LEVY FAMILY HAS LEFT MARK ON THE MILITARY
BY VAN CRADDOCK
Like a lot of East Texas families, the Levys of Gregg County believed strongly in military service. As a result, Levy family members were eyewitnesses to the end of America's two most costly wars.
The Civil War didn't end well for Richard B. Levy Sr., a soldier who was among Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate troops surrendering at Appomattox Courthouse, Va., in April 1865.
Eighty years later, Levy's grandson, a major general in the United States Army, accepted the surrender of Japanese troops to end World War II in the Philippines. More on that historic event in a moment.
The Levys arrived in East Texas along about 1871, led by patriarch John Levy, who fought for the Virginia militia in the War of 1812. He died in 1880 and is buried in Longview's Greenwood Cemetery, one of the few War of 1812 veterans buried in East Texas.
The Levys were one of six charter families of Longview's First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1873.
John's son, Richard B. Levy Sr., served with a Virginia signal corps unit during the Civil War (1861-1865). He was paroled at Appomattox along with Lee's remaining Confederates.
Levy Sr. was elected Gregg County's first county clerk in 1873. He later served in the administration of Texas Gov. James Stephen Hogg, a former Longview resident. Richard Levy Sr. died in 1918. Longview's United Daughters of the Confederacy unit, organized in 1907, is called the R.B. Levy Chapter.
Richard B.'s son, R.B. Levy Jr., enlisted when the Spanish-American War came along in 1898. He was a captain in the Third Texas Infantry when the U.S. went to war against Spain.
Levy Jr. also made his mark. The young attorney was elected to the Texas Legislature and became a district judge. In 1907, he was appointed to the Sixth District Court of Civil Appeals in Texarkana. He left the court in 1935, returning to Longview. The noted jurist died in April 1949.
One of Judge Levy's sons, Edmond, played a historic role in the ending of World War II.
Edmond Leavey (as an adult he legally changed the spelling of his last name) was born in Longview July 21, 1894. He was a 1917 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A one-time instructor of military science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Leavey had a long and distinguished military career.
By 1945 he was a major general and deputy commander of U.S. Army Forces in the Western Pacific.
On Sept. 2, 1945, aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japanese officials signed a surrender agreement witnessed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The very next day Leavey, representing MacArthur, led the Allied delegation in accepting the surrender of all Japanese forces in the Philippines.
Japanese Gen. Tomoyuk Yamashita, the so-called "Tiger of Malaya," signed the document that said in part, "Acting by command of and in behalf of the Emperor of Japan … we hereby surrender unconditionally … all Japanese and Japanese-controlled armed forces, air, sea, ground and auxiliary, in the Philippine Islands."
Leavey became chief of transportation for the U.S. War Department, then was comptroller of the Army from 1948-1949. He left the military to join International Telephone & Telegraph and was president of ITT from 1956-1959. Leavey died in February 1980 at age 85 and is buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.
There are additional Levys who have distinguished themselves in uniform from the American Revolution to Korea. When it comes to military service, the Levys take a back seat to no one.