THE CADETS at West Point didn’t get a “be no.” It’s shorthand for the announcement cadets most love to hear: “There will be no parade today.” Bad weather is usually what prompts a “be no.” The phrase has also become cadet slang for something that won’t happen. If your date cancels, you got a “be no.” Last week, late in the afternoon, and solely for the benefit of myself, my wife Barbara, seven of my relatives, and about 150 other folks, the cadets marched. The weather was fine. The cadets surely had better things to do. Exams are coming up. But for the descendants of the West Point class of 1902 sitting in the reviewing stand, there was no place they’d rather have been. The centennial of that class was the reason for the parade and for a day of activity honoring the 54 graduates (the class of 2002, by contrast, has nearly 1,000 members). My grandfather, Troup Miller, was a 1902 grad, a young man from Macon, Georgia, who joined the National Guard out of high school and set his sights on West Point. Many of the stars of his class served in the Corps of Engineers after graduation, but my grandfather joined the cavalry, the horse cavalry. Troup Miller was a man who knew his own mind. Or as therapists might say today, he was in touch with his feelings. As a young officer, he was introduced to a beautiful young woman from Atlanta named Alice Coffin. The idea was marriage. And it made sense: the handsome military man and son of a respected Macon judge and the oldest daughter of a prominent Atlanta family. Only it was a “be no.” He fell in love with one of Alice’s four sisters, Rosa, and married her instead. As they do today, American officers after the turn of the century served all over the world. My grandfather spent two tours in the Philippines, which the United States had acquired in the Spanish-American War. Then came World War I, in which he fought in the Argonne Forest and at St. Mihiel. Postwar, he was assigned to the staff college at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, teaching Dwight Eisenhower among others. He spent most of the 1920s in Washington, and in the late 1930s he commanded the cavalry post at the Presidio of Monterey in California. One of the lieutenants under his command was a West Point graduate in 1934, a fellow who, like my grandfather, didn’t think the advent of the tank meant the end of the cavalry. Anyway, Troup Miller’s daughter Rosa, just out of college, joined her parents in Monterey, met the lieutenant, and married him in 1937. They are my parents. Miller was one of seven in the class of 1902 who was promoted to general. (Douglas MacArthur was class of 1903.) Still, regulations required retirement after 40 years. Retirement, however, was a “be no.” It was 1942 and World War II was raging. Retirement lasted one day. Then he was ordered back to active duty, staying through 1945 as inspector general of the Eastern Defense Command. My grandfather was not a stereotypical Army officer. There was no harshness in him, yet he had a commanding presence–erect, firm, reserved in speech. I never heard him utter an unkind word, and I spent a lot of time with him. He doted on his five grandchildren. I was his only grandson, so I got special attention. He was a great fungo batter, hitting fly balls for me to catch for hours. He played cards with his grandkids, though never on Sunday. He took us to drive-in movies. He was a wonderful storyteller. His favorite involved the appearance of Teddy Roosevelt’s tailor in a White House receiving line. “Don’t you know, Mr. President,” the tailor said. “I made your pants.” Roosevelt then introduced him to Mrs. Roosevelt as “Major Pants.” Next to his family, Troup Miller’s great love was West Point. He was proud to belong to the Long Gray Line. He began a West Point tradition in his family. His son, Troup Jr., was a West Pointer, class of 1930. His daughter married a graduate. His granddaughter, Judy, married a class of 1954 West Pointer, Dan Tobin. His great-grandson, Steve Emmons, altered the tradition a bit by going to the Air Force Academy, class of 1989. Then there was his grandson. My grandfather planted the West Point tradition in me. Every Tuesday or Wednesday during football season I’d get a letter from him with the New York Times story on the Army football game enclosed. We talked about his becoming the oldest living graduate of West Point and my becoming a cadet. But he died at age 77 in 1957. I was 14. If he’d lived on, I suspect I’d have wound up, one way or another, at West Point. But the way things worked out, that was a “be no.” –Fred Barnes
