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 as a passenger on board Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when it was shot down by Soviet interceptors.
[2][3] Lawrence Patton McDonald was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, in the eastern part of the city that is in DeKalb County.
[citation needed] 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.
[2] 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.
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.
[15] McDonald co-sponsored a resolution "expressing the sense of the Congress that homosexual acts and the class of individuals who advocate such conduct shall never receive special consideration or a protected status under law".
[16] He advocated the use of the non-approved drug laetrile to treat patients in advanced stages of cancer[17] despite medical opinion that such use was quackery.
According to The Spokesman-Review, it was intended to "blunt subversion, terrorism, and communism" by filling the gap "created by the disbanding of the House Un-American Activities Committee and what [McDonald] considered to be the crippling of the FBI during the 1970s".
A number of McDonald's insertions relating to the Socialist Workers Party were collected into a book, Trotskyism and Terror: The Strategy of Revolution, published in 1977.
[26][non-primary source needed] During his time in Congress, McDonald introduced over 150 bills, including legislation to:[independent source needed] McDonald was invited to South Korea to attend a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the United States–South Korea Mutual Defense Treaty with three fellow members of Congress, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Senator Steve Symms of Idaho, and Representative Carroll Hubbard of Kentucky.
[30] Due to bad weather on Sunday, August 28, 1983, McDonald's flight from Atlanta was diverted to Baltimore and when he finally arrived at JFK Airport in New York, he had missed his connection to South Korea by two or three minutes.
As the delays mounted, instead of joining McDonald, Hubbard at the last minute gave up on the trip, canceled his reservations, and accepted a Kentucky speaking engagement.
[31] McDonald occupied an aisle seat, 02B in the first class section, when KAL 007 took off on August 31 at 12:24 AM local time, on a 3,400 miles (5,500 km) trip to Anchorage, Alaska for a scheduled stopover seven hours later.
On March 18, 1998, the Georgia House of Representatives, "to preserve the memory of the sacrifice and service of this able and outstanding Georgian and recognize his service to the people of his district", named the portion of Interstate 75, which runs from the Chattahoochee River northward to the Tennessee state line in his honor, the Larry McDonald Memorial Highway.