Almost a decade after William Leahy left the White House, a reporter from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot paid a visit to the old admiral. “On the 17th floor of towering Bethesda Naval Hospital an 83-year-old gentleman sits alone,” the reporter later wrote. “He wears a checkered bathrobe and smokes placidly in a cushioned wheel-chair in his two-room corner suite. There is neither radio nor television to disturb the silence. . . . He is the only patient on the floor.”1 Leahy had grown weaker over the years, his skin more wrinkled. Wrestling with immobility due to a broken hip, his weight had dropped, hollowing out his frame.
Yet his blue eyes remained penetrating, his memory unusually sharp. When discussion inevitably turned to World War II, the admiral recalled Stalin as “a great leader for the Russians” who “succeeded in getting a great deal of assistance from the Americans.” Churchill was “a great friend,” and Leahy mentioned that they still exchanged Christmas cards. When the reporter brought up de Gaulle, the admiral, largely isolated now, with few visitors and little contact with the world outside the hospital, was stunned to learn that the general had, three months earlier, become the premier of France. His hackles up, Leahy dismissed de Gaulle as an egoist and violent nationalist, croaking, “He thirsted for power!”
When he was asked about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he grew silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts, and then launched into a lucid monologue about the president’s greatness, praising Roosevelt’s qualities as a war leader, his ability to listen to argument, and his instinctive ability to make the right decision. As the reporter later wrote:
At their daily sessions the President sometimes brought up matters that they had not discussed in years. Then he asked the Admiral’s opinion.
If it did not jibe with what Admiral Leahy had said in the past, the President would look puzzled and say, “Bill, that’s not what you told me a year ago.”
“Well my President, if I told you something a year ago—that was wrong, because what I’m telling you now is right.”
Then they would both smile; it was a long-standing personal joke.2
That Leahy would still be alive ten years after leaving the White House had been inconceivable to him in 1949. An adverse reaction to the penicillin administered as part of his kidney operation had almost killed him, and kept him hospitalized for more than three weeks. Stuck in bed, he missed Truman’s inauguration, but the president visited him in the hospital and presented him with a gold-plated .38 caliber Colt revolver that he knew Leahy admired. No longer having the cantankerous admiral around seemed to make Truman miss him more than he expected. He did everything possible to help Leahy recover, and when he was better, Truman ordered him to Key West until he could come down and join him.
In Key West, following doctor’s orders, Leahy sunbathed daily, swam, and took his vitamins. He also had daily injections, though he was never quite sure what was in them. The rest did him good, and he completed a draft of his memoirs. By the time the president arrived in March, Leahy seemed healthier. He returned to Washington with Truman and for a few days appeared in his new office in the Pentagon. He met with James Forrestal and was given a gift by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a silver cigarette case with their signatures engraved on it. On March 25, President Truman presented him with his third Distinguished Service Medal.
Then Leahy’s health quickly spiraled again. By late May, he was found to have two blockages of the urethra and had to be rushed in for another operation. Too weak to work, he did little else that summer but convalesce. By September he was showing signs of improvement, able to keep a watchful eye on the big story of the day, the revolt of the admirals.
In October 1949, navy fears about the course of service unification boiled over. In a public testimony before Congress, Adm. Louis Denfeld, chief of naval operations, repudiated administration policy.3 When Leahy heard about the revolt, he was torn. While he instinctively sided with his beloved navy, he loathed anything that smacked of insubordination and disloyalty to the president. Publicly, he was mute. When approached by a reporter, he said nothing.4 His absence from office probably contributed to the revolt, as he was not available to be an intermediary between the fleet and the president. Now, even in his weakened state, he began to pass on some of Truman’s thoughts on the matter to the navy.5
For the rest of the year his health fluctuated, and he was confined to the hospital for long periods, poring over the proofs of his memoirs, which arrived in November, finding the chore unspeakably tedious. In early 1950, he was laid low by excruciating headaches and was so weakened that he had to decline an invitation from the president to come to Key West. Then something unexpected happened. In springtime he stabilized and strengthened. Though hardly robust, he was well enough to travel, see friends, work a little, and, most important, enjoy life. He joked about his improvement, saying, “I feel fairly well for a cripple.”6 It set the stage for almost five years of relatively good health, and he made the most of it. He had been so devoted to work during World War II and the difficult years that followed that he had neglected to spend time with his son and his granddaughter. Now, his health seemingly renewed, family became his main preoccupation. Father and son grew close, and William Jr. made a point of bringing Leahy to dinner in his family’s home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In June 1950, the newly married Louisita gave birth to Leahy’s first great-grandchild, a girl named Elizabeth. Louise and her husband, John Cusworth Walker, would eventually have seven children, three of whom were born while Leahy was healthy.
