Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

On Stage, Nervously, For Dad

Even in death, Richard “Mac” McDermott is a ham.

It looked like his youngest daughter, Suzie, guest-conducting North Idaho College’s symphony Thursday. But it was Mac’s spirit propelling that baton.

“This is something he wanted to do and didn’t get to,” Suzie says. “I had to do it for him.”

A freak accident knocked Mac flat on his back two years ago, the day before he was scheduled to conduct the symphony. He died a few weeks later.

Suzie and her sister, Debbie, had bought Mac the guest-conducting opportunity at an auction for the North Idaho College Symphony Orchestra Guild in 1994. Everything about the gift suited him.

“My father was a total ham,” Suzie says. “That’s why we thought he’d really get into this.”

He grew up listening to the radio, learned to dance and taught himself to play piano. His parents taught him an appreciation for the arts that lasted him a lifetime.

He didn’t push his five children into music lessons, but he did love to see them perform. Suzie remembers the Christmas her family lined up on a department store escalator in Los Angeles and sang “Hi Neighbor” to shoppers.

“Dad wanted us to be famous so badly,” she says.

Mac followed Debbie to Coeur d’Alene in 1990 and Suzie followed two years later. Together they went to all the local plays and concerts.

Debbie and Suzie joined the Symphony Guild. The guild offered the conducting opportunity plus four conducting classes at its fund-raising soiree in October 1994.

“When I saw it, I pulled my sister over and said, ‘This is Dad,”’ Suzie says.

A neurologist bid against them until his wife persuaded him to let the McDermott women have it for their father. The sisters bought a baton and wrapped it in a music scroll on which they wrote the story of how the gift was born.

Mac unrolled the scroll Christmas Day and his jaw dropped. He immediately began conducting carols.

“He never said anything about the concert, but I’m sure he was nervous,” Suzie says. “He was a perfectionist.”

Mac practiced conducting John Philip Sousa marches at home. His family, including his two grandchildren and his ex-wife, flew in for the big event that March.

He was playing with his granddaughter in a park when he slipped and fell on his back. Mac was a big guy and the fall knocked the wind out of him. Emergency room doctors examined him and sent him home. He couldn’t move enough to conduct the symphony the next night.

Mac’s pain was so constant that his son-in-law returned him to the emergency room a few days after his fall. The hospital kept him for a week and gave him morphine for two broken ribs. He went home on St. Patrick’s Day 1995.

Suzie and Debbie checked on their father twice a day. He didn’t look good, but he wasn’t hurting. Then, on March 22, Suzie found him dead. He was 73.

The family couldn’t be sure of the cause of death without an autopsy. But Mac had wanted his body to go to science. He’d put Suzie in charge of his will when she was 15 and gone over the details annually with her.

“I coddled Dad. He always went to the person he knew would do what he wanted,” she says.

She had so many questions about Mac’s death but she finally yielded to his wishes, as he knew she would.

The symphony guild’s auction that fall offered no conducting opportunities, which was fine with Suzie. But the 1996 auction did.

“I showed it to Debbie and started crying,” she says. “I didn’t want to deal with it.”

But suddenly she was bidding. As her sister stared at her, Suzie called out bids and cried until she won.

“It was the most embarrassing thing in my life,” she says. “I’m crying hysterically and everyone is watching. They’re congratulating me and I’m saying I don’t want to do it.”

Friends showed Suzie how to handle the baton - her father’s. Unlike Mac, she dreaded her big night and was comforted that the audience could see only her back. She’s convinced Mac was determined to have his night in front of the symphony - even after death.

“He decided I’d do it in his memory,” Suzie says. “It was still very much his big night.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo