Table Of ContentThe Button Box
University of Missouri Press
Columbia and London
The Button Box
A Daughter’s
Loving Memoir of
Mrs. George S. Patton
Ruth Ellen Patton Totten
Edited by James Patton Totten
Foreword by Carlo W. D’Este
Copyright © 2005 by
The Curators ofthe University ofMissouri
University ofMissouri Press,Columbia,Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States ofAmerica
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05
Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library ofCongress
ISBN 0-8262-1576-9
™This paper meets the requirements ofthe
American National Standard for Permanence ofPaper
for Printed Library Materials,Z39.48,1984.
Designer:Jennifer Cropp
Typesetter:Crane Composition,Inc.
Printer and binder:Thomson-Shore,Inc.
Typefaces:Minion and Snell Roundhand
Contents
Foreword,by Carlo W.D’Este vii
Introduction 1
Part I
Chapter 1.Granfer Ayer and Ellie 5
Chapter 2.“Like Birds on a Telephone Wire” 18
Chapter 3.Growing Up 29
Chapter 4.The Pattons 35
Chapter 5.Georgie 66
Part II
Chapter 6.Orange Blossoms 85
Chapter 7.The Great War 102
Chapter 8.Camp Meade and Fort Myer 121
PartIII
Chapter 9.Schofield Barracks 145
Chapter 10.Legendes Hawaiiennes 177
Chapter 11.“The Debutante Racket” 231
Chapter 12.Hawaii Revisited 247
Chapter 13.Trouble in Paradise 260
Chapter 14.Europe Before the War 288
Chapter 15.Visiting Firemen 301
Chapter 16.Long Shadows 321
PartIV
Chapter 17.“A Helluva Way to Die” 343
Chapter 18.I Hide in Songs 354
Chapter 19.Happy Days 380
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Foreword
by Carlo W. D’Este
Ruth Ellen Patton Totten’s The Button Boxis an engaging memoir ofthe life
of an extraordinary woman: her mother,Beatrice Banning Ayer,who was the
daughter ofFrederick Ayer,a self-made New England millionaire entrepreneur.
Growing up in wealth and privilege,Beatrice Ayer was an accomplished eques-
trian, a skilled racing sailor, a talented musician and songwriter, and later in
her life,a published author.By the age of eighteen,when she was first intro-
duced into Boston society,Beatrice had matured into a confident,independent,
strong-willed woman.Her father expected she would one day marry a man of
proper social standing. Instead, Beatrice gave her heart to a young dyslexic
Californian by the name ofGeorge S.Patton.
Her courtship by Georgie,as his family and close friends called him,began
in 1902 and continued while he was a cadet at West Point.Frederick Ayer quite
liked young Patton but deplored the prospect ofhis daughter marrying a lowly
career Army officer with little money and few prospects in an era when Yankees
like Ayer thought of soldiering as the last refuge of scoundrels,a profession of
the “brutal and licentious mercenary.”
Obsessed with a deeply held conviction that his destiny was to become a
great battlefield commander,and that he would one day lead an army in a des-
perate battle,Patton steadfastly resisted Frederick Ayer’s attempts to persuade
him that he could have a successful civilian career ofhis own choosing.Failing
that, Ayer turned his attention to dissuading Beatrice from marrying young
Patton;and when that too failed,he vetoed the marriage.In response,his head-
strong daughter locked herselfin her bedroom and staged a hunger strike that
soon led to her father’s capitulation,and his blessing of the marriage.After a
lavish wedding that was one of the noteworthy social events of 1910 on the
fashionable North Shore ofMassachusetts,Beatrice Ayer Patton entered into a
new way of life for which nothing could have adequately prepared her. The
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viii Foreword
young woman who had been the toast of Boston suddenly found herself an
Army wife.
The life ofa Cavalry officer’s spouse in the “Old Army”ofthe early twentieth
century was one of hardship and habitually Spartan living conditions.On the
remote Cavalry posts of the American West where her husband was assigned
the days were regulated primarily by the evocative sounds of the bugle and of
horses.When the Pattons arrived at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1913, traces of the
old frontier army were still in evidence,including some grizzled veterans ofthe
Indian wars of the nineteenth century. A sign on the parade ground read:
“Officers will not shoot buffalo from the windows oftheir quarters.By order of
the Commanding Officer.”
For a time Beatrice questioned seriously if she was cut out for such an exis-
tence.Ruth Ellen writes that “She was beginning to feel she was a terrible fail-
ure as an Army wife...It all seemed very wild and crude and savage.” The
story ofBeatrice Patton’s epiphany in the wild,open spaces ofKansas and how
it changed her life forever is one of the most heartwarming anecdotes in this
memoir.Henceforth,Beatrice not only embraced her new way of life with the
same passion she brought to every endeavor she ever undertook, but as Ruth
Ellenwrites,“Her inner eye had been opened...She had discovered the whole
world.”
Beatrice’s role in Patton’s life was indispensable,and throughout their tur-
bulent thirty-five-year marriage her influence upon her flamboyant,mercurial
husband was profound. She was also fiercely protective. Shortly after World
War I Beatrice demonstrated the same warrior spirit as her husband at a white-
tie dinner in Washington, D.C. As Beatrice waited in the foyer while Patton
parked their car,a stout,unmistakably deskbound officer began making snide
remarks about him.“Just look at the little boys they are promoting to colonel
these days; look at that young chicken still wet behind the ears, wearing a
colonel’s eagle,”he complained.The next thing Beatrice remembered was sit-
ting astride the officer’s shoulders, banging his head on the black-and-white
marble floor tiles.It took Patton and another officer to pull her off the dazed
officer.
Although he is not the principal character,the book also reveals a great deal
about George S.Patton as a father and husband.As Ruth Ellen has noted,her
father is “a twice-told tale,and Ma is a tale that has never been told.”
Ruth Ellen Patton Totten was a singular, outspoken, and resolute woman
with an irreverent sense of humor.I first met her in 1992 at the Patton family
home in South Hamilton,Massachusetts,while researching my biography of
her father. She not only told me about her parents and her late husband, an
Army general,but also spoke thoughtfully about herself.I learned ofher photo-
Foreword ix
graphic memory,her belief in reincarnation,and her philosophy of life.Both
George and Beatrice Patton believed passionately in reincarnation, and that
conviction seemed to rule Ruth Ellen’s life.Death to her was merely a passage
to a new life in another time and place.My visit with her remains one of the
most exceptional and unforgettable days ofmy own life.
The reader will find this book poignant, amusing, and enormously enter-
taining.For example,the anecdote the author relates of how her father taught
her and her sister,Beatrice,to memorize and recite his ribald version of“Itsy
Bitsy Spider” in front of a roomful of eclectic characters like Ellie, with her
mass of tinkling bracelets,and the elderly lady with an ear trumpet,remains
the most uproariously funny tale I have ever read.
Originally written for the edification and amusement ofher family,is the in-
sightful portrait of a remarkable American family.Its publication will serve as
a lasting testament to a very unique woman, to a bygone era we will never
again see,and as a portrait ofsome ofthe most interesting characters that one
could hardly invent any better in an E.L.Doctorow novel.
