Bro Douglas MacArthur, born on the 26th January 1880 Bro MacArtur was a scholar and military leader dubbed “The American Shogun”. While stationed in the Philippines, MacArthur was made a Mason “at sight” by the Grand Master of the Philippines, he was raised on the 14th January 1936 and had received the 32nd degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite on the 28th March of that same year. Despite his numerous duties MacArthur managed to maintain an active Masonic career. Bro MacArthur died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on 5 April 1964, of primary biliary cholangitis. President Kennedy had authorized a state funeral before his death in 1963, and President Johnson confirmed the directive, ordering that MacArthur be buried “with all the honour a grateful nation can bestow on a departed hero”. On 7 April his body was taken to New York City, where it lay in an open casket at the Park Avenue Armory for about 12 hours. That night it was taken by train to Washington Union Station and transported by a funeral procession to the Capitol, where it lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda. An estimated 150,000 people filed by the bier. Bro MacArthur had requested to be buried in Norfolk, where his mother had been born and where his parents had married. On 11 April, his funeral service was held in St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Norfolk and his body was laid to rest in the rotunda of the Norfolk City Hall.
