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Larry McDonald | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromGeorgia's7th district | |
| In office January 3, 1975 – September 1, 1983 | |
| Preceded by | John Davis |
| Succeeded by | George Darden |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Lawrence Patton McDonald (1935-04-01)April 1, 1935 |
| Died | September 1, 1983(1983-09-01) (aged 48) |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | 5 |
| Education | |
| Occupation | politician, military officer, urologist |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch/service |  United States Navy |
| Years of service | 1959–1961 |
Lawrence Patton McDonald (April 1, 1935 – September 1, 1983) was an American physician, politician and a member of theUnited States House of Representatives, representingGeorgia's 7th congressional district as aDemocrat from 1975 until he was killed as a passenger on boardKorean Air Lines Flight 007 when it was shot down bySovietinterceptors.[1]
McDonald maintained the mostconservative voting record of any Democrat in Congress andcrusaded against communism. He became chairman of theJohn Birch Society in 1983, months before his death. He was remembered as a martyr by American conservatives.[2][3]
Lawrence Patton McDonald was born and raised inAtlanta,Georgia, in the eastern part of the city that is inDeKalb County. GeneralGeorge S. Patton was a distant relative.[4] As a child, he attended several private andparochial schools before attending a non-denominational high school. He spent two years at high school before graduating in 1951.[2][5] He studied atDavidson College from 1951 to 1953, studying history. He entered theEmory University School of Medicine at the age of 17, graduating in 1957.[2][5] He interned atGrady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He trained as a urologist at theUniversity of Michigan Hospital underReed M. Nesbit. Following completion in 1966 he returned to Atlanta and entered practice with his father.[citation needed]
From 1959 to 1961, McDonald served as aflight surgeon in theUnited States Navy stationed at theKeflavík naval base inIceland. He married anIcelandic national, Anna Tryggvadottir, with whom he eventually had three children: Tryggvi Paul, Callie Grace, and Mary Elizabeth.[2] In Iceland, McDonald asserted to hiscommanding officer that the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik was doing things advantageous tocommunists, but was told he did not understand the big picture.[2]
After his tour of service he practiced medicine at the McDonald Urology Clinic in Atlanta.[2] He joined the anti-communistJohn Birch Society in 1966 or 1967.[6] He hosted thousands of people in his living room for Bircher-inspired lectures and documentaries, according to his first wife.[4] His preoccupation with politics led to a divorce.[2] He became known as ananti-abortion activist.[4] He made one unsuccessful run for Congress in 1972 before being elected in 1974. In 1975, he married Kathryn Jackson, whom he met while giving a speech in California.[2]
He served as a member on the Georgia State Medical Education Board and as chairman from 1969 to 1974.[5]
In 1974, McDonald ran for Congress against incumbentJohn W. Davis in theDemocratic primary. McDonald opposed mandatory federal school integration programs, and criticized Davis for being one of two Georgia congressmen to vote in favor ofschool busing. He also attacked Davis for receivingpolitical donations from out-of-state groups which he said favored busing.[7][non-primary source needed]
McDonald won theprimary election in an upset and was elected in November 1974 to the94th United States Congress, servingGeorgia's 7th congressional district, which included most of Atlanta's northwestern suburbs (includingMarietta), where opposition to school busing was especially high. However, during thegeneral election, J. Quincy Collins Jr., an Air Forceprisoner of war during theVietnam War, running as a Republican, nearly defeated him, despite the poor performance of Republicans nationally that year due to the aftereffects of theWatergate scandal.
McDonald, who considered himself a traditional Democrat "cut from the cloth ofJefferson andJackson", was known for his conservative views, even bySouthern Democratic standards of the time. In fact, one scoring method published in theAmerican Journal of Political Science[8] named him the second most conservative member of either chamber of Congress between 1937 and 2002 (behind onlyRon Paul, who was his closest confidant in Congress).[9][4] Even though many of McDonald's constituents had begun splitting their tickets and voting Republican at the federal level as early as the 1960s, the GOP was still well behind the Democrats at the local level, and conservative Democrats like McDonald continued to hold most state and local offices well into the 1990s.[citation needed]
TheAmerican Conservative Union gave him a perfect score of 100 every year he was in the House of Representatives, except in 1978, when he scored a 95.[10] He also scored "perfect or near perfect ratings" on the congressional scorecards of theNational Right to Life Committee,Gun Owners of America, and theAmerican Security Council.[11]
McDonald admiredSenatorJoseph McCarthy[12] and was a member of the Joseph McCarthy Foundation. He hired former staffers of theHouse Committee on Un-American Activities to work in his own congressional office to continue their research on left-wing groups, which was shared with law enforcement.[4] He considered communism an international conspiracy. An admirer ofAustrian economics and a member of theLudwig von Mises Institute, he advocated tight monetary policy in the late 1970s againststagflation, and advocated returning to thegold standard.[13][independent source needed] He displayed a portrait ofFrancisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, in his office.[4]
McDonald called thewelfare state a "disaster"[14] and favored phasing control of theGreat Society programs over to the states.[15] He also favored cuts toforeign aid, which he said "you could take a chainsaw to".[15] McDonald co-sponsored a resolution "expressing the sense of the Congress that homosexual acts and the class of individuals who advocate such conduct shall never receive special consideration or a protected status under law".[16]
