Milo Radulovich, 81, helped to defeat McCarthyism
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Milo Radulovich, who in 1953 stood up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist browbeating in a showdown that led to the demise of McCarthyism, died Monday.
He was 81 and had struggled with his health since suffering a stroke in June.
Although his case was a sensation 50 years ago, trumpeted on Edward R. Murrow’s TV show “See It Now” and the inspiration for the 2005 movie “Good Night, and Good Luck,” Mr. Radulovich for decades enjoyed an energetic but low-key career as a Sacramento-area meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
He was Ronald Reagan’s favorite weather forecaster when Reagan was California governor.
Until the last two years of his life, Mr. Radulovich rarely mentioned the scandal that rocked the nation at the height of the so-called Red Scare.
The movie turned him into a celebrity, a rejuvenated hero and a widely sought speaker as Patriot Act critics drew parallels to the Radulovich ordeal. “I am uneasy about self-praise, but I am proud I responded as a patriot to an unjust attack,” he said in 2003.
“If anyone was un-American, it was Joseph McCarthy. He did what the communist would have loved to do; he demoralized an entire nation.”
In the early 1950s, buoyed by the Cold War and the near-hysterical fear of communism, McCarthy derailed careers and ruined lives in his quest to root out Americans whose loyalties he questioned.
But the Wisconsin Republican picked on the wrong man in 1953. Mr. Radulovich, then 27, was a University of Michigan student and father of two. He was an Air Force reservist while studying meteorology and holding down three jobs.
His Yugoslavian immigrant father subscribed to a socialist newspaper from the old country, and his left-leaning activist-sister had demonstrated against war and racial discrimination.
Out of the blue, Mr. Radulovich received a special-delivery letter indicating he would be discharged from the Air Force for those reasons.
He decided to fight, becoming the first to take on the powerful McCarthy.
Murrow soon featured Mr. Radulovich on Murrow’s current-affairs broadcast, and the national tide turned against McCarthy as millions decided he had gone too far.
Mr. Radulovich won his case and cleared his father’s name, but he always insisted his father died broken-hearted, abandoned by most of his friends after he was identified as a likely communist.
Mr. Radulovich moved on and was never bitter. He retired in 1994 and, until his health woes, had lived alone in Lodi, Calif., since his second wife died in the early 1990s.
He is survived by three daughters, Danica Berner of Bishop, Calif.; and Janet Sweeney and Kathy Radulovich, both of Sacramento, Calif.; two brothers, Walter and Sam Radulovich, both of Detroit; and his sister Margaret Fishman, of Detroit.
Details on Mr. Radulovich’s father and sister were provided by the Los Angeles Times.