Posted on 07/01/2019
Rear Admiral Malcolm MacKinnon III
On Monday, June 24, 2019 at Inova Fairfax Hospital Loving husband of Rosamond MacKinnon Beloved father of Richard and Jeffrey MacKinnon Grandfather of Grace and Catherine MacKinnon. Rear Admiral MacKinnon had a long and rewarding Navy career. He became the chief engineer in the Navy, a position he was well suited for. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1955 followed by a naval architect degree from MIT, focusing on submarine design. This is where he met his lifelong companion, Rosamond and they would end up being together for 59 wonderful years. He served in shipyards from Connecticut (Electric Boat), Hunters Point (San Francisco), Mare Island (Vallejo, CA.), Pearl Harbor and Newport News, VA. where he oversaw the construction of aircraft carriers. He returned to Groton (1971-1974); Naval War College (Newport, R.I.) 1970. While in Hawaii, he learned to scuba dive and he also ran in marathons. Mal was always willing to help his coworkers through mentoring. Flexibility was his watchword, and this helped him thrive in various work environments with competing interests. Mal was rightly proud of his accomplishments, such as the Engineering Duty School at Mare Island which allowed him to share his experiences and his hard-won wisdom with a new generation of naval engineers. He also played a key role in retrieving a lost nuclear bomb off the coast of Spain in 1966. The undersea habitat SEALAB was another project he worked on which was the Navy's answer to the experimental efforts in space. After retirement, he led a maritime consultancy primarily based on salvage expertise. The firm later branched out to expert witness defense in asbestos cases and worked on everything from cruise ship propulsion to oil spill response to efforts to defeat piracy. Malcolm was an avid golfer, enjoying weekends at The Woods golf resort in West Virginia along with being a devoted Redskins fan (which served to keep him humble!). His joie de vivre was palpable, and an inner light shone around him. He was a member of the Cosmos Club and the National Academy of Sciences. Funeral services will be held on Saturday, June 29, 2019 at 4 p.m. at National Presbyterian Church, 4101 Nebraska Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20016 In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation at jdrf.org or (800)533-CURE (2873). Arrangements by DeVol Funeral HomeArrangements by DeVol Funeral Home
Published in The Washington Post from June 29 to July 1, 2019