Katherine Boyce Tupper Brown Marshall

Personal tragedy Katherine's happy years with her husband and children soon ended. On June 4, 1928, she phoned Clifton's office inside the Calvert Building to tell him about an offer she had received on her cottage at Fire Island, New York. There was no answer. She phoned again. No answer. During her third attempt, two men came up the front steps to tell her that her husband had been shot in the back while unlocking his office that morning.

Within two years, Katherine's acquaintance with George Marshall developed into a deep and mutual affection, topped off with his proposal of marriage. Her decision was not one she felt she could make on her own. Before accepting him, she insisted on obtaining the consent of her three children. Molly, Clifton and Allen agreed. The youngest had reservations at first, but later wrote a letter assuring the colonel that it was “OK with [him],” signing it “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” The humble, quiet beginnings of their relationship contrasted with the fanfare of their wedding, caused primarily by the presence of Marshall's best man, General of the Armies John J. Pershing. With her husband's promotion, she rose from wife of a general to "First Lady of the Army."

The new role came with new obligations. Katherine became a member of boards for several humanitarian organizations, including the American Red Cross, Army Emergency Relief and the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines Club in New York City. Sixteen years earlier, she had buried her first husband, the father of her children. Now one of her sons was burying the other overseas, and she would not be able to visit his grave until after the war.

During the war, Katherine was Marshall's first line of defense against physical and mental exhaustion. In their frequent walks before dinner, she would act as his sounding board, allowing him to sort out his problems in the comforting presence of an attentive listener. She became his only real confidante. Katherine oversaw repairs, renovations and finishing touches in preparation for her husband's arrival. The following year, Marshall came to Dodona and remarked, “This is Home, a real home after forty-one years of wandering.” Katherine later said that “they kept taking my George away from me” despite her best efforts to alleviate the demands of public service that had claimed her husband's life for so many years.

An avid rose gardener, Katherine cared for over twenty varieties of roses at Dodona Manor. Katherine's love of roses was well known, leading inventor Eugene S. Boerner to create the Katherine Tupper Marshall Rose, a pink hybrid tea rose. It was patented by Jackson and Perkins in 1943.

Katherine Marshall was invited to attend a state dinner at the White House on April 29, 1962. President John F. Kennedy honored of General Marshall and 49 other Nobel Prize laureates at this dinner, coined the "Brains Dinner."

In 1953, the George C. Marshall Foundation began constructing a research library on the campus of the Virginia Military Institute. Along with Katherine Marshall, Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower attended the dedication ceremony on May 23, 1964.

Katherine died on December 18, 1978, at the age of 96. Katherine Marshall was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.