A Poor Specimen of a Man
by Tom Bowers
A version of this article originally appeared in the 2022 Summer issue of MARSHALL magazine.
Marshall, in good health, rides horseback, 1941.
George Marshall enjoyed good health for most of his nearly seventy-nine years, due mostly to healthy practices and minimizing stress. He ate wholesome foods, exercised regularly, gardened, rode horses, and fished to ease the pressures of his responsibilities. He also compartmentalized his work and personal life to reduce pressure. Marshall did have health problems, however, starting in 1948 when he was sixty-seven, culminating in his death in 1959.
Marshall had his right kidney removed in December 1948 while he was secretary of state. He tried to keep others from learning about his surgery: “No one knows this yet except [Robert] Lovett and one or two others, but, of course, once I am operated on, a statement will have to be made in the press and I will be out of action for some little time.” Katherine might interfere, he admitted: “The present battle is to keep Katherine out of the operating room and down at Leesburg.”
Six days after his operation, Marshall wrote his sister Marie that he was making “very satisfactory progress,” but it was a “rather painful process at times.” In addition to his problems, he worried about Katherine, who was “busy looking after Madame Chiang [Kai-shek] and two secretaries down at Dodona. She gets up here every other day, but the combination of Madame Chiang at one end of the line and me sick at the other is pretty hard on her. However, she always does get the short end of the deals.”
At sixty-eight years old, Marshall told a VMI classmate in January 1949 that his doctors were satisfied with his recovery from the surgery but that he was not. “This getting used to one kidney is a slow business,” Marshall complained, “and requires a great deal of patience, of which I have discovered I have only a small amount!” He told some students in a letter that he planned to stay in office for as long as he could. He knew, however, that Katherine would have something to say about the matter. His aide, Marshall Carter, added a postscript to Marshall’s letter: “The General told me orally to tell you when you get older you will understand that the lady of the house also has an opinion in such matters.”
Katherine did have an opinion about the matter. An Associated Press photo showed a frail Marshall standing next to her in Pinehurst, and she told friends that she wanted him to be seen with a cane so that people would know that he would not be available for public appearances for a long time.
“The risk in this business is that, when you feel considerably better, you immediately do some things, and then you lose a lot of ground.”
Marshall aboard the Andrea Doria, November, 1953.
Marshall was bedridden with a persistent cough on October 30, 1953, when he learned that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. President Dwight Eisenhower arranged to have Marshall flown to Walter Reed Hospital on November 2. He thanked Eisenhower and said he was feeling better, although his coughing continued, and he had lost fifteen pounds. Four days later, Marshall apologized for not writing to his wife: “Once I crawled into bed I have remained there without a break and not felt like writing,” he explained.
The trip to Norway for the Nobel presentation taxed an already weakened Marshall. The ceremony was scheduled for December 10 in Oslo, and Marshall was expected to make a speech the following day. The director of the Nobel Institute asked Marshall to send the title and three copies of his speech. His illness had prevented him from “giving much thought” to his lecture, Marshall replied, and he planned to write it while on the ship to Europe.
Marshall boarded the Andrea Doria on November 28 for the transatlantic voyage, accompanied by C. J. George, his aide. The trip was not as restful and productive as Marshall had hoped. He wrote Katherine while at sea, reporting that although the weather was bad he had good care. However, he was not writing: “I am having a terribly hard time getting down to the business of writing my lecture. I cant [sic] seem to concentrate.” After the ship docked at Naples, Italy, on December 6, Marshall flew to Paris, where then-Colonel Andrew Goodpaster helped him finish the speech. Following the speech on December 11, he returned to the U.S. by plane and went straight to Pinehurst.
The respiratory ailment persisted. Seventy-three-year-old Marshall told Eisenhower that he was still housebound because the “virus business is persistent.” He complained to former President Truman that the Oslo trip was “a most difficult time” because of the cold and damp ocean voyage. He expressed frustration to Admiral Richard Byrd in May 1954: “The risk in this business is that, when you feel considerably better, you immediately do some things, and then you lose a lot of ground. You have to be very lazy, very indefinite; altogether worthless, as I am now. You can’t beat the game on this thing.”
He was not back to his usual self by August. “I have been going very slowly to recoup from the damage done my heart or circulation by this persistent virus-flu,” he told Marshall Carter. “They tell me I look better than I have for years but I am still very careful.” He had maintained his weight in the 180s; his blood pressure was 190/100 and as low as 150/100 while he was in bed. Marshall had atrial fibrillation, but his pulse rate remained low, and his kidney function was adequate.
Marshall recuperates at Pinehurst following his illness, 1953
Robert Lovett reported in October 1954 that Marshall looked “tanned and well” and that his blood pressure had dropped from 200 to 150. “He has succeeded in keeping his weight down,” Lovett wrote, “and he is in better shape than I’ve seen him for a long time.”
Marshall told a friend in September 1955 that he had just returned from a four-day checkup at Walter Reed, which showed that the “disintegrating process had subsided” and that he was better than he had been two years earlier. He mentioned the “flu-virus” but said he was feeling “more vigorous.” His doctors had told him to avoid strenuous exercise, and his garden had suffered, he complained.
