Person of the Week: Robert Macauley

Robert Macauley was “a giant of a man,” according to his colleague at the AmeriCares board, Dean Maglaris. The chairman of the board at one of the world’s largest private health care charities, died on Dec. 26. He was 87.

In 1982, Macauley founded AmeriCares, which has distributed more than USD10 billion in aid in 147 countries, Connecticut Post notes. The charity helps deliver aid to humanitarian hotspots.

In the 1970s, he helped airlift orphans from Vietnam to the U.S. There was even an instance when Macauley leased a Boeing 747 from Pan American Airways using his own money to help transport Vietnamese orphans.

“You see a situation and you have to move, boom, boom, boom,” Macauley told The New York Times in 1982.