Honorary Trustee General Westmoreland
Dead at 91





Gen. William C. Westmoreland, 91, the World War II and Korean War combat veteran who went on to command the United States forces during the Vietnam War, died July 18 in Charleston, S.C. He was an honorary trustee of the Grant Monument Association since 1994.


Herbert Elmer Abrams' portrait
of General Westmoreland

 General Westmoreland came to epitomize changes in public sentiment about the military in the 1960s and 1970s that resulted in large part from the war in Vietnam. He was on hand for an event that is remembered as signaling the end of that acrimonious era, the 1982 dedication of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, DC.

In 1994, upon reading of the disrepair of Grant’s Tomb, the retired general took the initiative to write the GMA’s past president, Frank Scaturro, asked that his name be added to the list of citizens who were concerned that the monument be treated with respect.

Westmoreland, a native of South Carolina who graduated from West Point in 1936, worked his way steadily upward through the ranks to become the Army’s youngest major general. He also served as Superintendent of his alma mater.


He was commander in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, and left Southeast Asia to serve as the Army chief of staff. After retiring from the military in 1972, Westmoreland briefly entered politics as a gubernatorial candidate in South Carolina in 1974.

He is survived by his wife, the former Katherine Van Deusen, a son and two daughters.

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