Richard A. Macken *73

Dick died Aug. 12, 2025, at his home in Naples, Fla. 

Born in Chicago in 1941, he graduated from Northwestern in 1963 and began law school at Harvard but after a year transferred to the Middle Eastern studies department. While developing his Arabic proficiency in Cairo, his adviser moved from Harvard to the Near Eastern studies department at Princeton and asked Dick to follow him. His dissertation was on late 19th Century Tunisian history. After Princeton, Dick became a professor of Middle Eastern studies in Penang, Malaysia. 

Returning to the U.S., Dick worked in the international affairs department of Gulf Oil in Pittsburgh, advising company executives on political, economic, and oil developments in North Africa and the Middle East. When Gulf merged with Chevron in 1985, Dick joined USAID, working in embassies in Khartoum, Kinshasa, Bamako, Antananarivo, and other capitals in sub-Saharan Africa. His last AID posting was Bridgetown, Barbados, with responsibility for economic development in several Caribbean islands of the Lesser Antilles.  

Dick retired to Naples, where he engaged in philanthropic and volunteer work, notably as a docent at the Naples Botanical Garden and a patron of Opera Sarasota, where he rarely missed a performance and sometimes served as a producer.  

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.