'Captain Mac' Remembered for Service to Duke

As a Duke Police officer, James "Captain Mac" McClure carried an intoxicated Janis Joplin on stage for a concert at Cameron Indoor Stadium. He also protected such dignitaries as South African Bishop Desmond Tutu.

More people may remember McClure as the officer who, for years, ran beside Duke coaches as they took the football field or basketball court at the start of each game.

"I cannot remember Duke without Mac," said Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs.

McClure, 67, died on Christmas Day after battling bladder and bone cancer for nine months. He devoted 40 years to the university, joining the Duke Police Department as a watchman in 1964 and retiring as a captain in 1998.

But he never really left. Immediately after retiring, McClure signed up for part-time security work at special events.

Over the years, he was the first contact many visitors had at Duke. He found and reserved coveted parking spaces on the Chapel Quad and made sure traffic flowed during commencement, convocation and NCAA tournament celebrations.

"Captain Mac was a dinosaur," Joe Alleva, director of Duke athletics, said during McClure's funeral Dec. 29 at Duke Chapel that was attended by, among others, Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski. "His kind is extinct. Mac is the guy who worked 20 hour days -- always loyal, always caring, always smiling."

McClure was born and raised in Durham. His parents, Espra and James Barney McClure Sr., packed cigarettes for Liggett & Meyers.

In high school, the left-handed McClure was a baseball standout, pitching back-to-back no-hitters. The balls from those games still sit in the trophy case at his school, family members said. His team at Lowes Grove High School won the state championship in 1954, leading to his semi-pro start.

On weekends, McClure played baseball, earning $15 a game. He went on to pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals organization for about a year when a shoulder injury ended his athletic career and eventually brought him to Duke Police.

Along the way, McClure married and had three sons. His family didn't see him as much as they wanted, they said, because he worked a lot.

"Even at Christmas time, he was at Duke," said his son, Mike McClure, 38.

As special events manager for Duke Police, McClure coordinated security coverage for the university and medical center. Commencements brought former U.S. presidents and vice presidents and senior CIA officials. It was McClure's job to make sure festivities passed without major glitches.

Thank-you letters from Pelham Wilder Jr., the former university marshal, filled McClure's personnel file.

"You took care of the guests of the university and did so with grace and poise," Wilder wrote one year after Founder's Day activities.

Said Clarence Birkhead, chief of Duke Police, "Mac knew how to handle people and make them feel incredibly important “ no matter who it was."

In June of 1997, a Virginia man wrote the university to thank McClure. Ammon Sears and his wife were visiting the campus for a National Cancer Survivors Day service at the Chapel. They were in their late 70s.

"I walk with great difficulty and at times with much effort," Sears wrote. "Traffic as you know was heavy. Parking space was somewhat nil. However, your Captain McClure relocated several of the orange cones near the chapel steps to provide parking space for us to make our way to the chapel and communion service."

Last year, McClure started losing weight and feeling sick. In March, doctors told him he had bladder cancer. It spread to his bones. He went to live with his son, Mike, in Durham. In his last weeks, McClure talked with his sons about death and planned his own funeral -- down to selecting Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," which filled the Chapel for his funeral service.

And he wrote Krzyzewski a letter before the coach's 700th win.