Devout Adam dedicated his life to repairing cars and people

Published on Wednesday 21 May 2008 10:34

Adam McLean, a Musselburgh mechanic who received an American award for bravery during the Second World War, has died aged 92.

Mr McLean, the son of a devout Christian coal miner, was born in Musselburgh on March 9, 1916.

After a short spell as a lift boy at Edinburgh's NB Hotel, now The Balmoral, he began his trade after answering a job advert for a mechanic.

His boss, Sam Reid, was also a devout Christian and taught him about matters of the spirit alongside the nuts and bolts of car engines.

Daughter Elisabeth recalls from their early family life that when anything broke there was almost nothing he could not repair.

However, he was also devoted to repairing souls through a religious movement known as Moral Rearmament, which would take him to Canada in April 1939.

Mr McLean travelled with 11 other Scots after an invitation from a group of provincial and city leaders, and in May 1939, Moral Rearmament was launched in the United States.

Mr McLean wrote a book about his experiences and particularly recalled the day he introduced Moral Rearmament to a crowd of thousands at Madison Square Gardens.

He said: "It was quite an experience ... to look out over the battery of microphones and tell that audience of 14,000 people, 'Moral Rearmament started for me when I told the boss about the oil I had swiped'. They seemed to get the point."

These events drew people from the political world, the armed forces and the diplomatic corps, including US senator and future President Harry S Truman.

Within a few years Mr McLean and several of the other Scots were drafted into the US army.

He served as an infantryman in Italy and was badly wounded by a German mortar bomb – an experience that would earn him the American Purple Heart award for bravery.

After leaving hospital he spent time in Rome but soon received a message from US Chief of Staff General George Marshall requesting his immediate return to the US to continue his work with Moral Rearmament.

His religious work introduced him to a Swiss law graduate named Elsbeth Spoerry. The couple married in Caux, Switzerland, in 1952 and had a daughter Elisabeth.

They continued their work in Italy, and by the time they returned to Scotland Elisabeth was nine.

They started out in a rented flat in Granton, then moved to an old farmhouse in Fife, then to Dalgety Bay.

Elsbeth sadly died after a long illness and Adam later remarried to Toni Millar, a retired Edinburgh schoolteacher, in May 2001.

Mr McLean is survived by Toni, his daughter, three grandchildren and one great grandchild.