He was, of course, an adoring great-grandfather, but he missed his late wife enormously. He made a point of going to Arlington National Cemetery on their anniversary to leave flowers on Louise’s grave, and to see the patch of ground next to her in which he would be laid to rest. At least once, he discussed the possibility of seeing her in another life. He certainly made no effort to meet another companion. One close friend, former classmate Louis Powell, cheekily asked whether the admiral was stepping out with someone new. Leahy answered back playfully, but it was clear the memories of Louise were enough: “Replying to your questions, I have not yet acquired a mink coat or even anybody upon whom one could be appropriately draped.”7
Leahy also spent time connecting with his second family, his friends from the navy, particularly his classmates from Annapolis. He loved attending navy reunions, and exchanged letters with former colleagues such as Powell, Thomas Hart, and others. He often discussed his own health, making fun of the indignities of old age. As he joked with Hart: “A long time ago I gave up horse riding. Not so long ago, warped vision put a stop to any shooting in which I used to be generally accepted as pretty good. It might be possible now for me to shoot at an elephant, but there is no assurance that I could hit one from a safe distance.”8
He received letters from sailors who had served under his command, and always wrote back. In 1951 he heard from a former enlisted man from the New Mexico, the battleship Leahy had commanded twenty-five years prior. Leahy replied enthusiastically with as much information about different crewmates as he could provide. “It is more than a pleasure to receive your letter that resurrected vivid memories of this wonder ship New Mexico at the time when we were shipmates. Every incident to which you refer is treasured in my memory.”9
His memoir was published in March 1950. He hated writing, and it showed: he produced the least entertaining memoir of any of the major Allied military or political figures of World War II. The work emerged almost straight from his diary, and he removed nearly every personal touch, rendering the text unemotional and detached. Even the title he chose, I Was There, was observational, not active. When his publishers saw the first draft, they were disappointed. To enliven the leaden prose, they asked him to include as many amusing anecdotes as he could, but Leahy would not budge, saying, “I don’t want any funny stories in the book.”10 He was true to his word.
When I Was There was released, it was greeted with a collective yawn. The Washington Post tried to be kind about its plodding pace and lack of personality, though ended up making him seem creepy more than anything else: “Admiral Leahy was always something of a puzzle to the public in his White House days. To those who didn’t know him, there was something sinister about his owlish profile and his always solemn manner. He usually looked in his photographs as if he were forever smelling bad fish.”11 The New York Times just made him sound dull: “William D. Leahy, as he emerges from his own pages, seems to be an able, conscientious, industrious, tactful, honorable man without much sense of humor.”12 The book did not sell well, and when Leahy approached a publisher a few years later with a proposal for a book about his time in Puerto Rico entitled A Sailor’s Adventure in Politics, he was turned down quickly.13
If Leahy was disappointed with the mediocre reviews of I Was There, his formal nature prevented him from saying so. That was not the case when it came to a far more serious event a few months later, the outbreak of the Korean War. When Soviet-backed troops from North Korea launched their surprise offensive against the South in June 1950, one of the first things President Truman did was bring Leahy in for a confidential briefing by Omar Bradley. This was followed a few days later by a private meeting between Leahy and Truman so that the president could ask his advice. Leahy was confused by the president’s need for his views, though gratified. “A reason for the President’s sending for me and giving me all the information in his possession in regard to the situation is not apparent to me,” he wrote. “He seemed to wish to talk to somebody in whom he had confidence, or perhaps he just wished to be polite to his one-time chief of staff.”14
Leahy had a better understanding of the course of the war than Truman did. The president was surprisingly upbeat, thinking that American and Korean forces could hold off the Communists. Yet Leahy warned that US forces were inadequate and would be driven back into a pocket near the south coast of Korea.15 This is precisely what happened. Leahy understood that the only way to hold Korea would be to mobilize a significant army. He suggested ten divisions, two of which should be from the Marine Corps. As history would show, he was spot on the mark.16
