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David Blair McClosky (1902-88), was an opera singer turned speech professor who served as John F. Kennedy's voice coach during the 1960 presidential campaign. Other beneficiaries of the voice coach included President Lyndon B. Johnson, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, sportscaster Curt Gowdy, actors Faye Dunaway, Al Pacino, Jill Clayburgh, and Ruth Gordon and folksinger Joan Baez. Mr. McClosky's contribution to the 1960 campaign was first disclosed in "Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye," the book by Dave Powers and Kenneth O'Donnell, White House aides to President Kennedy. "It was a great secret", Powers said in a 1984 interview. He recalled how "Mr. McClosky's advice to all comers...is to relax, maintain good posture, breathe deeply and reduce any tightness in the neck."

Born in Oswego, N.Y., Mr. McClosky graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1925 and later studied in Berlin and Milan. He made more than 20 appearances as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra during the 1930s and 1940s. He also sang in light operatic productions in Europe and Africa and appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Minneapolis and Indianapolis Symphonies and at the Bach Festival of Berea, Ohio.

In 1923 he became the first radio announcer in Boston, on WNAC. He stayed until 1924. During World War II he served as an Army officer performing public relations duties in the United States and Africa. From 1946 to 1955 he headed the Plymouth Rock Center of Music and Drama, in Plymouth.

He taught music or voice at Boston University, New England Conservatory, Phillips Academy, Andover, Bradford College, Massachusetts College of Art, Simmons College and Vassar College and was a consultant at various times to numerous universities, among them Tufts, Cornell, Syracuse and Wellesley College.

Mr. McClosky wrote two books, Your Voice at Its Best (1959), and, with his wife, Barbara (Henneberger), Voice in Song and Speech (1984). Gov. Edward J. King, whose voice Mr. McClosky once likened to a truck driver's, named McClosky in 1980 to a term on the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities.