Family Weekly
January 22, 1961
THE
General Mac Arthur Family Man
Victory and defeat, honor and humiliation this history maker has known them all,
yet he has never failed in his most cherished role as husband and father
By
n the six-room presiden
tial suite of the Waldorf-
Astoria Towers in New York
City, General of the Armies
Douglas MacArthur lives far
from public view, as he has
I by t M for the past nine years.
I jfcjjf fC tne occasion of his ap-
y 7?' A I proaching 81st birthday, Jan.
20, let US nil me curiam auu
look in on him for a few
moments,-the retired, embittered national hero
and the considerate husband-father.
The MacArthur apartment consists of a living
room some 70 feet long, three bedrooms, a dining
room, and a maid's room. The MacArthur family
has put down roots here and made it home. "Here's
where we lighted," the General told his wife Jean
that day in 1951 when, after a 14-year absence
from their native land, they first came home, "and
here's where we'll stay."
The furniture is hotel furniture. The only per
sonal touch is reflected in beautiful Japanese
screens, in the silver vases that are the gift of the
Emperor of Japan, in a few objets d'art sent by
Japanese friends, and in the gold cigarette case
that MacArthur's World War I staff gave him as
a token of affection. But the apartment has no
trophies, no medals, no military decorations.
Living with the General are his wife, Jean Fair-
(af 2--. -Lb A
General MacArthur leaves Now York hospital ator his recent suc
cessful operation for removal of a gland. He is with his wife con
Family Wffkly. January 22, 1961
UNTOLD STORY OF
FLORA RHETA SCHREIBER
cloth MacArthur, 20 years his junior, and their
only child, Arthur, who is 22. Arthur is 5 feet, 10
inches, straight, slim, very dark.
There, too, is Ah Cheu, once Arthur's amah who
has been with the family since the dark days of
Bataan and Corregidor.
The MacArthur trio has always been closely
knit. Once, Mrs. MacArthur told Mrs. Manuel
Quezon, wife of the then-president of the Philip
pines who had pleaded with Mrs. MacArthur to
take her young son and join the Quezons in leav
ing besieged Corregidor:
"We will stay with the General. We three are
one. We drink of the same cup."
Tall, erect, alert, MacArthur impresses his friends
as having changed little in the past 20 years. In
stead of the familiar uniform, he appears in con
servative brown and gray tweeds when friends and
business associates call on him in the suite. Morn
ings and evenings, he enjoys wearing his West
Point blanket with the letter "A" (for Army)
boldly embossed.
He no longer smokes his famous corncob pipe.
Instead, he uses an ordinary pipe or smokes an
occasional cigar. He eats heartily and rarely drinks.
For exercise, he walks up and down his living
room for a half hour at a time. The walking serves
a double purpose. As has always been his habit,
lie thinks things out as he paces.
His life is centered in the apartment. Here as
"""" 1 The General's son Arthur is in the company of J .jStr
: 1 lovely Wendy Vanderbilt at a social function. ki; II -:-A? Ti','? (frflLEjfcl V
chairman of the board of the Sperry Rand Corp.
he holds consultations and committee meetings.
Herbert Hoover is the only person be visits. The
ex-President also lives at the Towers, but Mac
Arthur calls on him only a few times a year. He
maintains his old attitude towards the ex-President
slightly deferential because Mr. Hoover
was once his Commander in Chief.
General MacArthur leaves the apartment to at
tend St. Bartholomew's (Episcopal) Church with
his wife and son, or for special occasions like the
boy's graduation from the Buckley and Browning
schools. Sometimes, too, he just takes a walk with
his old friend and aide, Gen. Courtney Whitney.
He Has Remained Vigorous
For the most part, the General has enjoyed good
health for his age possibly because he wills it so.
Even last year, when an almost fatal illness struck
him, he refused to recognize its existence, or seek
medical help until the night of Jan. 29. Then he
was so gravely ill that there was no longer any
choice. When he was told that he had to be hos
pitalized, he refused to be taken out of the apart
ment in a stretcher or a wheel chair. Walking
between General Whitney and Dr. George W.
Slaughter, he insisted upon going to the car under
his own power.
Later, when he was under sedation and hospital
attendants were wheeling him out of his room, he
At homo, the General plays
host to a Tokyo
lifted his head slightly and smiled to his wife and
General Whitney. "I shall return," he said.
These words gave hope to Jean MacArthur who
had heard them betore. They made up the famous
battle slogan which MacArthur had first directed
to the soldiers, sailors, and nurses on Corregidor
and to the 18 million people of the Philippine
Islands when he was forced to flee from the Jap
anese onslaught in 1942. The words were also the
pledge that helped sustain the Filipinos during the
Japanese occupation; now it helped Jean Mac
Arthur believe that her husband would fight his
way back to health.
During his recovery, Jean, who has always
"drunk of the same cup," moved into the room
across the hall, where she stayed through the
three months of his hospitalization.
Home Life Has Been a Fortress
This has always been the tone of their marriage.
