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Fort Myer: Still standing tall

Date published: 3/8/2003

WHAT A DIFFERENCE 50 years makes in security! As a kid, I rode my bike through the gate onto Fort Myer with a friendly wave from the MP on duty.

I thought about that a couple of days ago as I waited in a long line of cars to get into the base, undergoing a thorough search of my car from the MPs.

The little outpost the Army built to guard the nation's capital during the Civil War is still there; still holding the high ground overlooking downtown Washington, still home to the famed 3rd Infantry Regiment--the spit-and-polish Old Guard.

Fort Myer, long a showcase Army post, has changed a lot from those days just after World War II. It's busier, has many modern buildings and tons more vehicular traffic. And it is still a small military base, squeezed into the eastern corner of Arlington, smallest of America's counties, flanking the west side of Arlington National Cemetery.

The fort grew out of forts Whipple and Cass, two small artillery outposts guarding approaches to the bridge at Georgetown.

I knew that even as a kid, though I surely never thought of it in those words. Riding along the quiet, tree-lined avenue down "generals' row," we passed the stately homes of the Army's top brass. The list of names who have occupied those homes reads like a Who's Who of the 20th-century history of the U.S. Army: Leonard Wood, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, Hugh Scott and many more. Just prior to the Second World War, the post commander was a colonel by the name of George S. Patton Jr.

Impressed as I was with the post, I little imagined as a bicycling boy that I would one day be a soldier and develop, well, a different view of the military and life in uniform.

I knew nothing of Fort Myer's past, not even that it was named for Brig. Gen. Albert J. Myer Jr., a physician who became the Army's first Chief Signal Officer. Two years before the Civil War, Myer developed the first practical signal system for the Army. A versatile and bright leader, he also created the precursor to the National Weather Service.

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Date published: 3/8/2003