Duncan McRae, co- founder of Yesterday's, remembers the journey that brought him to Columbia and the opening of the popular restaurant. By John Temple Ligon

Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Born at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia, Duncan McRae and his two brothers grew up in Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico. Their father, a Rutgers graduate, was a Marine officer who had to move the family nine times between McRae's kindergarten and the fifth grade. His mother was an educator, both a teacher and an administrator who oversaw the governor's program in English as a second language (ESL). McRae stayed in Lancaster, Penn., long enough to graduate from high school and to call it home.

Like his father, McRae went to Rutgers. Immediately upon graduation in May 1968, as the students were rioting in Paris and American cities were still smoldering following the King assassination, McRae was called up for the draft. While he was going through the physical exams, he asked about joining the Marine Corps and qualifying for officer candidate school. He passed the entry exams and toughed it out to gain the rank of second lieutenant.

As a second lieutenant he entered flight school, where he stayed to qualify as a pilot by the time he shipped out for South Vietnam in October 1969, the month of the Moratorium, as memorialized in a painting by Jasper Johns.

McRae flew his helicopters out of Da Nang, a large Marine base in coastal northern South Vietnam. His ship was the CH-46 Huey, a chopper capable of carrying 18 troops as cargo besides the crew of five (pilot, co-pilot, two door gunners, and a crew chief).

McRae's Huey rarely went out without two gunships (Cobras) for protection, particularly when he was flying a medivac (short for medical evacuation), taking out the wounded in the middle of a firefight.

Four years of the Marine Corps in wartime was just about enough for McRae, and he moved back into civilian society in 1972. He took the first two winters in Stowe, Vt., where he tended bar and tested the slopes. As a bartender for two years, he was grooming himself for the hospitality industry.

McRae took that hospitality industry grooming to Myrtle Beach, where he supervised in construction and finishes on the Hilton Hotel north of the Dunes Golf Club.

After approving the punchlist at the Myrtle Beach Hilton, McRae accepted the assignment as purchasing agent and food/beverage man at the Dallas Hilton on the Central Expressway between downtown and Love Field.

Two years in Dallas led McRae to West Texas in the Odessa/Midland area where George H. W. Bush started in the oil business and where George W. Bush tried his hand at it. In West Texas McRae ran a dinner club for the oil rich in 1974 and 1975, just after the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 when the price of oil shot up.

After the West Texas club scene, McRae moved back to Lancaster, Penn., to work in a restaurant advertising agency with accounts up and down the Eastern Seaboard, to include fast food operations like McDonald's and Burger King.

In 1977, McRae hit upon the idea of Yesterday's in Five Points. He and his brother Scott put the business together and opened their doors in January 1978. They bought their building two years later. Having been in business at the corner of Harden and Devine for almost 30 years, McRae is looking forward to the day Five Points businesses lose the construction site and regain their village atmosphere. Profitability depends on it.

McRae tried retirement for two years, sailed the East Coast and the Virgin Islands, and recently sold his 48' Jeanneau to come back to Yesterday's. Besides running the restaurant with his brother, he's running a farm with his family in Lexington County, replete with two horses and a tractor and a pond.