While Leahy enjoyed being involved in the discussions, it served to reopen the one great wound that would never heal: China. When first told about the North Korean attack, he knew what was to blame. ‘‘I personally do not expect a war with Russia in the immediate future,” he wrote, “but it does seem very likely that our failure to assist the Chinese Government during the past three years will eventually bring the United States into a war with the Soviet Republics.”17 Part of Leahy did not see the reason to fight for Korea. When he had run the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was asked to give his strategic opinion on Korea’s value, he replied that, in and of itself, the peninsula was unimportant. He believed it was only vital if the United States were going to maintain a connection to China, and with China already “lost,” Korea had little strategic value left. As he confided to Powell, “Of course a real war is possible, but I do not think it is likely now or in the near future. I have personally had enough wars to last me a long time.”18
His bitterness about China was as enduring as his devotion to Franklin Roosevelt. When Truman named George Marshall as secretary of defense a few months into the war, Leahy said that he thought the general would be a good choice “except for his attitude toward China, with which I have been in complete disagreement.”19
Leahy’s appearance and advice about Korea made an impression on the president, and he seriously considered finding a job for the old man, discussing with Dean Acheson the possibility of Leahy becoming the next American ambassador to the Hague.20 Truman also explored the appointment of Leahy as Marshall’s replacement as the head of the American Red Cross.21 In September, he arranged for Leahy and Marshall to discuss the mechanics of a handover, but the admiral’s doctors rejected the idea, saying the travel and speechmaking would be too much for him.
This might have been a mistake. While Leahy was hardly springy, he was surprisingly active. For New Year’s 1951, he joined Truman on a cruise aboard the Williamsburg, where they might have reminisced about the thrashing Leahy gave James Byrnes six years earlier. In March, he returned to Key West with Truman, and for the rest of the president’s time in office he accompanied him on every vacation he had in Florida. Strong enough to take part in swimming and fishing excursions, he even re-created part of his role as chief of staff, sorting through the confidential correspondence sent to the president in Key West and briefing him on international developments.
He also made regular trips to Wisconsin, delighting in the memories of his youth. In the summer of 1950 he paid a two-week visit, taking in the Fourth of July parade in Ashland, touring his old high school, and hosting a dinner for all the “old-timers” he could find. He even did something that he had once vowed he would never do: he went to Wausau to visit the graves of his parents and his brother. He had been away for so long that the local cemetery was now many times bigger, and he was unable to locate their headstones. Or that, at least, was what he claimed—perhaps the pilgrimage was simply too much for his emotions to bear.22
Leahy’s Wisconsin roots made him a target of influence with the state’s most notorious son, Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Embroiled in his campaign to smear his enemies as Communist spies, the senator employed Leahy’s criticisms of George Marshall’s inability to understand the value of China as part of his attacks against the general. When he first made his main speech about Marshall from the Senate floor, he sent Leahy a copy of the address, with an ingratiating cover note.23 Believing McCarthy was dead wrong when it came to criticisms of Marshall’s patriotism, he kept the senator at arm’s length.24 The only time he recorded meeting McCarthy was in August 1952, when they were both in the hospital at the same time and the senator, who was up for reelection, stopped by Leahy’s bed uninvited.25
One reason why Leahy would have nothing to do with McCarthy was the man’s criticisms of Harry Truman. The president remained warm toward the admiral in retirement, and Leahy responded with increased loyalty. This was most seen in the famous confrontation between Truman and Douglas MacArthur, which resulted in the general’s dismissal in 1951. Leahy viewed the firing of MacArthur as an act of “high courage” on Truman’s part.26 For Leahy, the fact that the president had determined that this was in the national interest was enough, and he believed Americans should accept the decision. This was even as he had some sympathy with MacArthur’s strategic vision. Yet Leahy could not understand why so many Americans, including some members of Congress, lavished praise on the general. He found their adulation of a military officer dismissed by his commander in chief to be “strange.”27 To Leahy, civilian control of the military was, as always, sacrosanct.