A different health problem manifested itself in February 1956 when Marshall was seventy-five. He told former aide Frank McCarthy in early February that he had been at Walter Reed for several days because of a rash [apparently shingles]. Marshall also had trouble focusing his right eye because of a ruptured vein in his head. Hearing issues appeared for the first time, also. Marshall had a 60 percent hearing deficiency in his left ear and 50 percent in the right ear. He had a hearing aid but used it only for movies and television. Marshall’s health problems were serious enough to prompt him to give C. J. George instructions about funeral arrangements—instructions that reiterated what he had told George earlier.
He admitted to a friend on December 17 that “there are a great many things about me that are failing, notably my hearing, and, I must admit, my sense of balance.” He jocularly added, “I have been told many times that I was off balance, but now I can understand it.” He told General Matthew Ridgway that he used to make fun of his mother because she carried around so many medications. “Now, by glory,” he joked, “I have as many as she had.”
Marshall’s health declined seriously in 1957 after his seventy-sixth birthday. He told a friend on February 9 that he was having trouble—his hand was usually steady, but he could not write. Dictating was no problem—he had dictated thirty-two letters in one hour at Walter Reed the previous month. Marshall taped his last interview with biographer Forrest Pogue in Pinehurst on April 11. He promised Pogue that he would continue the interviews in May when he returned to Leesburg, but he never did. Katherine shared her concerns with a friend in April: “G. is very frail & seldom goes out even for a drive now.”
The Marshalls returned to Walter Reed for checkups in May 1957. General Walter Bedell Smith was in an adjoining room, but Marshall’s hearing problem prevented him from conversing with Smith. Marshall wrote Truman that his doctors found him “quite perfect, except that they can’t help me at all.” He confided to Queen Frederica of Greece that he had had a “pretty sorry winter,” and he told Madame Chiang Kai-shek that Katherine had been nursing him. His lack of appetite was causing him to lose weight, and he suffered from a balance problem, leading him to say that he sometimes felt like he was going to “fall on my nose.”
“I am a poor specimen of a man. They tell me I look well but I am very thin. You knew me at 200 lbs. I now weigh 150.”
Marshall’s condition had not improved by July 1, when he told a friend that he was “pretty-much housebound.” That led Katherine to take a drastic step—hiring a doctor from Walter Reed to come to Leesburg to give Marshall injections of Diamox, a drug for dizziness and glaucoma. He was on a low-salt diet, and his balance problems were so bad that he asked Sergeant William Heffner, his live-in orderly, to stand guard in the bathroom in case he fell while taking a shower.
A noticeably thinner Marshall accepts Woodrow Wilson Award, October, 1956
C. J. George wrote in September that Marshall was “very frail, weighing only about 150 pounds.” His equilibrium was poor, and he seemed to be bored. George told Queen Frederica that Marshall had not been well for a long time, was unable to write, and had difficulty dictating. While at Walter Reed for tests in October, Marshall did not dictate a single letter, in contrast to his many letters earlier that year.
Marshall was aware of his declining health but tried not to let it hamper him. Just before Christmas in 1957, he wrote a poignant handwritten note to Truman: “My dear Mr. Truman. I did not want to type a letter to you and I may not be able to complete one in longhand—but I’ll try. Katherine is well but pretty hard worked keeping house and looking after or nursing me. I am about the same—possibly a little better off than last year—Less of unbalancing. I walk about six blocks a day—but with someone with me. In other words I am a poor specimen of a man. They tell me I look well, but I am very thin. You knew me at 200 lbs. I now weigh 150.”
His condition worsened throughout 1958. He admitted to Winston Churchill that he was “not doing quite as well” as Katherine was, but he told Queen Frederica that he was walking up to a mile a day and enjoying occasional days in Pinehurst when they could sit outside for meals and drinks. Marshall told Madame Chiang that Katherine was devoting a lot of her time to nursing him and that he was “humiliated to be failing in my duty to her.”
“One day he will be quite cheerful, bright and lucid, and the next day, the complete opposite.”
Marshall expressed frustration to a friend from his childhood home of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on April 1: “I am pretty poorly off these days and I don’t grow better with time.” He turned down an invitation to attend a reunion of the First Division, saying he was a “poor hand these days,” and “the years have a way of curtailing all desirable activity.” C. J. George told Katherine that Marshall’s color was good, his step was stronger, and his appetite was “ravenous.” His nurses said he had been eating “like a little pig.” In June, George told Carter that Marshall was eating well but had no taste for exercise. He was spending almost all day in bed, and George feared that he would become so weak that he would not be able to exercise at all.
