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255 GOOD MEASURE, PRESSED DOWN As he grew older and more wealthy, George McLean practiced a kind of personal checkbook benevolence. People came to his office at the Journal, almost as supplicants, and asked him for money to send their children to school or to get them through a particularly rough stretch. More often than not, he made the loan, asking only that he be repaid as soon as the borrower was able.“He was an easy mark for anyone wanting to borrow money for educational purposes ,” Keirsey McLean recalled,“especially someone wanting to send a son or daughter to college.” After her husband’s death, she found among his papers hundreds of dollars in crumpled ten- and twenty-dollar bills that he had stuffed haphazardly into folders—the money people had repaid. The other side of this benevolence was a close-to-cynical notion that he could use his money to get his own way, that if the price was right, people could be made to do things they initially did not want to do. His money got the two police officers accused of brutality off the force in 1978 and was the carrot for many of Tupelo’s development programs. He used similar tactics with his relatives . In a January 1974 letter to a great-nephew interested in becoming a journalist , he emphasized the need for reporters to know how to type and offered him a hundred dollars to learn: ten dollars when he reached ten words per minute , twenty dollars for twenty words, thirty dollars for thirty words, and forty dollars for forty words.“Just let me know when you reach the various levels of speed and I will send you a check,” McLean wrote.1 Beyond money, though, he was becoming far more conscious of his age and his health. In early 1978, as Tupelo’s racial tension was growing, he developed an irregular heart rhythm along with angina. Doctors installed a pacemaker for his heartbeat and prescribed drugs for the angina. McLean had long taken several drugs daily to control his allergies, but now his morning regimen included drugs to control his blood pressure and blood clotting as well. He used index cards to keep track of what he had taken and when. 14 256 Good Measure, Pressed Down He began to cut back on his involvement in statewide issues and on his speaking commitments. He began to mention his health problems in his letters. “I must decline the invitation, due to the fact that I developed heart trouble last year and any special public event in which I participate causes me trouble,” he wrote to the mayor of Oxford, Mississippi, declining a Fourth of July speaking appearance there.2 In a letter to the Aberdeen, Mississippi, chamber of commerce , he wrote, “Thank you for your letter inviting me to speak. . . . In prior years, I would have welcomed this opportunity. However, within the last two years I developed heart trouble and this summer I passed my 75th birthday so physical condition and age have forced me to stop accepting speaking invitations .”3 The word “angina” was scratched out in the draft of the letter, and the phrase “heart trouble” was substituted. In a letter to Mississippi governor Cliff Finch, resigning from a state advisory committee, McLean wrote, “I find that travel and meetings tend to raise my blood pressure and my wife feels that I am not being fair to her if I do not slow down on my out-of-town activities.”4 The McLeans celebrated their fiftieth anniversary at the end of 1975. Their children had moved to places far from Tupelo, and George and Keirsey had settled into a routine where Keirsey, in addition to taking a more active role in the Journal’s management, managed George’s life as well. She told him when to get a haircut and when he needed new shoes; she made sure that the maids—there were generally two household workers, Essie Howard, their longtime cook, and another person who did the cleaning—kept George’s bureau full of clean,folded clothes. She did the driving at night and on longer trips they took. She worried about his health and his weight. He looked thinner, paler. McLean never formally retired, but he did begin spending the first part of the mornings in his robe at home on Highland Circle, reading the Journal first, followed by the Memphis Commercial Appeal, then whatever religious...

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