Funston was a slight individual who stood 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) tall and weighed 120 pounds (54 kg) when he applied in 1886 to the United States Military Academy; he was rejected.

[5] While there, he joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and became friends with William Allen White, who became a writer and won a Pulitzer Prize.

Funston played the key role in planning and carrying out the capture of Filipino President Emilio Aguinaldo on March 23, 1901, at Palanan.

Funston's party, escorted by a company of Macabebe Scouts, had gained access to Aguinaldo's camp by posing as prisoners.

[9] Funston was considered a useful advocate for American expansionism; however, when he publicly made insulting remarks about anti-imperialist Republican Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts, mocking his "overheated conscience" in Denver, just prior to a planned visit to Boston, the epicenter of the U.S. anti-imperialism movement, President Theodore Roosevelt denied his furlough request and ordered him to be silenced and officially reprimanded.

[14] From December 1907 through March 1908, Funston was in charge of troops at the Goldfield mining center in Esmeralda County, Nevada, where the army put down a labor strike by the Industrial Workers of the World.

He commanded all forces involved in the hunt for Pancho Villa, and provided security for the United States border with Mexico during the "Bandit War".

Funston's intense focus on his work led to health problems: first, with a case of indigestion in January 1917, followed a month later by a fatal heart attack at the age of 51 in San Antonio, Texas.

In the moments before his death, Funston was relaxing in the lobby of the St. Anthony Hotel[16] in San Antonio, listening to an orchestra play The Blue Danube waltz.

[17][18] Douglas MacArthur, then a major, had the unpleasant duty of breaking the news to President Wilson and Secretary of War Newton D. Baker.

The latter honor gave him the distinction of being the first person to be recognized with this tribute, with his subsequent burial taking place in San Francisco National Cemetery.

Streets are named for Funston in San Francisco, New Carlisle, Ohio, Reading, Pennsylvania, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Pacific Grove, California, and Hollywood, Florida.