His loyalty to the memory of Franklin Roosevelt was even stronger, and when healthy he played an active role in the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial Foundation, being reelected to its board as late as 1954. His ideas on the purpose of the foundation were strongly progressive, advocating for the study of social problems in the United States.28 He thought the foundation should help improve the lives of the disadvantaged and foster international cooperation. Even in death, Roosevelt could push Leahy down surprising paths.
He could become sentimental when remembering Roosevelt. In 1953, William Hassett sent him the text of a speech he had given on the eighth anniversary of Roosevelt’s passing. Leahy’s response showed how much he missed FDR.
While you and I treasure in our memories an understanding appreciation of the courage, decision and devotion to the cause of Americanism that Franklin Roosevelt taught by example to everybody, it is hoped that in spite of the passage of the years your splendid and beautifully expressed address of appreciation will be read by a host of his countrymen who did not have our advantage of personal association, and for whom he gave the best years of his life and finally his life itself.29
What particularly irritated Leahy was the charge, which became common in the late 1940s and 1950s, that Roosevelt was either too weak or too foolish in his dealings with Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference in 1945. After retiring, Leahy reacted aggressively, even with friends, when they made similar charges. When Patrick Hurley publicly attacked Roosevelt for his performance at Yalta, Leahy defended his late friend with passion: “I don’t believe, from my daily contacts with Franklin Roosevelt, that he believed he ever made any mistake at Yalta. . . . I don’t believe Hurley deliberately publishes falsehoods about these matters, but I do think he is all mixed up.”30 The last article that would ever be published under Leahy’s name was a detailed defense of Roosevelt at Yalta.31
Another development which reemphasized Roosevelt’s greatness to Leahy was Dwight Eisenhower becoming president. When Truman decided that he would not run for president in 1952, it lessened Leahy’s interest in the contest. He could muster little enthusiasm for Adlai Stevenson, and even though he had worked closely with Eisenhower for years, he was not convinced of the latter’s skills. After Eisenhower was elected, he would occasionally invite the admiral in for meetings, but it was more out of a sense of decorum than anything else. Leahy told friends that Eisenhower could not compare to FDR as commander in chief. 32
The election of Dwight Eisenhower to the presidency marked the definite end of any residual influence that Leahy had over US policy. Right after the election, he was brought to the White House to help sort through President Truman’s secret correspondence, the filing of which was still being done to Leahy’s specifications.33 It was a somber moment, standing in the storied mansion surrounded by the secret and confidential letters and memoranda that had been the source of much of his power, knowing that in two months both of the administrations he had served would be consigned to history. His talks with Truman were tinged with sentimentality. He was asked to make a gift of an object that could be put in the museum that Truman was planning for his hometown of Independence, Missouri. The choice Leahy made was enigmatic. He returned the gold-plated revolver that Truman had given him in the hospital in 1949. It was as if he were saying that it was from the president that all of his influence had come, and to understand Truman’s importance in his life, he needed to return to the president a gift he had been given.
Leahy disconnected from international politics, and his remaining years were passed in relative quiet. He enjoyed visits from old friends, such as Anna Roosevelt and Constantine Brown, and sometimes with important senators or congressmen who came to pay respects. He kept in touch with members of the Roosevelt and Truman White House staffs, such as William Hassett and George Elsey. In 1957 he broke his hip in a fall. After a stay in the hospital, he made his final major trip, a journey to Pearl Harbor, in the hope that the warm weather and sunshine would aid his recovery. When back in Washington, he spent most of his time in his suite of rooms atop the Bethesda Naval Hospital. People would occasionally write to him expressing their concern, but would receive replies from his secretary, Dorothy Ringquist, on his behalf. Aside from his son and grandchildren, visitors became an increasing rarity. Yet when news got around that Leahy might not last long, one person made a special visit to say good-bye. On May 3, 1959, Harry Truman came to pay his last respects.34 It is unlikely that Leahy could have carried on much of a conversation at this point, but were he conscious, he would have been touched.
On July 20, 1959, William Leahy died. The cause of his passing was officially described as a “cerebral vascular accident.”35 After a lifetime of national service, adventure, political maneuvering, and shaping world history, they could just as well have written “old age.”