Lawrence E McCray

Larry McCray of Lexington, MA on December 26, 2023. He is survived by his loving wife, Alexa T. McCray, his children J and Malika, his grandchildren Max, Miles and Nora, son-in-law Brian and daughter-in-law Erin. Larry was born and raised in Ithaca, NY.
Larry met Alexa on a blind date on homecoming weekend at Union College in Schenectady, NY. They were married in 1969, followed by a honeymoon in Europe that began a lifetime of seeing the world together. They traveled together to destinations with a sense of curiosity and wonder, including trips to India, New Zealand, Australia, China, Japan and South Korea. They raised their two children, J and Malika, together at their home in Arlington, VA. Larry was enormously proud of his children and the lives they built, and was delighted by his grandchildren.
Larry devoted a lifetime to impacting policy decisions for the benefit of society, including work in emerging technologies, environmental issues and regulatory reform. He studied political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he completed his PhD in 1974 with a prize-winning dissertation in American government and politics. Early in his career, he worked at the Environmental Protection Agency, where he organized and implemented reforms in environmental decision-making processes. Then, as a member of the Carter administration, he was the first program director of the U.S. Regulatory Council, where he led reforms on the use of incentives in the nation's regulatory agencies. He was the founding director of the policy division at the National Academy of Sciences. In his role as a senior leader there, he directed a number of research studies, including studies on nuclear winter and climate change. He was the project director on Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process, also known as the Red Book. Following his retirement, he was a mentor in science policy at MIT's Center for International Studies, where he enjoyed advising many graduate students.
Larry was a lifelong athlete, hiker, cyclist, baseball player and tennis player. He had many passions and was known for his pursuit of interests off the beaten path. He played a version of tennis, known as real tennis or court tennis, from which the modern sport of tennis derived. Larry was a member of International Randonneurs, a group of endurance cyclists who participated in long bike rides, some of which covered hundreds of kilometers through the night. He once biked to every home ballpark in the Red Sox farm team system along the East Coast, stopping in for home games along the way. Recognized for his work as a baseball historian, he contributed significantly to research on the origins of baseball, and the predecessor games that led to its creation. He created Protoball.org, designed to help researchers and writers find primary data on the spread of ball play from ancient times to the beginning of baseball league play in the 1870s.
A celebration of life is planned for the spring of 2024 in Lexington, MA. In lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy may be made on the online guestbook at douglassfh.com.