Grand Old Man
Paul Howard Douglas (1892–1976)
In 1942, a 50-year-old Quaker enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Paul Douglas did his training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina. He was the oldest private to march out of boot camp.
The Marines had Douglas write training manuals. An easy gig for a college professor.
Paul Howard Douglas had graduated from Bowdoin College. He’d done postgraduate work at Harvard. Douglas earned his master’s degree and PhD in economics from Columbia University. He taught at Reed College, the University of Illinois and the University of Washington. Douglas also taught at the University of Chicago and at Amherst.
Paul Douglas chafed at his desk job in the Corps. Too old to fight as an enlisted man, Douglas decided he’d become an infantry officer instead.
Douglas pulled strings. He’d been a Chicago alderman before the United States entered World War II. He had political connections and knew how to use them. One of his connections was Frank Knox, Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Navy.
A veteran of the Spanish-American War, William Franklin Knox was a colorful character. Knox had served with the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment — Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders — in Cuba. He was at the Battle of San Juan Hill. Knox later served with the 78th Infantry Division in World War I. He took to calling himself Colonel Knox.
Frank Knox had flirted with presidential politics. He’d been Alf Landon’s running mate in 1936. That year the Democrats clobbered the Republicans. Landon won eight electoral votes to FDR’s 523. Four years later Knox joined Roosevelt’s cabinet.
The consummate fixer, Frank Knox got Douglas an officer’s commission. Captain Douglas sailed for the Pacific theater with the 1st Marine Division. He received the Bronze Star at the battle of Peleliu. Hit by shrapnel, he also received the Purple Heart.
Next stop, Okinawa. Douglas waded ashore with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Machine gun fire damaged nerves in his left arm, earning him a second Purple Heart. He spent thirteen months in rehab at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Douglas underwent five surgical procedures, but never regained use of his arm.
Discharged as a lieutenant colonel, Douglas taught economics at the University of Chicago. He became president of the American Economic Association in 1947.
In 1948 Paul Douglas ran for the U. S. Senate. An Illinois Democrat who championed civil rights, Douglas served three terms in the Senate. Defeated for reelection in 1966, he retired from politics.
Douglas taught at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. He wrote In the Fullness of Time: The Memoirs of Paul H. Douglas, in 1972.
Paul Howard Douglas died September 24, 1976, aged eighty-four. The Marine Corps named the Douglas Visitors’ Center at Parris Island in his honor.
