Larry McDonald

Lawrence Patton McDonald (April 1, 1935 – September 1, 1983) was an American physician, politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Georgia's 7th congressional district as a Democrat from 1975 until he was killed while a passenger on board Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when it was shot down by Soviet interceptors.

McDonald maintained one of the most conservative voting records in Congress and crusaded against communism.

In fact, one scoring method published in the American Journal of Political Science named him the second most conservative member of either chamber of Congress between 1937 and 2002 (behind only Ron Paul, who was his closest confidant in Congress).

He spent two years at high school before graduating in 1951.

He studied at Davidson College from 1951 to 1953, studying history.

He entered the Emory University School of Medicine at the age of 17, graduating in 1957.

He interned at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

He trained as a urologist at the University of Michigan Hospital under Reed M. Nesbit.

From 1959 to 1961, McDonald served as a flight surgeon in the United States Navy stationed at the Keflavík naval base in Iceland.

He married an Icelandic national, Anna Tryggvadottir, with whom he eventually had three children: Tryggvi Paul, Callie Grace, and Mary Elizabeth.

In Iceland, McDonald asserted to his commanding officer that the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik was doing things advantageous to communists, but was told he did not understand the big picture.

After his tour of service he practiced medicine at the McDonald Urology Clinic in Atlanta.

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.

Following completion in 1966 he returned to Atlanta and entered practice with his father.

He joined the anti-communist John Birch Society in 1966 or 1967.

He hosted thousands of people in his living room for Bircher-inspired lectures and documentaries, according to his first wife.

His preoccupation with politics led to a divorce.

He became known as an anti-abortion activist.

He served as a member on the Georgia State Medical Education Board and as chairman from 1969 to 1974.

An admirer of Austrian economics and a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, he advocated tight monetary policy in the late 1970s against stagflation, and advocated returning to the gold standard.

He displayed a portrait of Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, in his office.

He made one unsuccessful run for Congress in 1972 before being elected in 1974.

In 1974, McDonald ran for Congress against incumbent John W. Davis in the Democratic primary.

McDonald opposed mandatory federal school integration programs, and criticized Davis for being one of two Georgia congressmen to vote in favor of school busing.

He also attacked Davis for receiving political donations from out-of-state groups which he said favored busing.

McDonald won the primary election in a surprise upset and was elected in November 1974 to the 94th United States Congress, serving Georgia's 7th congressional district, which included most of Atlanta's northwestern suburbs (including Marietta), where opposition to school busing was especially high.

However, during the general election, J. Quincy Collins Jr., an Air Force prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, running as a Republican, nearly defeated him, despite the poor performance of Republicans nationally that year due to the aftereffects of the Watergate scandal.

McDonald, who considered himself a traditional Democrat "cut from the cloth of Jefferson and Jackson", was known for his conservative views, even by Southern Democratic standards of the time.

In 1975, he married Kathryn Jackson, whom he met while giving a speech in California.

The American 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.

He became chairman of the John Birch Society in 1983, months before his death.

He was remembered as a martyr by American conservatives.

Larry McDonald was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, in the eastern part of the city that is in DeKalb County.

General George S. Patton was a distant relation.

As a child, he attended several private and parochial schools before attending a non-denominational high school.

ACU Ratings of Congress: House Ratings: 1976, 1977, 1978 , 1979 , 1980 , 1981 , 1982 , 1983 ; retrieved August 26, 2009.

He also scored "perfect or near perfect ratings" on the congressional scorecards of the National Right to Life Committee, Gun Owners of America, and the American Security Council.

McDonald admired Senator Joseph McCarthy and was a member of the Joseph McCarthy Foundation.

He hired former staffers of the House 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.

He considered communism an international conspiracy.