Sen. Mac Mathias would not have been caught dead at his fellow Republican Richard Nixon's post-Watergate second inaugural or at any of its triumphal dinners and balls or at the odd celebratory Kennedy Center concert. So with no fanfare or publicity he invited maybe 20 of us to join him and his wife, Ann, for supper in his Senate offices. From there he arranged for all of us to be taken to the National Cathedral, where Leonard Bernstein conducted, at Dean Francis Sayre's invitation, Haydn's Mass in Time of War. That stunning work was written and first performed in 1796, as Napoleon was marching upon Vienna. The futility, death, and destruction of the decade-old Vietnam War reverberated throughout the great Gothic structure on that chilly January night, 37 years ago.

To Mac Mathias this was not just the right thing to do. There simply was no choice; that made it easy for him.

We have just lost one of the handful of this country's great statesmen and leaders of the last century. Things like this, and dozens of others, are what we will always remember and treasure about Mac -- and make us proud to have had him in our midst.

Henry R. Lord, Baltimore

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