TFAS Trustee, 1971 to 1984

Alan MacKay was one of those rare people in the modern world who had a rare capacity for putting a moment into where it belonged on the long arc of history. He had unlimited capacity to work toward objectives, but he undertook that work in such a patient way that it startled those to whom he gave counsel in his lawyering, family and friend communications.

I met Alan in September 1962 at Young Americans for Freedom’s (YAF) first annual conference. He was a recently wed husband with wife beside him attending a politically charged event, one she remembered recently as to its mixed demands on his time and attention. He was in the Massachusetts delegation, and I was in the Florida’s.

That meeting was the first of many over the next six decades. Not long after that first meeting, we served on the YAF board together, he as national chairman while I began as its national executive director. Beginning in late 1971, we served together in the Executive Office of the President of the United States. He then ran for Congress if, among other reasons, to shake up the arrogant majority of Massachusetts liberals in his district. That was in 1974, “the Watergate election” for Republicans.

In 1978 at his urging, I joined him in the legal department of Cabot Corporation, where, despite their liberalism they never gave him a hard time about his conservatism. That is peer respect! Headquartered in Boston, we worked in many of the nearly 30 countries where the company had manufacturing plants and other facilities. Alan’s language skills were of value, though we encountered few ancient Hebrews, ancient Greeks or ancient Romans as we interacted with a plethora of those who spoke modern languages, all of which old and new he spoke with remarkable fluency.

Alan was among the first supporters of The Fund for American Studies and its mission and work. In those days the organization functioned as the Charles Edison Memorial Youth Fund, not becoming The Fund for American Studies until the mid-1980s. He served on its board as secretary-treasurer. Far more importantly, he served as an always available counsellor on what to do and what not to do. His principal focus was on the necessity of scholarships for students academically qualified but lacking funds to pay tuition. Though academically qualified, he had nonetheless been able to attend Holy Cross because he had received scholarships, and he had attended Harvard Law School on merit scholarships.

That preceding fiscal observation applies to many students, but Alan was a personality of his own, for he was downright unflappable. He personified the words calm, patient, composed, even-tempered, maybe even stoic.
As David Keene, who worked with him in those years, responded when he heard of Alan’s death, Alan was “calmer and more steady than most of us,” hinting quite perceptively in contrast to the rest of us.
Past TFAS Trustee Arnold Steinberg said “Alan was a class act, courteous, respectful, pleasant, a nice guy. He was an intelligent man, happy and with a fun sense of humor. And he seemed to me a very competent lawyer, with a calm temperament and solid judgment” in recalling YAF’s battle against IBM’s intent to sell advanced computers to the Soviet Union. TFAS Trustee Charlie Black summarized him in just three words: “A great man.”

Alan was indeed a good man, a true gentleman in every sense. Just how patient was Alan? Those around him used to half-jokingly, half-seriously observe that if Alan were told at noontime that the world was ending, he would have responded calmly, “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll catch it on the evening news.”

His transcendent patience originated in his faith. Reading scripture and understanding it was not a sufficient response. Only living it was. The words “Emmanuel” (“God with us”) thus “Be not afraid” reminded him, as it should us, that God is in charge, a reminder especially needed when we do not understand the grand scope of human affairs in which a specific incident is examined.

Alan and his wife, the former Helen Palmer of Boston, raised seven daughters. Both. served on the boards of many conservative organizations and attended Mass on a daily basis no matter where they were in the world, knowing the certainty of heaven was far surer than the uncertainties of Earth.

Knowing no fear, he went gently into the brief moment of death’s transition to a new life. An angel without wings returned home.