Marshall spent three weeks at Walter Reed in August for the removal of a cyst and a hair follicle in his left eye. His balance problem persisted, and he fell and broke a rib. His appetite had returned, he told President Eisenhower, and he had gained eight pounds. C. J. George told Lovett that Marshall’s condition varied day by day: “One day he will be quite cheerful, bright and lucid, and the next day, the complete opposite.” Carter told Lovett that Marshall was “incoherent and demoralized” at Marshall’s condition: “I had not seen him for almost 9 months and while I had anticipated some degradation in his physical condition, I thought I detected a degree of faltering in his mental processes that I had never before experienced.”
“While the Old Man was feeble,” Lovett wrote after a visit, “he still seemed to me to be cheerful and eager, and that is really what counts in this case.” He said Marshall’s friends should not visit him because it would be too tiring for him.
C. J. George said in August 1958 that General Thomas Mattingly, chief of medicine at Walter Reed, had recommended that a medical attendant be posted at Marshall’s home in Leesburg because of the danger of his falling. George forwarded that recommendation to Katherine, who said such an arrangement “would not be practicable.” She said that she had converted their powder room in Dodona Manor to a bedroom for Marshall and that she and Heffner were almost constantly caring for their patient. When Marshall returned to Dodona on August 23, Katherine told a friend that his injections and medication had weakened him greatly. He had insisted on coming home, she said, but he was “really a hospital case.” Marshall was seldom out of bed, she confided, but he was happier at Dodona than anyplace else, and she wanted to keep him out of the hospital.
Marshall at Pinehurst, 1958
Katherine hired a male nurse from the Leesburg hospital to care for Marshall from 3 to 11 p.m. daily. Lovett told Carter on September 16 that “There is no question that his machinery is wearing out.” He thought that Marshall would be better off at Walter Reed but he did not know how anyone could make such an “offensive” suggestion. Marshall was taken from Leesburg to Walter Reed on September 23, and plans were made to transfer him from there to Fort Bragg instead of back to Leesburg, meaning that September 23, 1958, was Marshall’s last day at Dodona Manor. He told Queen Frederica in November that she should not visit him because she would find him “a poor conversationalist.”
Rose Wilson, Marshall’s goddaughter, noticed how frail he had become. He said that he was not going to get well but that Katherine did not want to believe it. He asked Rose to tell Katherine that he was going to die soon and that she needed to make plans. A distressed Rose could not talk to Katherine about such matters, and she spoke instead to Katherine’s daughter Molly, but she would not accept reality, either.
Marshall wrote Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., on October 18 that he was “not stepping very high.” After a thorough examination, doctors told him that all his vital signs were good, leading Marshall to conclude that “it is all a matter of age.” It was the last letter that bears Marshall’s signature. Katherine told a friend that the cottage in Pinehurst was being “run as a small hospital.” Queen Frederica cheered him with a visit there on October 25.
The seventy-eight-year-old Marshall suffered a stroke in Pinehurst, on January 16, 1959, and he was taken to the army hospital at nearby Fort Bragg, where doctors concluded that he had suffered no paralysis. They thought he would be in the hospital for six weeks, and Katherine stayed in a room across the hall. When Rose Wilson saw him after his stroke, he had to ask her where he was, and it was the last time he spoke to her.
The doctors had been overly optimistic, however, and Marshall suffered a second stroke on February 17, leading Katherine to convey bad news to Frank McCarthy: “He is desperately ill,” she said, adding that his eyes and throat were affected, and he could not speak or see. By February 24, C. J. George reported that Marshall’s condition had stabilized and that he was awake and alert. Marshall was transferred from Fort Bragg to Walter Reed by aircraft and ambulance on March 11, and President Eisenhower visited him on March 13. Katherine moved into an apartment on the hospital grounds. C. J. George told Marshall’s sister on March 24 that her brother was making “slow progress,” sitting up, and seemed “bright and cheerful.”
George told a family friend on April 10 that Marshall was “beginning to enjoy visitors.” He also told Marshall’s sister that his vision was still poor, he could not read, and he was listening to recordings for the blind. President Eisenhower and Winston Churchill visited Marshall on May 5, but it was not one of his good days, causing Churchill to weep openly in the hospital room. Several people visited Marshall: General Maxwell Taylor, General Lawton Collins, General Harold Bull, Anna Rosenberg, and Vice President Richard Nixon. Lovett visited every two weeks, and he sometimes took Marshall outside to enjoy the sunshine.
George C. Marshall lying in state at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., 1959
More bad news came on June 18, when George reported that Marshall had “slipped somewhat” and was “unusually frail and weak.” George later told Ridgway that he was amazed at Marshall’s alertness on some days, “but then he slips into twilight.” Marshall’s weight had dropped to 136 pounds. Hospital officials wanted to put Marshall in what was called General Pershing’s suite, but Marshall was alert enough to refuse because he considered that room a shrine.
George Marshall died at 6:08 p.m. on October 16, 1959, of a “cerebrovascular accident due to hypertension.” He was ten weeks short of his seventy-ninth birthday. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on October 20.
Tom Bowers is former docent director of George Marshall’s Dodona Manor in Leesburg, Virginia. From 1971 to 2006, he was professor and dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His article, “A Tonic to My Spirit: George Marshall and the American Red Cross,” appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Marshall magazine.