William George "Mac" McCarley

News Obituary Article

McCarley, a long shot in governor's race, dies

By ADD SEYMOUR JR.

William George "Mac" McCarley didn't think he had a much of a chance to become Georgia's governor last year. But the former Alabama senator figured he had a faint shot.

"I don't believe I can win," McCarley told The Atlanta Journal Constitution on primary election night in July 2006. "What kind of chance do I have? I don't know. But I'm still hopeful."

That's the way McCarley, the chain-smoking, straight-shooting Democrat who faced years of long odds, lived.

On Wednesday, the colorful Stockbridge resident died from lung cancer. He was 79.

"I guarantee he didn't give up. He fought all of this," said his daughter, Sherry Newman. "He's stubborn and he's a fighter. He wasn't going to go until he wanted to go. And damn if he didn't do it."

McCarley had very little money, no staff and high hopes when he jumped into the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial race with Mark Taylor, Cathy Cox and Bill Bolton. Out of politics since the 1960s, McCarley ran on a platform of helping veterans, bettering education and streamlining government.

"He really wanted to make a difference," Newman said.

McCarley hoped to force the race into runoff by finishing a competitive third. He finished fourth.

"You know, I've been treated well by Georgians across the state," McCarley said after election returns came in. "That's the reason I got my hopes up a bit."

McCarley was a child of the Depression as his family moved all over the South looking for a way out of poverty.

After his family settled in Macon, McCarley got his father to say the 15-year-old was 17 so McCarley could join the Navy. He served 20 years and retired at 35.

McCarley went into sales, but was elected to the Alabama Senate in 1966.

His term was quiet until a newspaper story linked him to a scheme to take $3,500 from the Fraternal Order of Police to help move a pension bill.

Even though a state court found him not guilty, McCarley became the first person kicked out of the Alabama Senate.

He later sued to get his seat back, but decided not to run for re-election.

He went to work running the Alabama Sheriff's Youth Ranch for needy and neglected youth and was getting ready to start a similar program in Maryland when a doctor told him he had stomach cancer.

McCarley was told he had six months to live.

That was in 1981.

Instead of sulking, McCarley went home to Alabama and decided to raise money for cancer awareness and research by walking Alabama's state and federal routes --- all 3,723 miles.

"He got out and walked himself, basically to good health," Willis Pratford, a friend of McCarley's in Prattville, Ala., told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in July.

McCarley eventually moved to Georgia to be near four of his five grandchildren. But politics, he said, kept him going.

"I'm wore out," he said on that July election night. "Was it fun? Yeah."

McCarley is survived by his wife, Helen; four daughters; one son; 15 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Services will be held Monday, with a public viewing at 10 a.m. and the service following at 11 a.m., both at Cornerstone Baptist Church, 171 Collier Drive in Stockbridge.

© 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution