Mac was a  1st Lieutenant in the U. S. Army infantry during World War II.  He served with the Americal Division during the early stages of the Philippine Campaign.  Mac served in the invasion of Leyte and Cebu.  During the taking of a hill on Leyte, Mac single handedly knocked out a machine gun emplacement killing three Japenses manning the position.  He saved his platoon before they could enter the kill zone and was awarded the Bronze Star.  The hill was also named "McGee Hill" in his honor.  He was blown out of a fox hole by a Japanese mortar which broke his neck and temporarily paralyzed him.  For the rest of his life he would be plagued by the injury eventually leaving him 100% disabled.

    Before his death on June 10, 1982, Mac married "his nurse" Veronica "Bonnie" Gillis.  Bonnie was really his nurse because she was also a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corp stationed at that time in Santa Fe, NM.  Together they had nine children.  He graduated from Oklahoma State University, then known as A&M, with a double degree.  Horticulture and Animal Husbandry.  He went on to get a teaching degree and taught elementary 5th and 6th graders for over 10 years.  Mac was one of the first people to be hired by the Job Corps to teach the youths of the program.  By the time he had  retired in 1978, Mac had received a Masters in Guidance and Counseling from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

    Other accomplishments included:

Honorary Kentucky Colonel recipient.

Counselor at Sequoyah High School.

Heading of education programs at Great Onyx Job Corps, Mammoth Cave, Kentucky.

Appointed Head of Guidance and Counseling, Tahlequah Public Schools, Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Author of THE CRYING OWL, a children's book that retells the stories of his Cherokee Indian culture that were related to him by his mother, Nannie Mae "Shug"(Waters) McGee.