A plan for Gen. Marshall

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 3, 1998 | by Patrick Butters

Dodona Manor, the only home George C. Marshall owned, rests on a sloping hill in Leesburg, Va. After restoration, it will provide some insight into the honorable yet enigmatic American hero.

The stoic George C. Marshall would blanch at being anyone's man of the century: The Army chief of staff who presided over the victorious World War II Allied war machine never sought attention.

But several historians, curators and Marshall buffs have devised ways to memorialize the man, the soldier and the diplomat. "His impact is extraordinary as a historical figure," says Tom Camden, director of the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, Va. "As a role model, a character role model, he's even more important."

After World War II, Marshall donned civilian clothes and pressed for the Berlin airlift, NATO and the European Recovery Plan, better known as the Marshall Plan. The $13.7 billion grant program not only nursed 16 of the Western European nations back to health, but helped check communism. "Just as Hitler had rent the fabric of Europe," wrote journalist Dirk Olin, "it was Marshall who stitched the tattered continent back together."

Known for his unassailable integrity, he turned down $1 million for his memoirs, knowing an honest appraisal of his career would offend somebody. He refused to run for higher office. Yet, after serving 43 years in the Army, Marshall repeatedly answered the president's call: as envoy to China (1945-46), secretary of state (1947-49), president of the American Red Cross (1949-50) and secretary of defense (1950-51).

"Here's this man ... of compassion, integrity, honesty and selfless public service for public service's sake," says Camden. "That's novel. We try to get this across."

The Pentagon's third-floor Marshall Alcove is named in his honor, but no monument proper has been erected to the five-star general. "I could not tell you how many times I have heard, `Who was George Marshall? What's the Marshall Plan?'" says Kara Terittipoe, assistant to the executive director at the George C. Marshall International Center at Dodona Manor in Leesburg, Va. -- one of the few places near the nation's capital where one can commune with Marshall's spirit.

Dodona Manor was home to Marshall and his second wife, Katherine, from 1941 to 1959. During his spare time, the general grew vegetables and received noted guests such as President Truman and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Later, the general's stepdaughter lived there and eventually donated Dodona Manor to the nonprofit George C. Marshall Home Preservation Fund Inc.

Today, a chain-link fence surrounds the grounds, where a backhoe is plowing the front lawn. "It grew into a jungle" says the center's Eric P. Michael, adding that the trees have been identified carefully in hopes of restoring the grounds to their 1950s state. Volunteers are working to rebuild the mansion and increase its public visibility.

Inside the mansion, visitors still can sense Marshall's presence. The general's office was tiny, part of a converted ladies' parlor. Much of the simple, lumpy furniture remains. "One of his orderlies told me he drove a Buick," Michael says. "The general never drove a Cadillac, he said, because he didn't want people to think he was driving such a fancy car at their expense."

Marshall died following a stroke on Oct. 16, 1959, at Walter Reed Army Hospital. He left strict orders for his burial at Arlington National Cemetery: no state funeral and no eulogy. Tours of Dodona Manor are available six days a week. For more information, call (703) 777-6304.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Soldier of Peace

The National Portrait Gallery recently commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan with an exhibit simply titled "George C. Marshall: A Soldier of Peace." The small but eloquent display summed up the life of the five-star general with paintings, photographs, documents and other Marshall memorabilia -- including Marshall's 1953 Nobel Peace Prize, the first such prize presented to a military officer.

"He was a busy man," says curator James Barber, pointing to an oil painting of Marshall, circa 1949, by Thomas Edgar Stephens. "He gave Stephens a sitting and, in the middle of the sitting, he just up and left. Stephens didn't know what happened to him -- he never came back."

Marshall's bedrock reputation played a major part in getting the Marshall Plan (a term he hated) through the 80th Congress. name than are Americans.

The "Soldier of Peace" exhibit has traveled to the George C. Marshall Foundation at Virginia Military institute in Lexington, where it will reopen Aug. 28. Marshall cut his teeth at VMI. He was the only "Yankee rat" in the class of 1901 to last all four years, graduating as first captain, the highest-ranking cadet officer.

He broke the rules, too. Marshall often skipped off campus to visit his future first wife, Lily Coles. They married in 1902; she died in 1930. Her Victorian house now is the VMI admissions office.

The Marshall Foundation headquarters opened in 1964. It houses a museum, a library and an education center. For more information, call (540) 463-7103.