Robert Macauley, Founder of Humanitarian Aid Group, Dies at 87

Source: New York Times

Robert C. Macauley, a paper manufacturer whose charity delivered more than $10 billion in medicine, food and humanitarian aid to alleviate crises in more than 140 countries, died on Sunday at his home in North Palm Beach, Fla. He was 87.

The cause was emphysema, Donna Porstner, a spokeswoman for AmeriCares, said.

The idea for AmeriCares took shape shortly before the fall of Saigon in April 1975, when Mr. Macauley helped arrange the airlift of more than 300 orphans from Vietnam to the United States.

Many of them had been injured several days earlier when an Air Force transport plane carrying more than 100 children to the United States for adoption — the first in a planned series of airlifts by the American government to rescue 2,000 war orphans — crashed while taking off from Saigon.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/business/30macauley.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

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In Honduras, AmeriCares began officially its operations in 1985, being diplomatically connected to, and supported by the Knights of Malta. 'As in the Central American remainder, in Honduras AmeriCares worked very close with the Knights of Malta. They support military civic actions and counterrevolutionary programs, but also provide supplies to the Department of Health for clinics in the country'.

In Guatemala a part of the funds mentioned was distributed among the armed forces, like part of a program of relocation by means of 'model villages'. According to Alejos, ‘..... the Guatemalan army sends medicines of AmeriCares to the people of the model villages along the border with Mexico'.

Besides, the Association of the Air Command, of Fort Walton Beach, said to have used installations of the Knights of Malta in El Salvador. The retired general H. C. Aderholt, leader of the group of 1500 members affirmed that the command sent food and medicines to the Knights and that jointly 'we gave good support to the Salvadorian air command'. According to Aderholt, the association mentioned has distributed to El Salvador 4,5 million in food and well-proportioned medicines by the Christian Broadcasting Network and World Medical Relief. In turn, Russ Bellant, in the Detroit Metro Times of October 9, 1985, stated that Aderholt claimed that the Christian Broadcasting Network of Pat Robertson had given the Knights of Malta 2 million dollars for operations in Central America.

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