As noted in the Spy’s obituary today, Professor Davy McCall passed away this weekend at the age of 97. The former U.S. State Department and USAID international expert for both Asia and the Middle East first arrived in Kent County in 1968, where he eventually joined the Washington College faculty and later became chair of the economics department.
At the urging of mutual friends, I was able to finally sit down with Davy at Heron Point on November 1 for a free-range conversation about his life and career. It is an extraordinary story of a gifted intellectual from the prosperous suburb of Shaker Heights in Cleveland, through Kenyon College, a Ph.D. from Harvard, and decades of finding himself in the center of foreign affairs in both China and later Syria.
In our interview, Davy talks fondly of his time at Washington College, his passion for historical restoration, and his love of Chestertown.
This video is approximately seven minutes in length