Mrs. Jean Mac Arthur , former US president Richard Nixon and Mrs. Imelda Marcos

Former Philippine first lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos and Mrs.

 

JEAN MAC ARTHUR (wife of General Douglas Mac Arthur) shows their appreciation and admiration at a piano rendition by former US President Richard Nixon at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.

(New York Times) Mac Arthur's widow Stood Fast in WW II

Jean Mac Arthur, the widow of Gen. Douglas Mac Arthur, who remained at her husband's side through the darkest days of World War II and was often introduced by him as " my finest soldier, "

In his later years, Mac Arthur confided that she was his " constant friend, sweetheart and devoted support."

Mrs. Mac Arthur whom William Manchester, the Mac Arthur biographer , described as " a poem in womanhood, " married Gen. Douglas Mac Arthur in New York in 1937 when she was 36 and he was nearly 20 years older. They had met two years previously when he was a fellow passenger on the S.S. President Hoover, enroute to the Philippines to assume his duties as military adviser to the government there. Later he became the supreme allied commander

in the Southwest Pacific, waged the campaign against Japan and accepted the Japanese surrender in 1945.

After the Japanese invaded the Philippines, it was decided to move the government to Corregidor. Mrs. Mac Arthur packed a few necessities and , as she was leaving the apartment, she passed a cabinet containing the decorations awarded to her husband. She made room for them in her suitcase by discarding some of her own clothes. Later when the military situation in Corregidor rapidly deteriorated, the general informed her President Manuel Quezon of the Philippines had offered her and their son, Arthur, passage to Australia. " We have drunk from the same cup; we three shall stay together, " she replied.

SOUTH BAY DAILY BREEZE, Torrance, CA January 24,2000

Thanks to Jim Faircloth

 

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