Obituaries

The Air Force lieutenant who battled against the Red Scare

On a summer night in 1953, a 27-year-old Air Force Reserve lieutenant and University of Michigan undergraduate named Milo Radulovich was taking care of his infant daughter and studying from a physics textbook when there came a knock at the door. Answering it, Radulovich was confronted with two men in Air Force uniforms, a major and a sergeant. They handed him an envelope and left. Radulovich was stunned by the contents: He was being discharged as a security risk. Though he had done nothing wrong, the Air Force explained that he was guilty of maintaining a “close and continuing association with his father and his sister,” who were both suspected subversives. When his shock passed and he realized what had happened, Radulovich devoted himself to clearing his name, becoming one of the first to speak out publicly against the communist witch hunts of the 1950s.

Radulovich had never been particularly political, said The Detroit News. But his father, an immigrant from Montenegro, had aroused suspicions because he subscribed to a Serbian-language newspaper that was considered pro-communist. His sister, Margaret, was also deemed risky because she had once picketed a hotel that refused to admit Paul Robeson, the black actor and outspoken Soviet apologist. Faced with the choice of disowning them, Radulovich refused. “I knew if my case went unresolved, the government could do this to anyone, anywhere,” he said. He faced a seemingly impossible battle; the Air Force produced no witnesses against him, and he was not allowed to cross-examine his accusers. So he

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and his lawyer decided to fight in the court of public opinion.

Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly, the producers of the CBS news program See It Now, took up Radulovich’s cause, said the Los Angeles Times. Dispatching a film crew to interview him, his family, and friends, they assembled a half-hour documentary that aired on Oct. 20. “If I am being judged on my relatives,” an impassioned Radulovich asked a national television audience, “are my children going to be asked to denounce me? Are they going to be judged on what their father was labeled?” CBS received 12,000 letters about the broadcast, the vast majority of them outraged over his treatment. Two days before Thanksgiving, the Air Force formally cleared him. He felt, he said, “like a helium balloon in weather floating up to the sky.”

Despite Radulovich’s formal vindication, the attack on his patriotism dogged him, said The Sacramento Bee. “It stopped me from achieving some of the goals I wanted to attain,” he said. “I never got my college degree and that bugs the hell out of me.” His first marriage also fell apart, under the strain of his fight against the Air Force. Eventually, he moved to California and became a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, where then-Gov. Ronald Reagan would often call him for a personal forecast. In 2005, the movie Good Night, and Good Luck, which depicted Murrow’s fight against McCarthyism, “turned him into a celebrity, a rejuvenated hero, and a widely sought-out speaker, as critics of the Patriot Act drew contemporary parallels to his ordeal.” Radulovich told audiences, “I am uneasy about self-praise. But I am proud I responded as a patriot to an unjust attack.”

Radulovich died of complications following a stroke. He is survived by three daughters and his sister.

The Rhodesian prime minister who was an unapologetic racist

Ian Smith, who has died of a stroke at 88, personified the last vestiges of European rule in Africa. As prime minister of the British colony of Rhodesia in the 1960s, he defied world opinion by vowing never to allow the country’s black majority population to wrest power from its white minority rulers. But after Rhodesia became an international pariah and endured a bloody, seven-year guerrilla war, Smith bowed to the inevitable, leaving behind a new, black-ruled nation called Zimbabwe.

The son of a Scottish butcher, Smith fought with the Royal Air Force during World War II, said the London Telegraph. He crashed twice, and facial surgery left him with a drooping eyelid, lopsided expression, and “somewhat menacing stare.” Somehow, it suited his dour persona. Smith was “awkward socially, disliked publicity, and his taste in clothes was drab.” But in 1948, following his election to Parliament, he won a reputation as an astute tactician and “ruthless” political infighter. He became Rhodesia’s deputy prime minister in 1962 and prime minister two years later.

“By then, the country was a self-governing colony, but pressure was growing for full nationhood,” said the London Independent. Smith would have none of it. Defying his British superiors, who had urged him to permit black governance, Smith declared Rhodesia’s independence on Nov. 11, 1965. “We have struck a blow for the preservation of justice, civilization, and Christianity,” he declared. Though U.N. sanctions swiftly cut off Rhodesia from the rest of the world, Smith wouldn’t relent. Asked when blacks would be allowed to determine their own destiny, he replied, “Never in a thousand years.”

Smith’s stance couldn’t last, said The New York Times. In December 1972, nationalist guerrillas began an insurgency that eventually killed some 30,000 Rhodesians, mostly black, and threatened to tear the nation apart. Under growing international pressure, Smith gradually began a “grudging” retreat from his hard line and, in 1979, stepped down. The following year, Robert Mugabe won election as prime minister. Though he and Smith “cooperated with each other at first,” Smith quit Parliament in 1987, “claiming he had been forced out illegally.” Though he never regained his former prominence, he became a bitter opponent of the Mugabe regime. Citing its corruption, violence, and political repression, as well as Zimbabwe’s plummeting economic fortunes, he insisted that history had vindicated him. “There are millions of black people who say things were better when I was in control,” he said in 2004.

Smith, who is survived by two stepchildren, lived his last years in self-imposed exile in South Africa.