Living Proof

Stonehill students today are encouraged, when they graduate, to go on to live lives of meaning and purpose. In another era, the College’s slogan was the “Making of a Person.” Our mission today is to educate the mind and the heart. In Stonehill’s early years, however, there were fewer phrases of exhortation as the College was finding its footing and working to attract a student body.

Despite attending a fledgling school, our early alumni charted amazing paths after they graduated. Richard McCormack ’53, right, a member of the College’s second graduating class, is one example, and here we celebrate his story.

First Act

He’s met John F. Kennedy, Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra, and a pope—and that was just Richard McCormack’s first act! To say that McCormack has led an interesting life is an understatement. He’s moonlighted as a nightclub singer, created his own vineyard and spent 35 years in public service—all this while raising 10 children. Through it all, he’s followed his passion and his faith.

Born in Boston, McCormack grew up in Weymouth and Braintree. Once he was old enough, he shipped out with the U.S. Navy seeking adventure. During World War II, he cruised the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. It was as a young assistant to the ship’s chaplain that he and a group of other sailors were granted an audience with Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. “As a Catholic, it was a big deal,” McCormack recalls. “I remember the Pope blessed my rosary beads.” While stationed in Virginia, McCormack met and married his first wife, Mavis. After the war, the couple moved to Massachusetts with their first two children. McCormack was determined to support his growing family, but first he needed a college degree. When there were no openings for GIs at Boston College, his first choice, he decided to apply to the “new Catholic school” that had just opened in Easton.

When McCormack was a freshman at Stonehill, his advisor encouraged him to major in English. It wasn’t long before he became involved with the student newspaper—the start of a lifelong career in writing and communications.

At his 50th Reunion, in 2003, McCormack participated in an oral history for the College. He recalled that the two men he admired most when he was a student were Rev. Richard Sullivan, C.S.C. and Professor Brasil Fitzgerald. “I looked up to them,” he says. “They were my heroes.” McCormack continued, “My dad died three days after I started at Stonehill, and I was a little lost lamb. Brasil took me under his wing, you know, started me in the writing career. Actually I wanted to be a dentist, but I got called up to the dean’s office one day and was told that I’d better change my dream, because the only teeth I’d pull would be my own.”

As a student, McCormack helped establish theater arts at Stonehill and went on to become his class vice president. He also sang in nightclubs and took part-time jobs to support his family. “We had no fear of hard work. We had no fear of going out on our own and working hard, and it was a blessing,” he recalls of those early years with his classmates.

Political Bug

With his college degree in hand, McCormack landed a job as an editor in Washington, D.C., at the Foreign Broadcast Information Center, an overt arm of the CIA. Bitten by the political bug in the nation’s capital, he soon decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, in his home state of Massachusetts. At the same time that McCormack was campaigning for a seat in the House, John F. Kennedy was running for the U.S. Senate.

Over the years, McCormack had worked on several of Kennedy’s campaigns and got to know him fairly well. One day, Kennedy asked McCormack how his campaign was going. “I told him I needed two things,” McCormack recalls, “money and prayers.” According to McCormack, Kennedy’s response was, “I’ll pray for you.” McCormack laughs recalling the exchange. “That was typical Kennedy,” he says.

McCormack lost the congressional election, but his run caught the attention of the then-Governor of Massachusetts, Foster Furcolo. McCormack worked for him for two years before heading back to Washington, D.C., to serve as an aide to U.S. Senator Vance Hartke from Indiana. “It was much different than it is now,” McCormack says of congressional politics. “Back then it was a working Congress. People on both sides drank and chatted and played together, and they got things done. There wasn’t the small-mindedness and hostility like today.”

By the late 1950s, Kennedy was running for president and tapped McCormack to serve as one of his campaign advance men. When Kennedy won, he named McCormack to his inauguration committee, as head of transportation. One of McCormack’s most memorable tasks during that period was making sure Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack (Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford) had the cars they needed when they came to Washington in 1961 to perform the night before Kennedy’s formal inauguration.

