Lawyer Led Fundraising For Renowned Hospital

Richard C. Shadyac Sr., 80, a well-known McLean lawyer who for 13 years was chief executive of the fundraising arm of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, died of respiratory failure Sept. 16 at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington.

Mr. Shadyac had been a St. Jude board member for three decades when he took the helm of the fundraising committee in 1992, shortly after the death of the hospital's founder, entertainer Danny Thomas. Under Mr. Shadyac's leadership, public donations rose from $100 million in 1992 to more than $400 million in 2005. When he retired, the committee, known as ALSAC (for American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities), was the third-largest health-care charity in the United States.

Mr. Shadyac, who displayed on his office wall photos of children who were treated at St. Jude, raised more than $2.5 million from the Washington-based Gourmet Gala alone. He also was involved with the St. Jude Celebrity Golf Open in the Washington area and the 2004 Hope Gala for St. Jude, which featured King Abdullah of Jordan as the keynote speaker.

"Dick Shadyac was a tireless champion of our mission and every child and their parents who walked through the doors of St. Jude," Marlo Thomas, national outreach director of St. Jude and daughter of Danny Thomas, said in a statement. "We are not just losing a great man, we are losing a patriarch of our St. Jude family who played a critical role in the history of St. Jude and ALSAC."

Mr. Shadyac was also known in Washington for representing the government of Libya in the 1970s and 1980s, a position that became controversial during the Carter administration.

Mr. Shadyac, a Lebanese American, had long been registered as a foreign agent for Libya. He set up an Arab American committee to help reelect President Jimmy Carter in 1980, at the request of the campaign, he said. But after Carter's brother, Billy, made headlines by taking a $220,000 loan from Libya, campaign officials became nervous about anyone with ties to the north African country, and they disavowed Mr. Shadyac's committee.

Mr. Shadyac took it personally.

"I will not be made a fall guy for anybody," he told the Washington Post's Myra MacPherson at the time. "The double standard of our diplomacy shocks me. How we single Libya out as the worst when we're in bed with Vietnam, who just a few years ago were killing Americans. We're in bed with Red China and Russia. The Pakistanis burn the hell out of our embassy and all of a sudden, because of the Afghanistan situation, we can't go over there fast enough and give them aid. The difficulties between [Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi] and [Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat zaps our relationship with Libya. We're in bed with Sadat."

Shortly afterward, he helped found the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

He was born the son of a Lebanese immigrant and an Irish-American mother in Barre, Vt. He graduated from St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vt. He received a law degree from Boston University in 1952 and served in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps during the Korean War.

After his discharge, he worked in the antitrust division of the Justice Department. He was among the founders of two law firms, McGinnis, Berg, Shadyac and Nolan, in 1958, and later Metzger, Shadyac and Schwartz.

Mr. Shadyac joined the board of St. Jude's Children Hospital in 1963 and was its chairman in 1986-88. After he retired as chief executive of ALSAC in 2005, he continued to serve on its board.

He was past president of the Arlington County Bar and a member of the National Association of Arab-Americans. He was also a member of Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Church in Washington.

His wife, Juliette B. Shadyac, died in 2001.

Survivors include his wife of seven years, Lynn Caruthers Shadyac of McLean; two sons from his first marriage Richard C. Shadyac Jr. of Fairfax County and Memphis; Thomas P. Shadyac of Los Angeles; a brother, Phillip Joseph Shadyac of Vienna; and two grandchildren.