Master Sargent: Morris Babb & General Douglas MacArthur

From the eBay archives comes forth this picture of Morris Babb who served as the personal aide to General Douglas MacArthur for 7 years. He is pictured here receiving the first slice of a special cake that was raffled off as a fund raiser. The photo is undated but apparently comes from the VA Hospital in Houston, TX, which would explain why the cake is clearly in the shape of the Great State of Texas (where I was born and raised).

I’ve taken the available information and identified a potential match. I’ve reached out to the owner of the tree to see if they can validate that their Morris is the same as this one who is pictured.

Reverse of Photo

Research is difficult in this time period due to the the worst Genealogical Record fire in US History at the St. Louis Veterans Personnel records center. It destroyed something like 80% of all personnel records from WWI & WWII particularly for the Army and Air Force service members. So, there is little info available to work from. The other tragic genealogical fire of epic proportions was the loss of the 1890 Census to a fire. Less than 1% of the pages survive.

Here are some pictures of the fire just to give you an idea of the enormity of the loss.