With his wife and son, General MacArthur has
enjoyed a home life that has been its own strong
fortress within any theater of war. These two
his wife and his son know what Manila, Corregi
dor, and Inchon meant to him. They know and
he knows that they know. To each of them, he,
in turn, has given a sentimental devotion.
This devotion to his son is reflected in a recol
lection of General Whitney, a frequent companion,
who has seen the General weep on only three oc
casions. The General wept when Manila fell to
the Japanese and when he told the world about
the Bataan Death March. The third time he wept
was when his son fell while ice skating and broke
his arm.
When the MacArthurs lived in Brisbane, Aus
tralia, early in World War II, the General used to
play a "boom-boom" game with five-year-old Ar
thur every morning. The game would start with
father receiving a smart salute from Arthur. Then
father and son marched about the room to the tune
of "boomity, boomity, boom," which they shouted
in chorus. When Arthur reached a certain chair,
he knelt and hid his eyes until his father shouted
an especially loud "boom!"
At that signal Arthur looked up to see what
his morning surprise was. Perhaps it was as insig-
Accompanying
was given this
dignitary, Dr. Ryotaru Azuma.
nificant as a pencil or some paper clips. But on
special occasions it could be a new toy. Because
this morning ritual was only for father and son,
the mother was never present. Her part in the
enterprise was to hide the boom-boom presents,
lest the too-doting father give his son all at the
same time. One boom-boom gift the boy cherished
was a tiny American flag, the symbol of the home
land he had never seen.
The General was named Father of the Year in
1942. In accepting this honor, he said: "By profes
sion, I am a soldier and take pride in that Jact. But
I am prouder infinitely prouder to be a father. A
soldier destroys in order to build; the father, only
builds, never destroys.
"The one has the potentiality of death; the other
embodies creation and life."
Douglas MacArthur was as dutiful a son as he
is a father. When the MacArthurs were evacuating
Manila, he ran back to the family apartment to
get medals won by his father, Lt. Gen. Arthur
MacArthur, also a famous soldier.
With his mother, Douglas MacArthur enjoyed so
close an attachment that, when he was appointed
military adviser to the new governor of the Phil
ippines, he said that he would accept only if his
mother, then in her middle 80s, could come with
him. Come with him she did.
During the voyage, Douglas MacArthur, then
57, met Jean Faircloth of Murfreesboro, Tenn., an
attractive Southerner 20 years his junior. She be
came his second wife after an extended courtship
(his first marriage to Henrietta Louise Brooks
ended in divorce).
To MacArthur, his wife has always been "my
beloved wife; my best soldier." To Mrs. MacAr
thur, her husband is never "Douglas"; she calls
him "General" or more playfully, "Sir Boss."
The General, Jean, and young Arthur have
shared difficult and dangerous times, and their re
lationship still reflects these ordeals. Once, the
General ordered his wife not to take the child to
the barber for fear that he would catch cold. But,
"best soldier" though she was, Jean defied her
commander this time.
In Tokyo, the MacArthurs resided in the former
American embassy, a gaudy and unlivable estab-
his father on a visit to West Point in 1951, Arthur
dress cap by the Corps of Cadets at the Academy.
Two
meet
lishment. When Arthur asked, "Will this be a
home?" the General assured him: "Your mother
will take care of us."
During the Korean war, MacArthur's family
shared with him the exultation of victory at In
chon and the despair and confusion that followed
Red Chinese intervention. Then, on April 12, 1951,
while the MacArthurs were entertaining two U.S.
Senators at lunch, Mrs. MacArthur was called to
the telephone. On an Armed Services Radio broad
cast, an old friend had heard the news of Mac
Arthur's recall because of his demands to attack
Red bases inside China.
This was the end of active service for an old
soldier whose earliest memory was the sound of
bugles in Fort Wingate, a lonely frontier post in
the territory of New Mexico, where his parents
took him as a babe in arms. But, as the senior mil
itary officer on the active rolls of the Armed Forces
of the United States, a post that ranks all other
offices, he had hoped to be assigned duties by the
President and to be consulted by the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. When no assignment and no request for
consultation came, he felt that he was a resource
that was being wasted.
MacArthur, however, feels that his warning in
Korea that "there is no substitute for victory" has
proved prophetic. He believes that, as the result
of our reluctance to pursue the Korean war to ulti
mate victory, we have allowed Red China to be
come a military colossus which threatens the peace
of the world.
Arthur Won't Be a Soldier
In the intervening years, the General's only son
has become a senior at Columbia College, major
ing in English. Arthur wants to be a writer and
has no intention of following in his family's mili
tary tradition. A soldier and a soldier's son, the
General has always encouraged his own son to
be self-reliant. He is content that this gentle and
intelligent boy has been drawn to the artistic rather
than to the military life. When Arthur showed in
terest in playing the piano, however, his father
watched closely, and when it was obvious the boy
was only an average player, he discouraged pro
fessional ambitions.
(Continued on page 12)
former soldiers, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur,
informally before attending a While House luncheon in 1954.
Family Weekly. January 22. J96I 7