Shoeshine Boy to Major General: A Summary and Analysis of An Oral History of Major General Hugh R. Overholt, United States Army (Retired (1957-1989)

• Author: Major George R. Smawley
• Pages: 05

2003] ORAL HISTORY OF MG HUGH R. OVERHOLT 309

SHOESHINE BOY TO MAJOR GENERAL: A SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF

An Oral History of Major General Hugh R. Overholt, United States Army (Retired) (1957-1989)1

MAJOR GEORGE R. SMAWLEY2

Don't be careless about yourselves-on the other hand not too careful. Live well but do not flaunt it. Laugh a little and teach your men to laugh-good humour under fire-war is a game that's played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way until you can.

-Sir Winston S. Churchill.

1. Introduction

   Humor, and the perseverance born of experience in rural Arkansas during the 1930s and 1940s, were hallmarks for Major General Hugh R. Overholt (Retired) during his life and education, from a roadless community in the depression-era South, to his rise in the United States military and service as the thirty-second The Judge Advocate General of the Army. It is a remarkable story, worthy, at times, of a Horatio Alger novel. Like an Alger protagonist, there is luck, pluck, altruism, honesty, and self-reliance that lead a young country lawyer to the pinnacle of military leadership in The Army Judge Advocate General's Corps.

   It is also a story of the Army that existed between 1957 and 1989, during the period from the Korean War to the fall of the Iron Curtain, and Presidents Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush. Major General Overholt's military experience spans the Civil Rights struggles in Little Rock, through Eisenhower's reduction of the officer corps, the Cuban Missile crisis, and the institutional changes started during the Reagan administration. It was a far different Army than the modern, information-based, and technology driven organization currently in transition.

   The changes in the Army were mirrored in The Judge Advocate General's Corps, which grew and developed with the needs of the Army. Major General Overholt served an extraordinary ten years as a general officer, eight of them as a major general, during which he increased the professionalism and role of the corps through organizational changes and the tireless pursuit of missions and responsibility for Army lawyers. He established the Masters in Military Law (LL.M.) program at The Judge Advocate General's School and dramatically expanded the school's facilities, automated the delivery of Army legal services, published a code of professional responsibility, modernized the U.S. Army Claims Service, and consolidated the U.S. Army Litigation Division with the U.S. Army Legal Services Agency. He moved Army legal services forward and demonstrated a leadership philosophy focused on morale, professionalism, and soldiering.

   I had that much time, [ten years in the Pentagon], and I had that much authority, and nobody will ever have it again. It wasn't me, it was the circumstances with President Reagan, money for the military, and total confidence in the JAG Corps by the leadership of the Army and by the Secretary of the Army. So we were able to be the first to utilize computers, to establish the lit-

   igation center, to get the LL.M. for the JAG School, to put the regimental system in place . . . .3

   This article is a summary and analysis of interviews conducted in May 2000 with the former The Judge Advocate General of the Army, An Oral History of Major General Hugh R. Overholt (Retired), on file with the library at The Judge Advocate General's School, United States Army, Charlottesville, Virginia. The purpose is to introduce Major General Over-holt to the reader, his professional experience and accomplishments, while identifying the unique leadership qualities that contributed to his success. In particular, this article attempts to highlight his experience during a period of transformation in Army culture, and the leadership techniques he developed to manage a professional officer corps increasingly focused on institutional change.

2. Arkansas: 1933-1957

   "What you are now is what you were then."4 These words capture a core perspective that help define Hugh Overholt, the man, and the leadership philosophy he developed during his life and military service. He never forgot who he was, or where he came from: born in Beebe, Arkansas; the grandson of a businessman, Presbyterian missionary, and a mule-trader; the son of a schoolteacher. When his father, Harold, graduated from the College of the Ozarks during the Great Depression, "there were no jobs and no money and no roads in Arkansas."5 It was a faith-based, conservative environment enlightened by parents and family who treasured education and learning.

