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He concluded: "Although without command, authority or responsibility, I still proudly possess what to me is the greatest of all honors and distinctions. I am an American." At the moment the speech ended, a huge fireworks replica of the U.S.S. Missouri flared into view, rockets soared into the sky, and the band played God Bless America. MacArthur stepped into his car and was driven away.
Milwaukee, the city he calls his "ancestral home," cheered him the next day. So did thousands who knotted up along the 90 miles of highways he traveled at 60 to 70 m.p.h. on the way up from Chicago. MacArthur and his 13-year-old son Arthur both looked tired on arrival (Mrs. MacArthur remained as fresh and chipper as ever), but the general seemed genuinely delighted to see the three-story Victorian house which his parents had rented from 1907 to 1912, to receive an honorary LL.D. degree from Marquette University, and to hear the ringing applause of half a million of his former townsmen.
He returned to Manhattan to discover that many a New York Protestant had been thrown into a tizzy over plans for the city's annual Loyalty Day parade: the general was to ride in an open car with his old friend and admirer, Cardinal Spellman. But all went smoothly. The cardinal himself settled things by walking with a group of other churchmen, among them the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, the Right Rev. Horace W. B. Donegan.
Sound of Dixie. This week, on their wedding anniversary, the MacArthurs flew South to spend a day in Mrs. MacArthur's old home town: quiet, elm-shaded Murfreesboro, Tenn. (pop. 13,000). Murfreesboro had been getting ready for its first glimpse of "Jean Faircloth's husband" for weeks.
Fifty thousand people, the biggest crowd since the Battle of Murfreesboro (in which 37,000 Rebels and 44,000 Yankees were engaged) were on hand to cheer the famous couple. The general (who surrendered to the 83° weather, and doffed his trench coat for the first time in any of his outdoor appearances) did not disappoint the crowd.
"Fourteen years ago, I married this lovely woman," he said. "How she has managed to put up with me during all these long years is quite beyond my comprehension ... I am no stranger to the South. I am a part of it. Born in Arkansas of a Virginia mother, I grew up with the sound of Dixie and a rebel yell ringing in my ears. Dad [General Arthur MacArthur, who fought in the Union Army] was on the other side, but he had the good sense to surrender to mother."
Murfreesboro cheered happily, and let out a few appreciative rebel yells.
But it was still Mrs. MacArthur's day, and before the distinguished visitors left for New York, her old friends gave her the proof—a six-starred general's insigne.