Throughout McCormack’s career, he moonlighted as a nightclub singer in Washington, so meeting Sinatra was a special thrill. What was Ol’ Blue Eyes really like? “He was very businesslike,” McCormack says. “He had a good sense of humor—and a temper.” McCormack recalls witnessing Sinatra scream and smash the hotel phone when the crooner discovered he’d been sent the wrong tuxedo.

Evening Crooner

After the inauguration, McCormack kept singing and performing at night, but during the day he went to work as deputy assistant to the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. It was around this time that his friend Mark Russell changed McCormack’s career. Russell, who made political jokes and played piano in a little bar on Capitol Hill, would go on to gain fame for his political song parodies featured regularly on public television. One night in the 1960s, Russell brought a friend to see McCormack’s show. That friend happened to be a writer for “The Tonight Show.” Two weeks later, McCormack got a call asking if he’d like to perform on the show with the new host, Johnny Carson. Of course, he said yes. In October 1962 (Carson’s season one, episode five), McCormack sang “Moon River.” He then enjoyed a spirited debate about abolishing taxes.

Carson must have been impressed because a few weeks later, McCormack was invited back. In December 1962, he sang another tune made famous by Sinatra, “September Song.” Carson applauded McCormack for fathering eight children and asked whether or not he considered leaving his Treasury Department job to become a performer full time. McCormack said he’d like to, and added, “There’s a very thin line between show business and politics.” That quip got a good laugh. McCormack appeared for a third time in 1963, on a “Best of Carson” segment.

That year, the mood in Washington and around the world changed. When President Kennedy was assassinated, McCormack felt a deep sense of loss for the man he knew personally and helped get elected. “Everyone was shocked and depressed—the whole country was,” he recalls. “The entire town [Washington] was in mourning, mentally and physically. We just couldn’t understand it.”

(Above right, Johnny Carson thanks McCormack for appearing on "The Tonight Show.")

Peace Corps, NASA, Star Wars

Soon after Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president, McCormack went to work for Sargent Shriver, the director of the War on Poverty. Inspired by Shriver’s earlier Peace Corps work, McCormack left Washington in 1970 to do cross-cultural training for two years at the Peace Corps training center in Puerto Rico. When he returned, he joined another federal agency taking on exciting new challenges—NASA.

In 1972, less than three years after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, McCormack became a public affairs officer at the space agency. One of his first projects was Landsat, a new remote sensing satellite that collected data on the Earth’s natural resources, inspired by photography taken of the Earth from space during the Apollo mission. McCormack also worked with the agency’s fledgling global positioning system (GPS) and space shuttle programs.

McCormack left the agency in the mid-1980s to work on another new government initiative—the Star Wars program. Proposed by President Ronald Reagan, Star Wars, officially called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), was the Department of Defense’s antiballistic missile system. McCormack worked for SDI at the Pentagon as a community relations officer until his retirement in 1995.

(Above right, McCormack is blessed by Pope Pius XII.)

Twinkle in His Eye

In addition to singing, McCormack’s other passion was winemaking. Some people are satisfied making wine in their bathtubs, but not McCormack. In 1982, he planted 8,000 vines on 10 acres in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Six years later, he launched North Mountain Vineyard and Winery, which produced about a thousand cases a year. McCormack has always been an active alumnus and often donated his wine to be served or auctioned at Stonehill events. And of course, he’s performed at his reunions. “He always has a twinkle in his eye and a story to tell,” says Francis X. Dillon ’70, the College’s vice president for advancement and a friend of McCormack’s. “And he loves Stonehill.”

Today, McCormack, whose first wife, Mavis, died in 1999, lives with his second wife, Caroline, in Virginia. He sold North Mountain Vineyard and Winery in 2002. At 87, this father of 10 children, stays busy keeping up with his family, including 15 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. And of course, he still sings. You can hear him in the choir at Good Shepherd Catholic Church most Sundays and at funerals. “There is always something exciting and socially productive to do in this world,” he says. Of this, Richard McCormack is living proof.

McCormack’s story is just one of many inspiring and interesting stories from Stonehill’s earliest alumni. If you have a story to share, email klawrence@stonehill.edu. Each year at Reunion, the Stonehill Archives conducts oral histories with 50th Reunion class members.