He advocated the use of the non-approved druglaetrile to treat patients in advanced stages of cancer[17] despite medical opinion that such use wasquackery.[18][19][20] He was ordered to pay thousands of dollars in a laetrile malpractice lawsuit in 1976.[4] An investigation by theAtlanta Constitution later that year found that a friend of McDonald, a Georgia doctor, was asking patients seeking laetrile treatment to make their checks out to the Larry McDonald for Congress campaign.[4]
McDonald opposed the establishment of aMartin Luther King, Jr. Day,[21] saying theFBI had evidence that King "was associated with and being manipulated by communists and secret communist agents".[22] A firearms enthusiast and game hunter, McDonald reportedly had "about 200" guns at his official district residence.[23]
In 1979, withJohn Rees andMajor GeneralJohn K. Singlaub, McDonald founded theWestern Goals Foundation. According toThe Spokesman-Review, it was intended to "blunt subversion, terrorism, and communism" by filling the gap "created by the disbanding of theHouse Un-American Activities Committee and what [McDonald] considered to be the crippling of the FBI during the 1970s". McDonald became the chairman of the John Birch Society in 1983, succeedingRobert Welch.[22][dead link] At the time of his death, Western Goals was being sued by the ACLU for obtaining illegal Los Angeles Police Department Intelligence Files from 1975 that had been ordered destroyed and computerizing them in a database on a $100,000 computer in Long Beach at the house of an attorney connected to theU.S. intelligence community. Many of these files concerned individuals from Ronald Reagan's term as Governor of California, and it was speculated that Western Goals was using these files toblackmail figures in the Reagan Presidential Administration.[24][better source needed]
McDonald opposed theChattahoochee River National Recreation Area in his own district because he did not believe the federal government could constitutionally own national parks.[25]
McDonald rarely spoke on the House floor, preferring to insert material into theCongressional Record.[22] These insertions typically dealt with foreign policy issues relating to the Soviet Union and domestic issues centered on the growth of non-Soviet and Soviet sponsored leftist subversion. A number of McDonald's insertions relating to theSocialist Workers Party were collected into a book,Trotskyism and Terror: The Strategy of Revolution, published in 1977.[26][non-primary source needed]
During his time in Congress, McDonald introduced over 150 bills, including legislation to:[independent source needed]
McDonald was invited toSouth Korea to attend a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the United States–South Korea Mutual Defense Treaty with three fellow members of Congress, SenatorJesse Helms ofNorth Carolina, SenatorSteve Symms ofIdaho, and RepresentativeCarroll Hubbard ofKentucky.[30] Due to bad weather on Sunday, August 28, 1983, McDonald's flight fromAtlanta was diverted toBaltimore and when he finally arrived atJFK Airport in New York, he had missed his connection to South Korea by two or three minutes.[21]
McDonald could have boarded aPan AmBoeing 747 flight to Seoul, but he preferred the lower fares ofKorean Air Lines and chose to wait for the next KAL flight two days later.[21] Simultaneously, Hubbard and Helms planned to meet with McDonald to discuss how to join McDonald on the KAL 007 flight. As the delays mounted, instead of joining McDonald, Hubbard at the last minute gave up on the trip, canceled his reservations, and accepted a Kentucky speaking engagement. Helms attempted to join McDonald but was also delayed.[31]
McDonald occupied an aisle seat, 02B in the first class section, whenKAL 007 took off on August 31 at 12:24 AM local time, on a 3,400 miles (5,500 km) trip toAnchorage, Alaska for a scheduled stopover seven hours later. The plane remained on the ground for an hour and a half during which it was refueled, reprovisioned, cleaned, and serviced.[21] The passengers were given the option of leaving the aircraft but McDonald remained on the plane, catching up on his sleep. Helms meanwhile had managed to arrive and invited McDonald to move onto his flight, KAL 015, but McDonald did not wish to be disturbed.
With a fresh flight crew, KAL 007 took off at 4 AM local time for its scheduled non-stop flight over the Pacific toSeoul'sKimpo International Airport, a nearly 4,500 miles (7,200 km) flight that would take approximately eight hours.[21] On September 1, 1983, McDonald and the rest of the passengers and crew of KAL 007 were killed when Soviet fighters, under the command of Gen.Anatoly Kornukov, shot down KAL 007 nearMoneron Island after the plane entered Soviet airspace.
McDonald became a martyr to his supporters, who thought he was assassinated in a communist conspiracy. According to his widow,President Reagan was reluctant to take actions against the Soviet Union.[32]
After McDonald's death, a special election was held to fill his seat in the House. Former GovernorLester Maddox stated his intention to run for the seat if McDonald's widow, Kathy McDonald, did not.[33]
Kathy McDonald did decide to run, but lost toGeorge "Buddy" Darden.
There is acenotaph placed for him at Crest Lawn Cemetery inAtlanta, Georgia.
On March 18, 1998, theGeorgia House of Representatives, "to preserve the memory of the sacrifice and service of this able and outstanding Georgian and recognize his service to the people of his district", named the portion ofInterstate 75, which runs from theChattahoochee River northward to theTennessee state line in his honor, theLarry McDonald Memorial Highway.[34]
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| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromGeorgia's 7th congressional district 1975–1983 | Succeeded by |
| Other offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chairman of theJohn Birch Society 1983 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
