(he (will (be (dearly (missed)))))
(will-be 'john-mccarthy (modifier 'missed 'dearly))
Incidentally, "I feel like we can do better" would probably be a pretty good summary of what John McCarthy was about. (assert (equal 'dearly (missed-amount 'john-mccarthy)))(He (will be) (dearly missed))
That's not very Lispy, and I'm sure some linguists would have a thing or two to say about my tree, but it at least has a structure related to the meaning.
With M-expressions, this would look like: he[will[be[dearly[missed]]]]
FTFY