McClure

J. Alfred Guest 

McClure was a pragmatist, with a good mind, a sense of humor, and an engaging laugh. McClure? I do not know where Donald H. McLean, Jr. acquired this name, but I believe it started at Yale Law School. There is a small group of Don's friends who often used “McClure,” including Martha when she talked with us

My first experience with Don’s sureness and compassion goes back 55 years when Don was on the Committee of Seven at Amherst College. This committee was selected by the president and the Dean to supervise and administer compliance with the rules of the college, not always written down. The Committee, with the aid of the Dean, of which there was only one in those days, assessed violations of conduct and recommended “punishment," a form of supervision not tolerated in modern times. Don made the Committee of Seven function efficiently and fairly.

At Yale Law School Don's qualities ascertaining the fax, His friendliness, And easy conversation with both faculty and his contemporaries quickly led to his acceptance into the law school community and if you would into the selective beauty organization known as Corby Court. Until Don's arrival, not many small college graduates have penetrated this club. Thanks to his influence I was fortunate to be invited to join in the next year when I followed him to yell while school. Corporate court provided a setting for stimulating discussions of legal and world problems, and also for stimulating, often hilarious, parties on football and Derby day weekend.

We enjoyed it heartily supported the courtship of Donna and Martha. We attended their wedding at Martha's home in Canada on September 1, 1939 plunged into World War II after the Nazis invaded Poland.

McClure’s further experiences in law, banking, and wartime service followed. We kept in touch, with visits to Don and Martha second-floor $60 a month walk up to New York City. And the war years I had occasion to spend overnights at their home in Washington DC. I remember that breakfast started with a small orange cut in two, and a spoon to complete the difficult and slightly splattering task for the uninitiated. It was a proper Canadian wartime measure in the days before frozen juices

Our contacts thereafter were less, as careers changed and children multiplied. But we shall never forget the stories of Don and Martha’s trip to the Orient with Mr. and Mrs. John D Rockefeller, III including Phnom Penh, Saigon, Tokyo, and New Delhi and their survey of sites to establish an International House in Tokyo and the International Centre In New Delhi. This trip brought innumerable Japanese visitors to the McLean's, and once, in sufficient numbers so that Barbie, their youngest child, had to sleep in the linen closet. Years later my note to Don about our own proposed world trip in 1984, led to our staying at the handsome International Centre with the advantages of a fine dining room, library, and theater. 

Don't could always be counted on to respond promptly to a question or request. He did not put these on ice. Again, this sureness, pragmatism, humor, and compassion were at hand. And after his outstanding careers Don’s alma mater, Amherst College, in 1977 conferred upon him an honorary Doctor of Laws which read in part,

Through all this, you have kept firmly in view first things first in your rich family life as husband and father. You once said of someone you admire, and we would like to give your very words of praise of you, “You are a man one can count on when it's snowing outside".

J. Alfred Guest, Amherst, Massachusetts, was a close friend of Don McLean at both Amherst and Yale Law School. For nearly 40 years he served as Secretary of the Alumni Council and Secretary of the Board of Trustees of Amherst College.