GeneralDouglas MacArthur On The Death Of His Mother
Douglas MacArthur was very close to his mother, Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur (nicknamed "Pinky"). Prior to his acceptance at West Point in 1898,Douglas MacArthur had been rejected twice due to curvature of the spine. Once he was finally accepted, his mom was not about to let him flunk out. She packed her bags, left her family in San Antonio, Texas (where her husband, also a military man, was stationed), moved across the country, and checked into a hotel suite overlooking the West Point Academy grounds forty miles north of distant New York City. Pinky MacArthur was determined that her son would be a success. (Her middle son had died six years earlier.) MacArthur did not disappoint his mother. In 1903, he graduated first in his class of 93. Brig. General Douglas MacArthur then went on to become superintendent of West Point in 1922. In 1936 while MacArthur was serving as Military Advisor to the Government of the Phillipines in Manila. When his mother died shortly after their arrival in the Philippines, Douglas was crushed. His aide Dwight Eisenhower wrote that her passing "affected the General's spirit for many months." He wrote simply in "Reminiscences" that "our devoted comradeship of so many years came to an end." For a man not often guilty of understatement, this came pretty close. The General was shattered by the event and shared his grief in these two letters to personal friends.
