Dwight D. Eisenhower

president dwight d. eisenhower
thirty-fourth president of the united states

interesting facts
President Eisenhowever was an avid golf player. He would practice his putting skills in the white house lawn. He also banned all squirrels.

quote
"There must be no second class citizens in this country."
Dwight D. Eisenhower 1952 Stump Speech

biography
The name Eisenhower comes from German words meaning a kind of ironworker. The president's father, David Eisenhower, was descended from German immigrants who had settled in Pennsylvania during the 1730s. In 1878 the family moved to Abilene, Kan. The president's mother, Ida Elizabeth (Stover) Eisenhower, had moved from Virginia to Kansas in 1883.

Eisenhower's parents met at a United Brethren school in Lecompton, Kan. They were married in 1885. A few years later David Eisenhower moved his family from Abilene to Denison, Tex. There Dwight was born Oct. 14, 1890. Two years later the family returned to Abilene.

The future president, with his brothers Arthur, Edgar, Roy, Earl, and Milton, grew up on the old homestead of his grandfather Jacob Eisenhower. In 1947 this home became a national shrine. Family souvenirs and papers are housed in the Eisenhower Foundation Museum, opened at Abilene in 1954.

During his school days young Dwight was usually called Ike by his friends. The nickname stayed with him throughout his life. Ike's favorite school subjects were English, history, and geometry. In sports he starred in both basketball and football.

In his early Army career, he excelled in staff assignments, serving under Generals John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, and Walter Krueger. After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called him to Washington for a war plans assignment. He commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, he was Supreme Commander of the troops invading France.

After the war, he became President of Columbia University, then took leave to assume supreme command over the new NATO forces being assembled in 1951. Republican emissaries to his headquarters near Paris persuaded him to run for President in 1952.

"I like Ike" was an irresistible slogan; Eisenhower won a sweeping victory.

Negotiating from military strength, he tried to reduce the strains of the Cold War. In 1953, the signing of a truce brought an armed peace along the border of South Korea. The death of Stalin the same year caused shifts in relations with Russia.

New Russian leaders consented to a peace treaty neutralizing Austria. Meanwhile, both Russia and the United States had developed hydrogen bombs. With the threat of such destructive force hanging over the world, Eisenhower, with the leaders of the British, French, and Russian governments, met at Geneva in July 1955.

The President proposed that the United States and Russia exchange blueprints of each other's military establishments and "provide within our countries facilities for aerial photography to the other country." The Russians greeted the proposal with silence, but were so cordial throughout the meetings that tensions relaxed.

Suddenly, in September 1955, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in Denver, Colorado. After seven weeks he left the hospital, and in February 1956 doctors reported his recovery. In November he was elected for his second term.

In domestic policy the President pursued a middle course, continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs, emphasizing a balanced budget. As desegregation of schools began, he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to assure compliance with the orders of a Federal court; he also ordered the complete desegregation of the Armed Forces. "There must be no second class citizens in this country," he wrote.

Eisenhower concentrated on maintaining world peace. He watched with pleasure the development of his "atoms for peace" program--the loan of American uranium to "have not" nations for peaceful purposes.

Before he left office in January 1961, for his farm in Gettysburg, he urged the necessity of maintaining an adequate military strength, but cautioned that vast, long-continued military expenditures could breed potential dangers to our way of life. He concluded with a prayer for peace "in the goodness of time." Both themes remained timely and urgent when he died, after a long illness, on March 28, 1969.