A Public Servant to the Last
Before Stepping Down, He Calls a New Generation to Serve

By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 6, 2006

In 1961, Ed McGaffigan Jr. was a seventh-grader from Boston watching the inauguration on television when a president told him to ask what he could do for his country.

The son of an Irish immigrant laborer, McGaffigan had a ready answer, as did many of his generation: He could work for his country.

That inspired a three-decade career that included stints at the State Department, the White House, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Capitol Hill and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where last month McGaffigan became the agency's longest-serving commissioner.

McGaffigan, who turns 58 on Friday, would normally have many more years of service ahead. Instead, he is fighting an illness that threatens to vanquish him, and he is taking on one last assignment: closing his career in a way that inspires others to consider public service.

"I do what I do out of a deep sense of appreciation for the opportunities that this country gives people like my father and me," he said. "I'm proud to have been there, and proud to serve with a bunch of people as dedicated as I am.

"I hope there's another generation."

One recent rainy morning, McGaffigan, a physicist with thick gray hair and a runner's build, took his place at the front of the NRC's conference room for a celebration of his career. A line of masking tape on the carpet showed him where to stand, and he placed the toes of his shoes precisely on it.

There were jokes, gifts and tributes. "He can quote the most obscure regulations and give exact details on how they were written," said fellow commissioner Pete Lyons. He presented McGaffigan, a serial marathoner, with a specially produced audiobook to listen to while he runs: a recitation of 10 CFR 3240, "tests required for tritium-powered auto lock illuminators," a reg so obscure it stumped even McGaffigan.

Then it was McGaffigan's turn. "As long as I'm here," he said, "I'm going to be dedicated to making you all improve."

He wept a little. But he did not take his shoes off the tape.

McGaffigan was the first in his family to attend college, earning a physics degree, with honors, from Harvard, and master's degrees from the California Institute of Technology and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Since his education was underwritten by taxpayers, he decided, he said, to give them the benefit of the technical expertise they paid for.

While at Cal Tech, he took the foreign service exam, and in 1976 he joined the State Department. During that time, he served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, overseeing international scientific programs, and worked for two years in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, reporting on science, technology and atomic energy.

"I'm sort of an omnivore when it comes to scientific knowledge," he said. "That gave me an advantage."

In 1982, he married Peggy Weeks, whom he met through a friend. Through his former boss at State, Kennedy School professor Joseph Nye, he met Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), and for the next 14 years he advised the senator in his work on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The McGaffigans had a son, Edward, in 1984, and a daughter, Margaret, two years later. Soon after, Peggy McGaffigan developed Huntington's disease, a degenerative disease of the nervous system. Bingaman reduced McGaffigan's workload, giving him time to care for his wife and children.

"He was always very organized, always making lists," said Margaret, who goes by Meggy. Grocery lists, family appointments, the annotated Christmas shopping list his children found -- for a decade, his reams of routine have kept his household on task.

Meggy McGaffigan, a physics student, has begun an internship at the NRC, where, at least for a time, she'll work alongside her father.

"He's always told me and my brother that we can do what we want" as a career, she said. But it has been her father's dedication to public service "that kind of makes you wonder if that's something that we want to do."

Her father hopes other young idealists follow his path.

"With Kennedy, serving government was a noble cause," he said. "Now Republicans and Democrats alike bash government when it serves their purpose.

"We are going to need a massive influx of young people. The answer is not contracts." Outsourcing the work of government technicians, he said, means "there are agencies where they can't do the calculations themselves any more. "

When McGaffigan was appointed to the NRC in 1996, his government experience helped the commission unravel a tangle of poor policies "one by one."

Today, he says, the NRC is "much more efficient, much more timely, more fair I believe and more transparent." At the height of this effort, in 1999, McGaffigan was diagnosed with melanoma and underwent extensive surgery. The following year, Peggy McGaffigan died. The day after her funeral, Ed McGaffigan was testifying on the Hill. "What we do is we go on," he said. "It's part of the duty thing."

Throughout his illness, McGaffigan has rarely spent more than a few days off the job.

"The odds are very, very stacked against me," he said. "But I'm going to remain commissioner as long as I'm of use."

Jeff Sharkey, McGaffigan's chief of staff, calls his boss "one of my heroes."

"He invests his entire character in this mission," he said, pausing to compose himself. "You want to do your very best for him."

A few weeks ago, McGaffigan asked his staff to help him write his obituary.

Filled with detailed instructions and proud anecdotes, "it shows what's important to him," Sharkey said. "He continues to be someone who shows others the way, . . . how to deal with things honorably, with grace and with dignity."

Today, Ed McGaffigan and his daughter will drive together to work. He's showing her the ropes, because too soon, Meggy McGaffigan will be working there alone.

"It's one of those things that goes unsaid," she said. Anyway, she knows what her father would tell her.

"Just go on to work like any other day," she said. "Just go on."