Stephen Masty, RIP

I don’t recall if I ever met Stephen Masty but I had heard his name for many years. My brother and brother-in-law were at school with him at Hillsdale College, but until I read his obituary in the Hillsdale alumni magazine recently I hadn’t conceived of what a big life he led. The Telegraph published a long obit, from which I’ve made some selections:

“Stephen attended Seaholm High School in Birmingham, Michigan, before reading English Literature at Hillsdale College, also in his home state; there he became a friend and protégé of Russell Kirk, the American conservative guru. Stephen went on to St Andrews in Scotland (which Kirk had attended) to do a PhD on the South African poet Roy Campbell. . . . He then went to live in Washington and wrote a weekly political column for the Washington Times. He also worked for the Republican National Committee, his duties including speech-writing for Ronald Reagan. Masty was responsible for many of Reagan’s jokes as well as for some of the president’s stronger Cold War messages and a well-regarded Lincoln Day address. Amid all the thrusting ambition in Washington Masty struck a contrast with most of his contemporaries. ‘His dress and mannerisms made it look as though he had strayed by mistake out of the 1930s,’ noted a friend. He first started spending time in Afghanistan, in rebel-held territory, in the mid-1980s. After the Soviet withdrawal, he spent much of his time, from 1989, in that country helping on development projects. He worked with a US charity called the Mercy Fund and taught people how to defuse the unexploded devices with which the Soviets had littered the country. A talented cartoonist, he used his skills in leaflets teaching Afghan children how to avoid these devices. He went on to manage the American Club in Peshawar, nightly entertaining guests with witty satirical songs about the region’s idiosyncrasies. He invented a new genre which he called ‘Country and Eastern’ (‘like Willie Nelson in a turban,’ a friend said). He was also a formidable punster. . . . During the 1990s Masty developed a career as a communications adviser, championing economic reform to governments across the developing world. He persuaded them to implement privatisation programmes in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa in India as well as in Nepal, Tanzania, Nigeria and Guyana. He produced a series of films that were shown to Indian politicians – including the federal cabinet – illustrating starkly the failure of state enterprises; the films played a pivotal role in persuading them to start serious privatisation efforts. In Tanzania he used music to get the message across, producing probably the world’s first privatisation rock video, featuring Captain John Komba, a local politician, and explaining why privatising the state brewery would be good for everyone. It became an unlikely hit. . . . In later years Masty settled in Kathmandu. He assisted with electrification projects, a cause he felt strongly about, and started a project to introduce the first children’s comics in the Nepalese language. But plans were disrupted by the earthquake in Nepal last year, which forced him to move out of his apartment. He was an intensely private man. He did not like to own property, and generally lived in rented rooms of fabled squalor. He avoided all romantic commitments. Always rotund, resembling Sidney Greenstreet in Casablanca, Masty said that his tragedy was that he had the mind of Holmes yet the body of Watson.”

Stephen Masty died on Boxing Day, 2015, age 61.