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Elks, Eagles, Everything. After the war McKay, 66% disabled, got a Saxon car and started to sell. By 1927 he had saved enough money to move his family to Salem, buy a General Motors franchise, rent an old laundry as his showroom and go into business. He dropped his first name James, for poetic reasons: "Doug McKay, Chevrolet—it rhymes." Now the company, which sells Cadillacs too, covers an acre of Salem's Commercial Street; the payroll runs to about 80 men and the year's business to $2,500,000. His two sons-in-law run it.
In Salem, McKay belongs to the Elks, Eagles, Kiwanis, Knights Templars, Masons, American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Order of the Purple Heart, Phi Delta Theta, and the Capital Card Club. For parades, he blossoms out in elegantly embroidered Western cowboy clothes. He likes to ride his horse—named Eugene Peavine, Gene for short. His outfit turned out to be good business, good politics and good fun.
McKay, a natural-born politician, has never lost an election since college, where he was elected class and student-body president. In Salem, after only five years in town, he was elected mayor.
Above & Beyond. On Dec. 7, 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Doug McKay was in Hawaii with the Willamette University football team from Salem. When a bomb landed two blocks from the hotel, he exploded: "By God, I'm Marion County defense chairman. I've got to get back home."
Before he could do so, he had to help defend Hawaii by passing out Springfield rifles to the football squad and leading them that night on a beach patrol. Back home he volunteered (at 48), waiving disability pay, and was commissioned a captain. The Army kept him in Oregon all through the war; at least, said McKay, "I released a WAC for overseas duty." In 1945 state party leaders urged him to get his discharge .and run for president of the state senate. McKay refused: "I asked to get into the Army. I won't ask to get out." In 1947, Oregon's governor was killed in a plane crash and McKay decided to run. "I'm not mad at anybody," he announced. "If the people want me—O.K. If they don't—O.K." They did. twice running.
McKay supported Ike for President in 1951 but never met him until 1952's famed "return to Abilene." Ike's memorable ad-lib speech that afternoon overwhelmed McKay. "It was the most moving thing I have ever heard," he later declared.
Just before the 1952 convention, McKay visited Ike at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel. "General Eisenhower," he recalled, "walked down the hall with me. He put his arm over my shoulder and asked me what I thought of the idea of a Columbia Valley Authority. I said I was against it, that I didn't believe in federal domination of a river valley. That's the only time I ever told Eisenhower my views until he called me and asked me to join the Cabinet."
"Oh dear," said Mrs. McKay, when she heard of the call to Washington, "I just planted 200 bulbs."