President Donna McElroy Stands Out for All the Right Reasons

By June Moynihan

Cover and article photography by Mewborne Photography on location at UNESCO World Heritage site, Mission San Jose, completed in 1782.

Donna McElroy started her professional life, and her life in San Antonio, at Cox & Smith Incorporated (now Dykema Gossett PLLC) upon graduating from Tulane University School of Law in 1986. Donna’s first interaction with the Cox & Smith firm was through a cattle-call interview event held in an Atlanta hotel with students from many law schools. Students submitted resumes, and if the law firm wanted to meet in person, they scheduled a twenty-minute interview. It was like speed dating, but on-campusinterview style. “I wore a maroon suit, so I would stand out in the sea of navy and black suits,” Donna recalls. “It was the mid-eighties so all the young women were trapped in pantyhose and skirts in one of the most humid cities in America. I have never been a fan of pantyhose!”

She was interviewed by Jamie Smith and Diann Bartek from Cox & Smith’s San Antonio office. The firm stood out for Donna because Smith asked her not just about law school, but also about her interests outside the office. When Donna expressed her enthusiasm for nature, he assured her that San Antonio was a perfect place to live and work for someone who loved the outdoors. He was right, and Donna fell in love with the city. Donna grew up in Marrero, Louisiana, a small town near New Orleans. She attended Auburn University and Tulane, both of which also had a small-town feel. When she arrived in San Antonio, it “was bigger but had small town charm, so it was comfortable and felt welcoming” to her.

When Donna officially joined the firm as an associate, she made fast friends with her new colleagues and got involved with various bar associations, including the San Antonio Bar Association, the Bexar County Women’s Bar Association, the William S. Sessions Inn of Court, the Labor and Employment Sections of the State Bar of Texas, and the American Bar Association. Former Fourth Court of Appeals Justice Rebecca Simmons, who was a second-year associate when Donna joined Cox & Smith, recalls, “People are drawn to Donna because she is charismatic and has a great sense of humor. She is also fiercely competitive, so you always wanted her on your team.”

Her competitive nature comes honestly—Donna was an athlete throughout her childhood and represented Auburn on their collegiate racquetball team. Once in San Antonio, Donna quickly fell in with a group of other young lawyers who organized recreational bicycle rides. Former Justice Simmons remembers, “I accepted the invitation to join this group because I thought they were planning some relaxing jaunts around town.” To the contrary, “I found myself riding with these seriously disciplined cyclists who scheduled early morning, after work, and weekend rides—they put in a lot of miles. I soon had a newborn baby, and the baby was the perfect excuse to bow out of these wildly rigorous excursions.”

Donna has since spent over three decades practicing law in San Antonio, and she is board certified in Labor and Employment Law. Her practice has evolved into regular client advisory and consulting work, but going to trial is always an option, and Donna enjoys trial preparation. “You do everything to avoid litigation, but sometimes, it is necessary,” she says. Her clients include Fortune 500 companies, learning institutions, and local governments. She recently was praised for her work on behalf of the City of San Antonio for ending a six-year stalemate, using binding arbitration to finalize a contract between the City and the San Antonio Firefighter’s Union.

Bicycling ended up being more than collegial recreation—it was also Donna’s path to romance. Robert Steele was the manager of Bike World on Broadway, and Donna recalls, “He had the best legs on a man I have ever seen.” She found reasons to visit the store frequently, so much so that Rob’s workmates began chiding him for not asking her out. Rob reasoned, “Donna was an accomplished lawyer. I figured she must be much older than me and probably not interested.” On one of her frequent visits to the shop, Rob casually asked Donna her age and discovered she was a few months younger than he was. Still not completely confident she would agree to a date, he calmly suggested that she “stop by” a company staff New Year’s Eve party.

She did stop by, and it was there he invited her out on an official date to see the movie Fatal Attraction. Robert reports, “It was a slow beginning, and the first date movie choice was questionable, but we worked that all out and just celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary.” The pair married in 1990, and former Justice Simmons recalls that “half the law firm flew to New Orleans to celebrate with them.” Rob finished his engineering degree, and Donna made partner by the time their daughter, Jordan, was born in 1995. Within four years, the family added two boys, Blaise and Jared, and the McElroy-Steele household had three children under the age of four.

Jordan declares that her parents “could not have found better partners. They just get each other.” The family prioritized attending their kid’s events and having dinner together every night. That often meant that everyone went back to work, practice, or homework after dinner, but it was phones off, dinner together nearly every night growing up. “It was organized chaos, but we got undivided attention for the entire meal,” remembers Jordan.

Donna’s parents were tremendous role models. Blanche and Royce McElroy adopted Donna and both of her siblings, Kevin and Stacie, through the Catholic Charities service. Blanche was the epitome of a gracious lady and hostess, and in her lifetime, she never wore blue jeans. Blanche sewed the habits for the nuns at their church and was active in parish life. Royce played minor-league baseball for the New Orleans Pelicans, both before and after his service in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. He started his career in the oil and gas industry after he married. As Donna tells it, their children were their joy, and they always encouraged Donna and her siblings to pursue their interests.

