheerleader and has a son, Bobby, playing there. Donovan has a son, Joshua, who sleeps under a black and white picture of his father playing for UH and, we're told, aspires to do the same.

Friends and family will tell you 48-year-old Jim Donovan has been a Rainbow/Warrior practically since stepping off the plane on his recruiting trip in 1980. He wanted to sign as soon as someone could find a pen and hasn't strayed far since. He worked a series of jobs at UH, sometimes sleeping in the then-Rainbow Stadium manager's office, always climbing the career ladder.

When he was passed over for promotion from associate athletic director to AD in 2002 in favor of Herman Frazier, Donovan moved out of UH but not far away, really, becoming executive director of the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl.

When the 2007 Warrior football team began to nail down Bowl Championship Series possibilities, leaving the bowl game with a considerable void, Donovan could have been devastated, or at least torn in his loyalties. He was neither. He knew what a breakthrough trip to the Sugar Bowl could mean to the program and that's where he committed his heart. And, a plane ticket to New Orleans.

After all, UH is family. One he will soon calls the shots for.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.