Sunday, June 1, 2014

Meeting MacArthur

It was either while he was stationed in Hawaii from April to June 1944, or earlier in 1941-1942, that my dad, Frank Dolan, and some of his buddies from his ship, Hector, decided to play some golf. It is the only time that I know of that he ever played, or as he recalled it, "pretended to hit a few balls around the golf course."

As he told the story, while the sailors were playing, a U.S. Army general caught up with them. It was an awkward moment, but the general made some small talk and offered a few observations with the sailors, then played on through their group. At the time, Dad had no idea who the general was. However, a few months later on October 20th, he and the rest of the world would recognize General Douglas MacArthur famously wading onto the beach at Leyte in the Philippines declaring, "I have returned."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers