Douglas MacArthur was born on January 26, 1880, in Little Rock, Arkansas. MacArthur was the son of Arthur MacArthur, Jr., a US Army captain and recipient of the Medal of Honor for his Civil War service. The family lived in a series of Army posts in the Old West, where MacArthur remembers he “learned to ride and shoot even before I could read or write – indeed, almost before I could walk and talk.” MacArthur graduated first in his West Point class, earning the third-highest score in its history. After a succession of posts, MacArthur was assigned to the War Department and then became the Army’s first press officer.