Good deeds are not sufficient unto themselves

Belen H. Abreu

On May 1, 1957, a history-making meeting was held in one of the rooms of the old Manila Hotel. Ramon Magsaysay, the much love President of the Philippines had died one and a half months earlier in a tragic airplane crash with twenty four others, and the meeting was to discuss the organization of a board of trustees of a foundation to honor his memory through a program of awards to recognize individuals in Asia who, like him, served their countries and fellowmen with courage and dedication. In the room where Mrs. Albert (Marjorie) Ravenholt, Donald H McLean, Jr., both representing the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Jesus Magsaysay, the brother of the late President and myself, then legal officer of the Philippine Commission on Elections.

That was my first meeting with Don, and his penetrating gaze and serious mien we're unsettling to say the least. That was also my first meeting with Jesus and both of us were eager to get Marjorie's ear to bring her up to date on the political situation, since a number of her dear friends we're running for office in the coming November elections - one for President and another for the Senate. We were, of course, touched by the noble gesture of the Rockefeller family to establish the award program and Don was telling us about the concept of the memorial, the role of the Rockefellers in this venture, and the trustees commitment and responsibility. Marjorie's long acquaintance with the Philippine scene and her equally long exposure to Asia fitted her ideally to be Don's teammate getting the Magsaysay Foundation off the ground. We all had stories we were dying to tell each other, but in deference to Don we desisted. A sharpened pencil and a pad on hand, this lanky American and his regulation striped blue and white seersucker suit was talking just like a lawyer. Since we already had a general idea of what the proposed memorial was all about, whenever there was a lull in the conversation, we would regale Marjorie with tidbits of the political boiling pot. We gradually grew aware of Don walking towards the window air conditioner to turn it on and, being an old appliance, it made a  disturbing racket which prevented us from hearing each other well. So we would stop our storytelling. Don would then put off the air-conditioner and continue with his explanation or questions.

This turning on and off of the air-conditioner went on for some time, until we finally caught on that we had to finish the business on hand before we could talk politics. I said silently to myself, "Thank heavens for Marjorie who understands our penchant for political gossip," as Don with his brusque and businesslike manner would have been hard to take without her. 

That was my impression of Don at our first meeting. It was my good fortune to be associated with him over the next 20 years and a nicer man and more steadfast friend it would be hard to find. When he smiled and executed that footwork of his that was almost a pirouette while bringing his two hands to a resounding clap, and his brown eyes twinkling and a wide grin dominating his face, you just got a feeling that all is well with the world. No longer was that unflinching gaze unsettling, no longer was his businesslike demeanor uncomfortable to take, for we knew that he was trying to get things done in the best way he knew. With our respect grew an affectionate regard for this man, for he gave himself unselfishly, sharing a brilliance of mind that underscored the good deeds are not sufficient onto themselves, they must be anchored to concepts that can endure when we leave the scene. This he has done in the Raymon Magsaysay Award Foundation's is witness to this.

Belen H. Abreu was Executive Trustee of the Raymon Magsaysay Award Foundation, 1957 - 1984. A member of the Philippine bar since 1944 she served as Chief Attorney, Commission on Elections, Philippine Government after World War II.

He gloried in the tactics of a worthwhile cause

Theodore R. Sizer

“Meet me at the Club,” he’d say; and a luncheon date and time would be set. Earlier, when Don was at the Lahey Clinic in Boston, the “Club” had in fact been Joseph’s Restaurant, on the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury Streets. Later it was the Andover Inn.

A splash of wine would start it off, and stories. About General Lucius D. Clay for whom Don worked after the War and whom he admired more than any other man. Or about the Ramon Magsaysay awards that he had engineered in the Philippines. Or about the politics of Massachusetts medicine. Whatever the intended agenda, institutional or personal, it would come out gradually, Don sensing just when to get on with that particular business. The talk would be easy, but direct, with Don’s Yale Law School and Millbank, Tweed training creeping out with apt questions, always interspersed with more anecdotes. Henry Stimson. Amherst College fraternities. Potton, the McLean sanctuary in Quebec. Agriculture and population policy in the Third World. Doshisha University and Otis Cary. The Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, John Kemper.

Then more questions. What will happen if…? Do we know enough about…? Have you checked this with Mel and Tim? Is Fred doing a study on that? By desert, the questions would merge into advice, and the language used was plain, even tart. They can’t do that because it’s unworthy. He’ll just have to pull his socks up. Don’t take a lead of first until you know where second base is.

The issues would take form, but their specifics were left deliberately dangling. Don gave his lunch mate the gratification of the final summary. Then Henry would bring coffee, and more stories would follow. And always there was the warm expectation of another luncheon soon at the Club.

Donald Holman McLean, JR. Son of a Congressman and Judge, he cared about getting things done. Weather the matter was as subtile as delineating the functions of an occidental International Hose in an oriental land or as politically Byzantine as moving a large medical facility from one city to another, Don gloried in the tactics of a worthwhile cause. Careful control of the facts was part of it; he learned well the virtues of thorough staff studies in his years of association with John D. Rockefeller, 3rd.

Knowing the people involved was equally critical. Don cared passionately for institutions, but he knew well that they were at their center both a cluster of ideas and a congeries of people, and that institutional decisions would ultimately be made by those peoples’ hearts as well as heads. One needed to know how others felt as well as thought.

Timing was also crucial in McLean’s repertoire. He knew when it was time to do a year’s work in a month, or let what appeared to be a simple issue marinate for weeks, off to the side even if not forgotten.

These tactics were but a means, of course. The ends were the key. Support of the institutions which were the focus of Don’s life became (albeit in a strongly secular sense) a holy purpose. No institution was holier than that of family, and while Don kept his privacy here, his friends readily sensed his intense commitment to wife, children, and grandchildren, to roots, to obligations. His marriage with Martha - two vivid personalities in serene and secure joining - was very special. However family customs may shift in our culture, the loyal vitality lived out by Don and Martha expresses humanity at its best. 

Don’s loyalty and persistent persuasiveness affected other institutions too. Some were primarily ideas, such as a worthy American role in postwar Germany and a philanthropy that served a global public interest. Others were formal entities as well as ideas - the Lahey Clinic, Amherst College, Phillips Academy.

No person could care more for the place where we now gather than did Don. He cared enough for Andover to change it, to change its form while he protected it substance, the ideas at its core. The founders ideology - a "free, public school or academy," and especially that imbedded in the Paul Revere motto, “non sibi,” - was the constant. Don't felt that the true loyalist obligation was to fashion and refashion a contemporary expression of an enduring, noble ideology. In many ways Don's memories, his history, shaped his character. He talked often of the past, and especially of the men and women who had moved him. But he never became their prisoners. 

And so we hope it will be for us, Don McLean’s lunch mates, his friends and family. His nicely balanced mixture of well-defined ends and carefully crafted means and his witness to loyalty - loyalty whose restless quality was a virtue - he touched us greatly. For us he was a great man. He had Lucius Clay; we have Don to claim.

He'll be uneasy with that word “great," though. To him it would sound too rigid, too Napoleonic. The better word which crap most often across the lunch table was the term "worthy." A worthy idea. A worthy person, someone up to the standard of the idea to which loyalty was expected. Don would have us be worthy, and our lives were changed because we wanted him to find us worthy. We knew, at those lunch table talks and elsewhere, that we were the beneficiaries of the loyalty of the profoundly worthy man.

Theodore R Sizer was headmaster a Phillips Academy in the 1970s. He had been Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Chairman of a" Study of High Schools," and the author of numerous articles and books.