By Yolande Robbins

Somewhere recently I saw a report that General Douglas MacArthur’s son was 80 years old now. The mathematics works out since I was 10 and going on 11 in 1951 when I first caught sight of him in newspaper clippings and thought he was the cutest thing going. Not that he’d ever notice me, of course, given our disparate ages, me a mere child of 10, and he, a manly 13.

There were other factors as well. He was reportedly a New York Giants fan, photographed in their dugout with Leo Durocher, while I was a Dodger fan and hated the Giants. It would never work. But oh my, how the time goes by.

I came of age in a time when his father was legendary; when he’d been fired by President Truman; when all the talk was that he had been right, and the President was wrong. I came of age when the radios blared from morning ‘til night an old and often changed ballad, recorded by Vic Damone, proclaiming that “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”

I kept up with his son, Arthur, though, noting he was a musical prodigy and majored in English at Columbia and that he hadn’t gone to West Point or married anyone. Reports said when his mother died, he changed his name soon after.

And the years added up in such grace and he always stayed my hero.

Like so many others of this time, I had heard that his father had said, “I hope God lets me live to see him on the fields of West Point,” and when asked if he’d follow in the general’s footsteps, his mother had replied, “How can he not, with such a father?”

But he didn’t. And that’s how he became my hero. Not because I was anti-military or even anti-war; but because this one child of a storied soldier who’d been a child in the midst of war, stayed true to who he was. He loved the arts. He loved music.

So I not only grew up with him. I’ve grown old with him too. He had been born in the Philippines and never set foot on American soil until his father was fired. His first public statement on American soil was “America’s much more than I thought.” And his singular life’s borne this out. He is what he wanted to be.

That’s what so many of us wanted.

So I’ve gone back to the pictures, seeing him at 4 and 8 and 13; seeing him as the darling of the debutante set, all wanting dances with him; seeing him in his cap and gown at Columbia; seeing him as his mother’s vital support after his father had died. Then a life, his life, for the next 55 years, in his private accomplishments and joy.

There doesn’t always have to be a legacy, does there?

Which is why, at my 78 and his 80, he is still my hero.

 

Yolande Robbins is a community correspondent for The Vicksburg Post. You may email her at  yolanderobbins@fastmail.com