Claire Lee Chennault

Chennault's Louisiana story starts with loss. He grew up in Gilbert and Waterproof after his mother died of tuberculosis in 1901, raised by an aunt. He married Nell Thompson in Winnsboro in 1911, and was principal of the Kilbourne School in West Carroll Parish from 1913 to 1915. The end followed lung cancer, diagnosed in late 1957. In January 1958 he was too weak to cut the cake at Civil Air Transport's tenth anniversary in Taiwan. Congress made him an honorary lieutenant general on July 18, and he died in New Orleans on July 27, 1958.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chennault Aviation and Military Museum — steps away
  A Monroe museum that began as a 1986 reunion of Selman Field airmen and now holds Flying Tigers displays, Delta's Monroe beginnings and a park of retired aircraft.
• Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum — 1.9 mi
  A museum chartered in 1994 that tells the story of the Black pioneers of Monroe and northeast Louisiana, with local art, quilts and the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail's only Ouachita Parish stop.
• Masur Museum of Art — 3.7 mi
  A 1929 limestone Tudor house on South Grand Street, built by a Monroe lumberman and given to the city in 1963 by the Masur family to become its art museum.
• Biedenharn Museum and Gardens — 4.5 mi
  The 1913 Monroe home of the man the museum credits with first bottling Coca-Cola, with a Coca-Cola museum, his daughter's Bible collection and her gardens.

More markers nearby

• OH-6 Cayuse Helicopter — steps away
• Selman Field Navigator Memorial — 0.6 mi
• Selman Field — 0.6 mi
• Fant-Ewing Coliseum — 1.6 mi