After acting more and studying less at Hollins College, Katherine Tupper graduated in 1902 and followed the stage lights to New York. After a single role, a director offered her work as a lead actress.
Her father forbade her from pursuing an acting career, so she moved to England, taking her middle name, Boyce, as her surname. Katherine Boyce signed a seven-year contract with the Benson Company, playing 17 Shakespearian roles. A “tuberculosis of the kidney” diagnosis forced her to retire from theater and return to the United States.
During her convalescence, she accepted a marriage proposal from Clifton Brown, a Baltimore lawyer, who’d previously proposed to her in college. The Browns had three children and a led happy life until an angry client shot and killed Clifton Brown. Mourning her husband, she moved to Georgia to stay with her family. Katherine met a recently widowed Army officer there.
Within two years, her attraction to Col. George C. Marshall intensified into a close relationship, leading to his marriage proposal. Before accepting, Katherine consulted her three children. In 1930, she married Marshall, becoming an Army wife. The day after the wedding, she knew her once-private life was now public.
At her husband’s duty station, Fort Benning, Ga., Katherine emerged as a socialite, generously conducting ceremonies, dinner parties and teas while her husband trained soldiers. Her previous stage experience and natural graciousness helped. When her husband felt depressed about his sluggish path to promotion to general, she consoled him. When he was finally promoted in 1936 and reassigned to Vancouver Barracks, her status rose to that of a commander’s wife.
After driving leisurely for three weeks across the country, the Marshall family arrived in Vancouver. Gen. Marshall’s World War I colleague, Oregon Gov. Charles Martin, opened Portland’s society to them. Katherine often crossed the Interstate Bridge to shop, attend tea parties and cultivate enduring friendships with individuals like Harriet Corbett, a member of one of Portland’s first families. The Marshalls found a friendly, warm community and reciprocated, organizing events like a “‘49ers” costume party at their residence on Officer’s Row.
In 1938 Marshall was transferred to Army headquarters in Washington. A year later, the man who once thought he was of “no use to the Army” was named chief of staff, making Katherine the first lady of the Army.
Katherine Marshall served on boards like the American Red Cross, Army Emergency Relief, Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines Club in New York City and during World War II frequently appeared at war bond drives.
In January 1941, months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Katherine wrote to Harriet Corbett saying her husband had made a speech to the House of Representatives, which was met with “stony silence” by “one-half of the members.” She foresaw a “bitter struggle ahead” and wished they could “drop all this for a few months and once again drive, fish, and picnic on the West Coast.”
Three years after her husband’s 1959 death, Katherine was invited to the White House where President John F. Kennedy hosted the “Brains Dinner,” honoring Gen. Marshall and 49 other Nobel Prize laureates.
