McNAMARA, Margaret Craig

(b. 22 August 1915 in Seattle, Washington; d. 3 February 1981 in Washington, D.C.), teacher, tutor, and goodwill worker who in 1966 founded Reading Is FUNdamental, a national organization that promotes literacy among disadvantaged children and their families.

McNamara was one of two daughters born to Thomas J. Craig, an insurance executive, and Margaret McKinstry. She grew up in Alameda, California, where she cultivated a love for the outdoors. At the University of California at Berkeley, where her idealism was honed, McNamara met her future husband, Robert Strange McNamara, who later became the secretary of defense in the presidential administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. After graduating in 1937, McNamara taught biology and physical education at a high school in San Rafael, California. In August 1940 the McNamaras married and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Robert taught at Harvard University. The couple had three children.

In the summer of 1945 both McNamaras contracted poliomyelitis. Her husband's case was very mild, but McNamara was paralyzed. Even so, by early 1946 she was walking again. Polio is rare among adults, and her rehabilitation took place at the Children's Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was surrounded by paralytic children. In the next fourteen years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her husband worked for the Ford Motor Company, McNamara did volunteer tutoring and was active in civic affairs. Although McNamara retained a permanent limp, she resumed her favorite outdoor activities, mountain climbing and skiing.

In December 1960 Robert McNamara accepted Kennedy's nomination as the secretary of defense. The family settled in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Among the glittering Kennedy set from the East Coast, people observed that the McNamaras were "bright and straight" and that Margaret McNamara was "so innocent," "so fine and natural." McNamara immersed herself in goodwill work, which she already had taken up actively in national organizations. The most publicized of all her projects was her founding of Reading Is FUNdamental (RIF).

When she resumed tutoring in Washington, D.C., McNamara saw that her young inner-city students had few books at home. On a spring day in 1966 she brought the children a Jules Verne adventure book. They became interested instantly. One boy wanted to have the book, and McNamara agreed, realizing that given the opportunity to choose and keep the books they liked, children would be more likely to establish a lifelong interest in reading. The books also could serve to reach an entire family through one child. McNamara launched RIF on 3 November 1966. It quickly flourished in inner-city schools, reaching disadvantaged children and their families in a wide range of settings. With McNamara's vigorous efforts to raise funds and organize support, RIF went beyond Washington, D.C., and became a national organization that operated in all fifty states, on Native American reservations, and on farflung island territories of the United States.

As the 1960s wore on, anti–Vietnam War sentiment intensified, and people with connections to the Johnson administration, including the McNamaras, became a target for hostility and threats. McNamara worked hard to support her husband and family through these difficult times. She also had other obligations, including work with cabinet wives. In July 1967 McNamara had an operation for ulcers, yet the family was still able to enjoy vacationing at their second home in Snowmass, Colorado, and abroad.

In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, McNamara traveled extensively in developing countries with her husband, who had become the president of the World Bank. McNamara sowed the seeds of RIF along the way. She also advised her husband on global education and health issues. With her tireless efforts, McNamara convinced many members of Congress that RIF deserved the nation's full and steadfast support. In 1976 Congress passed the Inexpensive Book Distribution Program, matching individual community-raised funds with federal government funding, three to one.

President Jimmy Carter awarded McNamara the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 15 January 1981 for her work in Reading Is FUNdamental. Although she was dying from cancer and appeared extremely weak, McNamara sat in a wheelchair with her back straight, looking up at the president with her typical direct gaze. McNamara died at home in Washington, D.C. That summer, her ashes were scattered at Buckskin Pass, near Snowmass, on a peaceful mountainside meadow with a creek and a blanket of wild-flowers.

McNamara, "one of God's loveliest creatures," as her husband called her, was always unaffected and selfless to a fault. Throughout her life as a career goodwill worker, a loving wife and mother, a fearless fighter of her illnesses, and an avid mountain climber and skier, McNamara's perseverance and intelligence were extraordinary. She left her legacy in Reading Is FUNdamental, which became the nation's largest children and family literacy organization. In 2002 RIF ran a program to put 200 million books in the hands and homes of children who need them most.

Information about McNamara can be found in Henry L. Trewhitt, McNamara (1971); Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (1993), which contains the most in-depth account of McNamara; Robert S. McNamara with Brian VanDeMark, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995); and Paul Hendrickson, The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (1996). An obituary is in the New York Times (4 Feb. 1981).

Shaoshan Li