![]() MacArthur said: "It was a wonderful homecoming the folks tendered me in Milwaukee. MacArthur then dedicated a plaque honoring the city's veterans, to be installed at the city's war memorial.Īfter the ceremony, the MacArthurs had a police escort to Mitchell International Airport, where 40,000 people gathered to see them fly back to New York. It has etched on my heart a memory I can never forget." "The warmth of your welcome has moved me more deeply than words can express. "I cannot tell you with what emotion I come again to my ancestral home," MacArthur told the crowd, according to the Journal's coverage in the April 28, 1951, edition. The tour ended at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, where an estimated 40,000 people came for the dedication of MacArthur Square. Crowds lined every street of the procession downtown, the Journal reported, people climbed on rooftops and hung off buildings to get a glimpse. In a half-hour outdoor ceremony, MacArthur received an honorary degree of doctor of laws from Marquette University, with about 22,000 people looking on, according to a report in the Journal.įrom there, MacArthur took a 32-mile "tour of glory" around Milwaukee. where several thousand people were waiting to greet him and his family.Īfter a few hours at the hotel, MacArthur and his entourage headed to Marquette Stadium at N. before heading east to the Plankinton Hotel - MacArthur's official home address for decades, at N. The motorcade headed west on Mitchell St. "It was excitement in the few seconds of greeting for each little segment of the waiting lines that almost reached the bursting point."Īs the motorcade sped through Milwaukee - too fast, according to Mayor Frank Zeidler, who told the Journal that he had protested about it to the "proper parties" - fire sirens and factory whistles went all along the route, from South Milwaukee to Cudahy and through the Bay View and Mitchell St. "Women screamed their greetings, men bellowed, and children shrilled their youthful welcome," the Journal reported in one of the many stories on the proceedings in its April 27, 1951, edition. But that was just a prelude to the all-hands-on-deck celebration that awaited him in Milwaukee. On April 27, 1951, the day after his speech at Chicago's Soldier Field, MacArthur headed to Milwaukee, with people lining the highway all the way, according to the Journal. Truman in a dispute over expanding the fighting into communist China.Įight days later, MacArthur gave a memorable address to a joint session of Congress, in which he said that, like the "old soldier" in an old barracks ballad, he would "just fade away."Īnd then MacArthur did anything but, starting with a motorcade with jets overhead in Washington, D.C., and a ticker-tape parade in New York City and a parade and speech in Chicago. forces in Korea until April 11, 1951, when he was fired by President Harry S. MacArthur, who led Allied forces in the Pacific during World War II, had been in command of U.S. So when one of the world's most famous military men took a valedictory lap around the United States in late April 1951, it wasn't surprising that Milwaukee was on his itinerary - or that nearly 1 million people came out to see him here. Douglas MacArthur called his "old hometown." His legal "home address" was a hotel.īut Milwaukee was still the place that Gen. He hadn't been back since 1912, and then it was for his father's funeral.
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