Claire Lee Chennault - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Chennault was promoted to Lieutenant General in the U.S. Air Force, several days before his death on July 27, 1958 at the Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans. He died of lung cancer. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery (Section 2, 873).

Chennault was twice married and had a total of ten children, eight by his first wife, the former Nell Thompson (1893–1977), an American of British ancestry, whom he met at a high school graduation ceremony and subsequently wed in Winnsboro, Louisiana on December 24, 1911. The marriage ended in divorce in 1946 long after his service in China started. He had two children by his second wife, Chen Xiangmei (Anna Chennault), a young reporter for the Central News Agency that he married on December 2, 1947 . She became one of the ROC's chief lobbyists in Washington.

His children from the first marriage were John Stephen Chennault (1913–1977), Max Thompson Chennault (1914–2001), Charles Lee Chennault (1918–1967), Peggy Sue Chennault Lee (born 1919), Claire Patterson Chennault (November 24, 1920 – October 3, 2011), David Wallace Chennault (1923–1980), Robert Kenneth Chennault (1925–2006), and Rosemary Louise Chennault Simrall (born 1928). By his second wife, he had two daughters, Claire Anna Chennault (born 1948) and Cynthia Louise Chennault (born 1950), a professor of Chinese at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

On January 11, 1960, his son, David Chennault was defeated in a Democratic runoff election for the office of Louisiana state custodian of voting machines. He lost to the incumbent, Douglas Fowler.

Son Claire P. Chennault was a United States Army Air Corps and then Air Force officer from 1943 to 1966 and subsequent resident of Ferriday.

Chennault was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in December 1972, along with Leroy Grumman, Curtis LeMay and James H. Kindelberger. The ceremony was headed by retired Brigadier General Jimmy Stewart, and a portrait of Chennault by cartoonist Milton Caniff was unveiled. General Electric vice-president Gerhard Neumann, a former AVG crew chief and the tech sergeant who repaired a downed Zero for flight, spoke of Chennault's unorthodox methods and of his strong personality. An award plaque was presented by Stewart to presidential adviser Thomas Gardiner Corcoran and fighter ace John R. "Johnny" Alison, who both accepted for Anna Chennault, who could not attend.

He was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 40¢ Great Americans series (1980–2000) postage stamp.

Chennault is commemorated by a statue in the ROC capital of Taipei, as well as by monuments on the grounds of the Louisiana state capitol at Baton Rouge, and at the former Chennault Air Force Base, now the commercial Chennault International Airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana. A city park and public golf course in Monroe, Louisiana is also named in his honor. A vintage Curtiss P-40 aircraft, nicknamed "Joy", is on display at the riverside war memorial in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, painted in the colors of the Flying Tigers. In 2006 the University of Louisiana at Monroe renamed its athletic teams Warhawks honoring Chennaults AVG Curtiss P-40 fighter aircraft nickname. A large display of General Chennault's orders, medals and other decorations has been on loan to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (Washington D.C.) by his widow Anna since the museum's opening in 1976.

In 2005, the "Flying Tigers Memorial" was built in Huaihua, Hunan Province, on one of the old airstrips used by the Flying Tigers in the 1940s. On the 65th anniversary of the Japanese surrender to China, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and PRC officials unveiled a statue of Chennault in Zhijiang County, Hunan, the site of the surrender of Japan.