Donna has always been creative and loves to draw, paint, and take photographs. Blanche encouraged Donna to become an artist. When Donna was 15, her father took her to Barker’s Department Store to buy her first camera, a 35mm Minolta. Donna took her camera everywhere, and her family and friends lovingly referred to her as the “teen photographer.” She is still the family photographer, and many fond family memories are captured in her pictures.

Donna was also a famously talkative child, and her father suggested that she should use her intellect and voice for good. “My dad was the first person who told me that I should be a lawyer, although I am not sure if he was complimenting me the first time he said it,” Donna laughingly recalls. She also remembers it was her father who urged her to work hard for the things she wanted and to avoid unsupportive people. Donna sometimes says the person who motivated her the most was the school counselor who tried to steer her toward a career as a legal assistant, confidently asserting that law school would be too hard for Donna.

“If you want to rile my mom up, tell her she can’t do something,” Jordan warns. “My mom is channeling her dad when she pushes us to work hard for the things we want.” Donna trained her children to believe that one does not “always have to be the smartest person in the room if” he or she is “willing to outwork everyone else in the room”; and that one should not give up just because something is hard because “worthwhile things are often hard.”

The discipline to pursue hard but worthwhile goals is evident not only in Donna’s work, but also in how she plays. For years, Donna and Robert’s dates consisted of double-digit-mile bike rides, hikes, and camping. Until the children could manage their own bicycles, they joined in on bike trailers. When her children were still in elementary school, summer meant a family mountain bike tour through a national park. Everyone biked 15-20 miles a day from campsite to campsite through the Grand Tetons and the Grand Canyon. Jordan reminisces, “My parents were in heaven because cell service was non-existent, and they loved being in nature with their children.” The utopia could not last forever, though. Jordan remembers distinctly, “We were biking out of Yellowstone Park after a week of riding, and as we got closer to the city, my mom’s Blackberry phone started pinging as her inbox was filling up with emails and voicemails. It was the sound of our vacation officially being over.”

The call for a home in a mountain setting was rumbling, and the family initially started looking at places in Colorado. By chance, they were invited to visit friends in New Mexico, and they drove through the village of Angel Fire. Donna did the math. While Colorado was enchanting, it would always require air travel. Angel Fire is a straight nine- or ten-hour drive on the interstate. They bought a place near Angel Fire Resort about ten years ago, and it is now an all-season family retreat, but especially in the winter. Former Justice Simmons teases that Donna always avoided winter sports because she dislikes being cold. While Robert and the kids would ski and snowboard each winter before they bought their mountain home, Donna only ventured into winter sports in Angel Fire. She chose snowshoeing, unsurprisingly much more challenging than gliding down a mountain on skis. Angel Fire became a refuge during the COVID lockdown, and the family was able to build some normalcy with daily excursions outdoors for activities and exercise. Donna recounts it was difficult to be away from San Antonio, but a peaceful space to quarantine.

When at home in San Antonio, as busy as they are, the McElroy- Steele family is famous for their hospitality. Each Easter, the doors are open to their extended “family” of friends for a potluck, Easter egg hunt, and egg toss. Their most beloved event is their “Turkey Fry” which is held the night before Thanksgiving. The invitation list is informal. The regulars bring new friends, and people come and go. Robert sets up the fryer in the driveway, and Donna creates various spice blends to inject into the birds before frying. Friends bring over their turkeys and line up to drop them into the deep fryer. There is an abundance of food and drink, and guests have been known to stay into the wee hours to make merry, sometimes falling asleep on the couch.

Donna is a woman of deep faith and is influenced by her Catholic upbringing. She attends daily Mass during Lent. She has been a longtime instructor for Rites of Christian Initiation of Adults, the courses for adults who want to join the Catholic Church. She continues to educate herself in the faith and has academic knowledge of Catholic history and theology. Her faith also guides her deep respect for others’ faith practices. In a leadership capacity, Donna serves on the board of directors of Caritas, the legal service arm of Catholic Charities. Donna is very connected to her parish, and there is no task beneath her. Her parish friends say she is just as willing to sit in a prayer circle as she is to show up on a Saturday with supplies to paint a church room.

As the kids have left the nest, Donna has formed a new pack with her growing menagerie of dogs—Thibodaux, Boudreau, and Gumbo each joined the family (not coincidentally) as a Steele child graduated high school. Donna has also been able to spend more time on another longtime passion, photography. Having graduated from her Minolta, Donna has spent a full week of evenings camping on a mountainside waiting for the perfect conditions for a beautiful shot. It is no surprise that Donna decided she wanted to develop her long-dormant photography skill, and through her time-tested discipline and hard work, capture the heavens. Donna expects and has faith that the San Antonio Bar Association will accomplish some big things under her leadership. She knows it will take discipline and probably be hard, but worthwhile things often are.

Cover and article photography by Mewborne Photography on location at UNESCO World Heritage site, Mission San Jose, completed in 1782.