William McLellan Thornberry came home the other day to be honored by Texas Tech University as its 2026 Alumnus of the Year.

It was an honor well-received and richly earned.

Allow me now to dispense with the use of his given name. I want to refer to him as Mac. Yes, Mac Thornberry was my congressman for virtually the entire time my bride and I lived in the Texas Panhandle.

I agreed rarely with his politics. Or his views on public policy. Or with his occasional disdain for members of the “other” party on Capitol Hill. However, Mac Thornberry, a dedicated Republican through and through, did his work with class, with decorum, with dignity and with the sense that he knew from where he came.

Mac was a gentleman. He grew up in Donley County just east of Amarillo. He worked his parents’ ranch. He learned the value of hard work, of getting dirt under his fingernails. He served in Congress with none of the bellicose bluster we hear too often from the guy who succeeded him.

Mac Thornberry and I kinda grew up together. He’s a lot younger than I am, but we started our new Panhandle jobs in the same week in January 1995. He was elected to the U.S. House in the Contract With America election in 1994. I started my jog as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. He read me pretty well. He knew my personal politics veered from his conservative views, even though the paper’s editorial policy remained faithful to the right-wing views for which it had established over the course of many decades.

However, I always liked Mac Thornberry as a person. He was charming in a West Texas, humble sort of way. I don’t recall ever telling him directly that I developed a deep respsect for the quality of man he showed himself to be. Maybe if he reads this blog post, he’ll see it for himself.

Given the open hatred and hostility we hear from those in power in D.C., there is not a hint of doubt that for my money, we could use more like Mac Thornerry in D.C. than we have serving there these days.