LAST TUESDAY AFTERNOON, RON BROWN found himself with some time to spare in Paris before flying on to the Balkans. So he went over to the U.S. embassy and engaged Ambassador Pamela Harriman in a stroll along the Seine. As they walked and chatted, the Commerce Secretary could barely contain his enthusiasm over a scheme he had just cooked up involving 200 Big Macs, which he had managed to persuade a McDonald's manager in Croatia to give him, free of charge. His plan was to pick up the burgers in Zagreb, fly them to Tuzla and pass them out to the U.S. troops he would be visiting. That gesture was pure Ron Brown: part theater, part business, with an eye on self-interest and a generous touch.
The purpose of Brown's trip was to demonstrate U.S. support for the peacekeeping effort in the Balkans, as well as to lobby on behalf of the 12 American industry leaders in his delegation who hoped to grab a piece of $5 billion in reconstruction aid already promised to Bosnia. After leaving Paris, Brown and his party spent the night in Zagreb, then proceeded to Tuzla, where the Secretary delivered his Big Macs. The troops were thrilled. Then around 2 p.m., Brown's entourage boarded an Air Force T-43 for the coastal town of Dubrovnik, where one of the worst storms in a decade was raging.
Just after 3 p.m., the plane suddenly disappeared from the radar screens in the Dubrovnik control tower. It was more than four hours before the truth emerged: the aircraft had slammed into a rocky hilltop nearly two miles from the airport. With the exception of a fatally injured flight attendant who died on the helicopter ride to a nearby hospital, every passenger was dead by the time Croatian rescue teams reached the site of the crash.
In Washington, a city famous for counterfeit displays of emotion, Brown's demise at the age of 54 immediately transformed the corridors of power into a theater of genuine shock and grief. And as his sea of mourners gathered at one another's homes, Brown was remembered as the complicated figure he had been in life: a fan of Hermes ties who liked to dine in deep-fry joints; a defender of the little people who enjoyed being chauffeured around in limousines; a dealmaker who could talk policy (if only to better horse-trade on Capitol Hill); a big-time Washington lawyer who never gave up public service; a man of conviction who often skirted the ethical edge; a keenly optimistic black man in the white establishment. His resume contained a gold-plated series of civil rights achievements, even if he refused to let them define him only in terms of race: first black chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee; one of the first black partners in his Washington law firm; first black Democratic Party chairman. There were many other firsts as well.
The morning after the crash, U.S. Army Brigadier General Michael Canavan phoned from Dubrovnik to inform Harold Ickes, Clinton's deputy chief of staff, that Brown's body had finally been identified. Famous for his steeliness, Ickes opened the 8:30 a.m. White House staff meeting with the grim news, then issued a call for business as usual. But within minutes he had turned the meeting into an impromptu wake, with staff members swapping fond anecdotes and roguish tales, all of them rich in laughter and full of deep pride in Brown. Even Ickes told one.