General Clifton B. Cates, a 1916 Law (LLB) graduate of the university, won letters in both football and baseball and was tapped by the Scarabbean Honor Society. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. He served in World War I with distinction, being the recipient of a Distinguished Service Cross, a Navy Cross, and two Purple Hearts for seven wounds. At the end of World War I, he held the rank of captain. He served as aide to President Woodrow Wilson in 1919. He was honored as one of UT’s alumni heroes of World War I as a marine lieutenant in a ceremony on the Hill following the war.
In World War II, he commanded the 4th Marine Division at Iwo Jima. He was among the first on shore at Guadalcanal when he commanded the 1st Regiment of the 1st Division, and he led the 4th Division during its attack on Saipan and Tainan. He was made a brigadier general in 1943 and major general in 1944. He received the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star with oak leaf, the Purple Heart with cluster, the Presidential Citation, the Legion of Honor, the Croix de Guerre with gilt star and two palms, the Netherlands Order of the Orange Nassau with crossed swords and rank of grand officer—being decorated 29 times during his lengthy military career.
On January 1, 1948, he became the 19th commandant of the Marine Corps, a post he held until December 31, 1951, after which he served as the commandant of the Marine Corps Schools at Quantico, Virginia. He retired on June 30, 1954.
UT awarded him an honorary degree in 1951.
In 1983 an unidentified portrait of a decorated military man hardly noticed for a decade and passed by scores of students and faculty daily, caught the eye of law student James Lunceford. Shortly after Cates’s death, his family had presented his portrait to the law college, and it hung outside the faculty study in the old law library but without identification. Lunceford learned the identity of the military man and wrote the Department of the Navy for more information. The navy’s reply contained such impressive compilations of Cates’s accomplishments that Lunceford himself supplied the brass plaque that now identifies the portrait. In 1998 Cates and Brigadier General Austin S. Shofner were honored in a ceremony at Stokely Athletics Center, in which the Tennessee Chapter of the First Marine Division Association donated two plaques to UT. UT President Dr. Joe Johnson presided. In April 2001 a historic marker at the corner of Cumberland Avenue and James Agee Street was dedicated to Cates.