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McClellan stayed with it—to the exclusion of all else. He fell back on the cure he had taken after his divorce from Eula: work, more work, still more work. Finally a worried colleague talked McClellan into going along to a friend's Washington home, where "a very attractive lady" was visiting. McClellan went, reluctantly—and then he saw the lady. "I'll never forget," says McClellan. "She came down the steps of the house wearing a picture blue hat and a blue dress, a beautiful lady in blue." The lady in blue was a widow from North Carolina, Norma Myers Cheatham. She is now Norma Myers McClellan.
John McClellan's mother had died bearing him. His first wife had died hating him. His second wife died loving him. After his third marriage, McClellan reached again for family happiness and stability. They were beyond him. In North Africa, during World War II, Corporal Max McClellan—Eula's son—came down with a back ailment. Doctors neglected him, his Army superiors accused him of goldbricking—until he. like Lucille McClellan, died of spinal meningitis. John and Max had never been close, which made the boy's death all the more painful. Says a close family friend: "Max was raised in a broken home, and John felt bad about that. He felt he had let Max down."
Almost six years later the body of Max McClellan was returned to the U.S. for burial. Two nights before the funeral, John McClellan received word that his favorite son John Jr., who was preparing to follow his father in the law, had been injured in an automobile accident near Fayetteville. But Johnny was reported not badly hurt, so the family attended Max's funeral, then flew to Fayetteville. Recalls Jimmy, the only remaining son: "When we arrived at the airport, there was a little delegation waiting to see us. Dad looked out of the window at their faces and he knew."
Johnny McClellan had died that morning of a brain injury. The family had buried Max on a Friday. On Monday Johnny was buried in Malvern, next to his mother's grave.
"Master of My Soul." That nearly did it. "There's not a man in the world," says an intimate friend, "with more excuse to throw up his hands and turn all his problems over to alcohol than John McClellan." McClellan did just that, and it nearly broke up his marriage to Norma. Finally he turned in despair to a trusted adviser. "What will I do?" he asked. The stark, unqualified reply: "Lay off that bottle." John McClellan thought for a moment, then his face turned hard. Said he: "I'm going to show you that I am the master of my own soul." He went into the bathroom, and when he emerged, there were two shattered bottles of bourbon on the floor. Drinking has not since been a problem with John McClellan.