Larry’s Legacy
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge”
— Hosea 4:6, KJV
In this passage of Scripture from the Old Testament, the prophet Hosea was lamenting the fact that because the nation of Israel had forsaken knowledge, it now faced captivity and rejection from the Lord. This was Larry McDonald’s favorite passage from the Bible, according to both his youngest son, Larry McDonald, Jr., and his former campaign manager, Don Vice. He would often insert and quote it in his speeches that identified the cause and solution to America’s declining condition. Like the prophet Hosea, McDonald lamented America’s decline as the result of what he also saw as a lack of knowledge — a lack of knowledge about the severity of the threat of communism and a lack of knowledge of the principles outlined in the Constitution. To save America, McDonald believed that education was the key.
While en route to South Korea aboard commercial Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983, Georgia Congressman Larry McDonald and 268 others were lost at sea, when a Soviet MiG-23 “Flogger” and three Soviet Su-15 “Flagon” fighters intercepted and shot down the plane over Sakhalin Island, in the Sea of Japan. He was a practicing urologist, a five-term member of Congress possessing a consistent constitutionalist voting record, an active member of The John Birch Society who eventually became its chairman, the chairman of Western Goals Foundation, an ardent anti-communist, and a stalwart defender of the Constitution.
Education and Medical Practice
Lawrence Patton McDonald was born on April 1, 1935, in Atlanta, Georgia, to parents Dr. Harold P. McDonald, Sr., and Callie Patton McDonald, who was a cousin of General George S. Patton. McDonald was only 10 years old when George S. Patton died shortly following a car collision in Germany in 1945. McDonald became fascinated with his deceased relative at an early age, learning everything he could about him from family members, and buying and reading books about him. Before the tragedy of KAL 007, McDonald was said to own every book ever written about or by General Patton. He loved to read, a trait that he most likely picked up from his mother, who also enjoyed reading. Although Larry was not a speed reader, he was able to retain almost everything that he did read and often recited quotations from his reading in his speeches, such as quotes from Patton and Bible verses, such as Isaiah 5:13 and Hosea 4:6.
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