   Like others of that generation, it was impossible for the Overholt family to escape the profound effects of the Great Depression. Relatives lost businesses and property; nothing was guaranteed. Life was never easy in rural Van Buren County, Arkansas; the Depression made it even harder. In the 1930s, the Overholts moved from Scotland to Higdon, Arkansas, where Harold Overholt secured a job as a high school principal and teacher. "Higdon was a little bitty town of about fifty people . . . . There

   were no school buses, so you either walked or rode a mule to get to school.

   If you wanted to really go anywhere, like Little Rock, which nobody did, it was just unheard of."6

   Although modest, the school position and its $12-15 a month stipend provided the family with a modicum of security.7 It was an experience characteristic of the times. In the Overholt home, one could find an icebox filled with twenty pounds of ice per week and kerosene cook stoves. There were hog killings and squirrel hunts,8 and other vestiges of rural American life.

   Around 1938, the family packed up again from Higdon to Mount Pleasant, Arkansas, "out in the country, but a grade up."9 The Overholts moved whenever Harold was able to secure a better teaching position,10

   and gradually saw the close-knit family disperse in search of new and better opportunities elsewhere, "a kind of Grapes of Wrath type of deal, loading up and heading for better places like California, the Okies and Arkies."11 Harold eventually moved the family to Cove, Arkansas, where he was the superintendent of schools. For the first time, the family enjoyed running water and an electric light hanging from a single 25-watt bulb.

   The relative comfort the Overholts experienced in Cove did not separate them from the plight of those still affected by dire conditions of the Great Depression.

   [P]eople still looking for work . . . would come up and knock on the door and offer to work for food. Mother would have them go out and split wood or some make-do job that really didn't need doing just so they could keep their pride, and then she would give them two sandwiches. Some days as many as forty people would come by our house . . . . [W]e always found something to give them.12

   It was a challenging time for Arkansans. The Overholts were avid readers, and they instilled this life-long passion in their son. From his earliest age, Hugh Overholt read everything he could get.13 Radio, for him, was more for sports than regular entertainment. It was also for the news, including the memorable announcement in 1942 that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.14

   Harold Overholt registered for the draft, but was deferred on account of a shortage of schoolteachers. In 1945 the family moved again, to Berryville, Arkansas, a county seat with hints of the modern age, including running water and paved roads.15 A couple years later, after a falling out with the school board, the Overholts moved again to Huntsville, where Harold took a position with a state vocational school. The school was located in Madison County, the poorest county in the state, and was one of only two state-supported schools built by Arkansas because the counties were unable to support schools any other way.16

   The position with the state brought financial security, but provided little excess. It was there that Hugh Overholt learned the virtue and value of work. "I started figuring out that you had to work if you were ever going to get anything yourself. So, I took a job down at the barbershop in Huntsville as the shoeshine boy. I shined shoes every day . . . for a quarter."17

   He used the money to buy a .22 rifle and a dozen steel traps, which he hoped would result in a "big bonanza" of fur-bearing wildlife. It didn't. After a year, "I think I caught two rats . . . . I was totally inept at trapping. I never caught a fox, I never trapped a raccoon . . . . [F]rankly, I wouldn't have known what to do with it if I had."18 That same work ethic and creativity carried over to sports19 and other activities, including shining shoes,

   work as a drug store "soda jerk," shooting pool,20 and folding the newspapers for the Madison County Record.21

   In 1948, the family moved again when Harold was hired to build a school in Westside, Arkansas, outside of Heber Springs, "in kind of the middle of some old cotton fields and scraggly low lands, backing up into the Ozarks."22 It was largely an agricultural community, with a school year that included summer sessions and long breaks to accommodate cotton picking and planting season.23 There was little money. Indeed, during Overholt's senior year the school ran out of money and graduated the fourteen seniors after only four months.24

   Harold Overholt was concerned that his son was unprepared for college, so the next year he sent him to live with his grandmother's brother, "Uncle Doc," in Clinton, Arkansas, where Overholt enrolled as a senior in the local high school. Overholt assisted his uncle with his medical practice, driving him to house calls and assisting in the office. It was an

   apprenticeship Overholt would never forget, and it convinced him that a career in medicine was not in the making.25

   Following graduation, Overholt entered the College of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Arkansas, where he received a $25 work scholarship cleaning the college chapel. The student body was notable for the high number of older...