CURTIS LeMAY
(Continued from page 5)
straight. "I'm the only one allowed to
touch this garden. Usually I'm up weeding
at 6:30." An immense patio of weathered
brick covers half the back yard. "The lawn
was worn out, so we went down to the
dump and Ashed out 4,000 old bricks and
carted them up here in the family car."
Inside the LeMay home, you sense rather
than see that they are a closely knit team.
Paintings he has collected and others she
has painted decorate the walls. You sense
it in her golden bracelet with its bangles
of airplane models and as you overhear
her respond to endless phone calls about
the Air Force charity group she directs.
The LeMays' immense living room has
become the core of their home life. One
wall is mostly a window looking over
shrubbed slopes to a hazy District of Col
umbia. A taupe rug ties together chairs
and a sofa drawn around a coffee table
before a deep fireplace. Two consoles stand
as high as a man's chest, embracing a me
ticulously engineered stereophonic system.
Curt LeMay built it, cabineted it, and
laid on the glossy patina.
Other LeMay artifacts include two
"tweeter" cabinets hung overhead behind
the valance, still unpainted, and the modi
fied breakfront in an adjacent study that
Helen designed in a frenzy of determina
tion to contain the sprawling empire of
wires and record players, wires and hi-fi
tuners, wires and tape recorders.
Hobbyists at Work
His workshop is in the basement When
time permits, he retires there to fashion
some gadget. At the same hour, Helen is
probably up under the eaves in a studio
where she follows her great enthusiasm,
painting. Many of her oils decorate the
homes of friends, including that of Ma
dame Chiang Kai-shek on Formosa.
This is their first home without a room
for Janie, their only child. Two years ago,
their daughter married a service physi
cian, and they now live at the Air Force
Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. But
on a small table by the big chair in which
the General sits you will find a well
thumbed album of family photographs.
"We are a close family," Mrs. LeMay
reminds you.
Day begins in this home much as it
does for any suburban husband. His bed
is king-size, which is his idea. The bath
room is carpeted wall-to-wall, which is her
idea. He takes 11 minutes to exercise,
showers, and goes downstairs to his one
egg breakfast "If I'm down first I hand
him the paper without a word," Mrs. Le
May says. "He's the kind of person who
can't talk before 10 o'clock."
Breakfast over, the pattern changes
when a military limousine picks him up and
delivers him to the Pentagon. In the base
ment garage there, he uses a special key
to a private elevator. Pressing the down
button would take him to the bombproof
command post which is always in readi
ness. He presses the up button.
In his office, he swings from briefings
to conferences to interviews. Hour after
hour, this caged man of action is required
to make policy, set things right, answer
inquiring Congressmen and newsmen.
Some time ago, a caller asked, "What
about this balance of terror?"
He said, "I don't know of any balance of
terror. I'm not terrified. My friends aren't
terrified."
After the B-70 bomber was cancelled, a
reporter asked, "Aren't you discouraged?"
He replied, "The B-17 was scrubbed
three times before World War II. General
Marshall got it fired up again. The B-52
was dead four times before we finally got
it. I'm not discouraged."
After the Soviet rendezvous in space,
an editor said, "They're doing better than
we are, General. What have they got that
we ought to worry about?"
LeMay answered, "I don't worry."
Tho Gathering in tho Tank'
On Monday afternoon at 2:30, he at
tends a meeting of the Joint Chiefs in a
second-floor chamber called "the Tank."
Secretary McNamara sits on his right.
Gen. Maxwell Taylor, top man among the
chiefs, sits on his left. LeMay unbuttons
his blouse and waits.
Theodore White writes, "If LeMay is
Mr. Massive Retaliation, Taylor is Mr.
Flexible Response. He and LeMay are
rivals, as they have always been. Only re
spect for each other's achievements keeps
them this side of outright clash."
These officers are the cream of our mili
tary leadership. A friend says, "I think
Curt is still startled to be sitting there
with the top dogs." Insiders are surprised,
too. At appointment time last spring,
President Kennedy backed General Taylor
with a two-year appointment, replaced a
recalcitrant admiral, and named LeMay
for only one more year. Nobody is certain
what it means.
Being human, Curtis LeMay must won
der, too. But the odds are 1,000 to 1 that
he will continue to assert that a man is
more important than a machine, that the
United States will need manned bombers
for a long time to come, and that the Air
Force must soon carry defensive explora
tions into outer space or we will become
a second-class power. '
He runs his shop on a single, unforgiv
ing principle. "I'll back you in your first
mistake," he tells subordinates. "If you
make it again, you're through."
Pentagon politicians ask if his first
mistake was to fight Secretary McNamara
and his famous computers over the B-70
manned-bomber Bystem. Nobody knows.
But this much is certain : the first line of
America's defense is still securely in the
hands of its most experienced, battle-tested,
space-oriented general.
"I like computers. I use 'em," says Curt
LeMay. "But we still don't have one that's
dedicated to this country or that's willing
to die for liberty."
To a good many Congressmen and other
citizens who like the cut of his homely jib,
"Old Iron Pants" LeMay is the kind of
chief America still needs.
family Weekly, September 29, IH3
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