Posted on 01/29/2004 8:04:01 PM PST by HAL9000
Tom McRae, one-time gubernatorial candidate, dies at home in Arkadelphia
LITTLE ROCK — Tom McRae, great-grandson of a former governor and aide to another, who sought the state's highest office himself in 1990, died Thursday at his home in Arkadelphia after a long illness. He was 65.
McRae ran second to then-Gov. Bill Clinton in the Democratic Party primary in 1990, when Clinton was seeking his fifth term. McRae also ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1993, after Clinton had taken office as president and then-Lt. Gov. Jim Guy Tucker took over as governor.
"He always wanted to do work for the public good, and to help the underprivileged," said his wife, Christine McRae, a native of Scotland who was raised in Nottingham, England.
She recalled that, during his campaign for governor, he was told "you're too honest to be a politician."
"He would not compromise his principles," she said. "When people would offer him money with strings attached, he wouldn't take it."
His wife recalled Thursday that the couple met because of their commitment to help those less fortunate than themselves. She had joined the British version of the Peace Corps, called Voluntary Service Overseas, and served in Malaysia, and the man who became her husband was stationed with the Peace Corps in Nepal.
The two met in Cairo, Egypt, after both had completed their stints assisting citizens of those underdeveloped nations, she said.
After their marriage, the couple moved to the United States, and McRae worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity at Washington, she said, later returning to Arkansas and eventually going to work for then-Gov. Dale Bumpers in 1971.
"I got Tom from Texarkana," Bumpers said Thursday. "He was running a Model Cities program. He served me very well. He was very dedicated to the environment. I think he would have been an excellent governor."
In addition to government posts at Washington and Little Rock, McRae headed several groups that worked to improve the lot of the less fortunate.
McRae suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease after the baseball player who died from it.
The incurable disease devastates the body, attacking the system that the brain uses to deliver messages to muscles, and those muscles wither from lack of use, eventually leading to full paralysis and death.
McRae was a great-grandson of Thomas C. McRae, who served as governor from 1921 until 1925. He was keenly aware of his heritage, both its tradition of public service, and its origins in Scotland, his wife said.
"His abiding passion was Scotland," she said. "It was the wildness, the mountains, and the open spaces — and the music."
For several years, he led hikes in Scotland on behalf of the Ozark Society, a conservation group based in Arkansas.
"He fought a very courageous battle," his wife said. "He never really accepted that (ALS) was a terminal disease. He kept telling people he was going to take them to Scotland this summer."
After working for Bumpers, McRae later served as president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, established by the Republican incumbent Bumpers beat in the 1970 general election.
He moved to Mississippi for a time to head up a community development group called Local Initiative Support Corp. The group worked to improve the lot of people living in the impoverished Mississippi River Delta region.
Until he returned to Arkadelphia last year after being diagnosed with ALS, McRae had been director of the Maced Association for Community Economic Development in Berea, Ky., his wife said.
Other survivors include a daughter, Catherine McRae, 31, of New York City, and a son, Thomas "Tam" McRae V, 29, of Little Rock.
A funeral is scheduled for 2 p.m. Tuesday at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Little Rock.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
check this read if you haven't already:
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