Jacob L. Devers

At 92 years old, Jacob L. Devers physical status not available right now. We will update Jacob L. Devers's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Under the rules of the time, Devers was given mandatory retirement on his 62nd birthday on 30 September 1949. Devers and his wife Georgie decided to buy a farm in Herndon, West Virginia, although they retained their "Yellow House" in Georgetown, Virginia, where Georgie had resided during the war. Devers settled into the role of a cattle rancher. He hired Curtis and Beatrix Murphy as handyman and cook. When he discovered that they owed $2,000 in hospital bills, he paid it for them, and never accepted repayment. They continued working for him until his death.

Finding that the life of a rancher did not sufficiently hold his interest, Devers accepted a job as managing director of the American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety. He hired Dorothy Benn as his executive assistant. The job mostly involved fund-raising, which Devers did not enjoy, and he left when a better opportunity as technical assistant to the president of Fairchild Aircraft presented itself in 1950. He successfully lobbied the United States Air Force to buy the Fairchild C-123 Provider. He was also a strong advocate of Fairchild's AR-15 rifle, which he maintained was a much better weapon than the Army's M14 rifle, which Devers described as "obsolescent". As the M16 rifle, the AR-15 would ultimately supplant the M14.

Devers also served briefly in 1951 as military advisor to Frank P. Graham, the United Nations mediator in the dispute between India and Pakistan over the status of Kashmir. Eisenhower, now president, had Devers represent the United States at tenth anniversary ceremonies for the invasion of southern France in 1954, for the dedication of Epinal American Cemetery and Memorial and the Rhone American Cemetery and Memorial in France, and for that of the Sicily–Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Italy. In 1960, as Devers was leaving Fairchild, Eisenhower asked him to replace Marshall as chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission. He would remain in this role until 1969. In May 1964, he joined a number of other retired generals, including Eaker, Clyde Eddleman and Merrill B. Twining, for Joint Exercise Desert Strike, a major military exercise.

The farm was sold, and Devers and Georgie moved back to the Yellow House in 1957. Her health declined in the 1960s, and she died on 8 February 1967, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Dorothy Benn's second husband, a Harvard economics professor who worked for the Department of Agriculture, died in 1973, and she married Devers on 28 May 1975. He died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on 15 October 1979, and was buried with Georgie at Arlington National Cemetery. He was survived by wife Dorothy, who died in 2007, and his daughter Frances, who died in 1986, his sister Catherine, stepdaughter Bonnie Benn Stratton, and her sons Troy DuVal Stratton and W. Benn Stratton, who graduated with the West Point class of 1983. Alex Graham died in 1977; Alex and Frances are buried at Arlington near Devers and Georgie. Devers' papers are at the York County History Center in York.

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