Dwight D. Eisenhower

34th President of the United States

### Resting Place

Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home, Abilene, Kansas, U.S.

### Residence

Eisenhower Farm, Cumberland Township, Pennsylvania, U.S.

### Children

Doud Eisenhower (son)John Eisenhower (son)

### Parents

David Jacob Eisenhower (father)Ida Stover (mother)

### Siblings

Arthur B. Eisenhower (brother), Edgar N. Eisenhower (brother), Milton S. Eisenhower (brother), Roy J. Eisenhower (brother), Paul A. Eisenhower (brother), Earl D. Eisenhower (brother)

### Hair Color

Light brown

Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, **Dwight D. Eisenhower** obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms (1953-1961) to ease the tensions of the Cold War.

*The Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower spanned the period in United States history that encompasses the events of the Cold War Era and the age of the Space Race and the Cold War Arms Race. President Dwight Eisenhower represented the Republican political party which influenced the domestic and foreign policies of his presidency.*

## Biography

Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms to ease the tensions of the Cold War. He pursued the moderate policies of “Modern Republicanism,” pointing out as he left office, “America is today the strongest, most influential, and most productive nation in the world.”

Born in Texas in 1890, brought up in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower was the third of seven sons. He excelled in sports in high school, and received an appointment to West Point. Stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant, he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom he married in 1916.

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.

## Personality

The character traits of President Dwight Eisenhower can be described as outgoing, friendly, honorable, honest, optimistic and superstitious. It has been speculated that the Myers-Briggs personality type for Dwight Eisenhower is an INTJ (introversion, intuition, thinking, judgment). A reserved, analytical and insightful character with a strong sense of independence. Dwight Eisenhower Personality type: pragmatic, logical, individualist and creative.

## Nicknames

* "Ike"
* "The General"

*Meaning: The nickname of President Dwight Eisenhower provides an insight into how the man was viewed by the American public during his presidency. The meaning of the nickname "Ike" refers to his boyhood nickname and was used in his presidential campaign with the slogan "I like Ike".*

## Inaugurations

### First Inauguration

The first inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower as the 34th president of the United States was held on Tuesday, January 20, 1953, at the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This was the 42nd inauguration and marked the commencement of the first term of Dwight D. Eisenhower as president and of Richard Nixon as vice president. Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson administered the presidential oath of office to Eisenhower. The vice presidential oath was administered to Nixon by Senator William Knowland.

During the oath, Eisenhower said the line "the office of President of the United States" as "the office of *the* President of the United States," even as chief justice Vinson said the line correctly. Eisenhower placed his hand on two Bibles when he recited the oath: the Bible used by George Washington in 1789, opened to II Chronicles 7:14; and his own personal "West Point Bible," opened to Psalm 33:12. Afterward, he recited his own prayer at the start of his inaugural address, rather than kissing the Bible.

### Second Inauguration

The second inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower as president of the United States was held privately on Sunday, January 20, 1957, at the White House and publicly on the following day, Monday, January 21, 1957, at the East Portico of the United States Capitol; both located in Washington, D.C. This was the 43rd inauguration and marked the commencement of the second and final four-year term of both Dwight D. Eisenhower as president and Richard Nixon as vice president. Chief Justice Earl Warren administered the presidential oath of office after the Senate Minority Leader William Knowland swore in the vice president. During the oath, as at his first inaugural, Eisenhower said the line "the office of President of the United States" as "the office of *the* President of the United States," even as Chief Justice Warren said the line correctly.

## Famous Films

* The Ten Commandments (1956)
* 12 Angry Men
* Ben-Hur
* Vertigo (1958)
* Lady and the Tramp (1955)
* Sleeping Beauty
* Creature from the Black Lagoon
* Attack of the 50 foot Women
* Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

## Accomplishments and major events

*The major accomplishments and the famous, main events that occurred during the time that Dwight Eisenhower was president included the End of the Korean War in 1953 and the outbreak of the Vietnam War (1955 – 1975),  the formation of SEATO, the Brown v. Board of Education (1954),  the Interstate Highway System and the establishment of NASA. The Civil Rights Movement gained momentum with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education legal case. Federal troops were sent to Little Rock to enforce integration and Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott led by Martin Luther King Jr.*

**The Cold War (1945 - 1991)**

Summary: The Cold War (1945 - 1991) was a 'war of words'  involving the Cold War Space Race and the Cold War Arms Race involving the nuclear build-up between the USA and the West and the Communist countries dominated by the USSR and China in the East. Dwight D Eisenhower was one of the nine US Presidents who were in office during the dangerous period in history known as the Cold War in which the US adopted the policy of Containment to restrict the spread of communism abroad.

**Sputnik (1957)**

Summary: Sputnik was the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth, launched by the USSR on October 4, 1957. The Sputnik satellite made an orbit every 96 minutes and became a constant reminder to Americans of Soviet space supremacy.

**The Warsaw Pact (1955)**

Summary: The Warsaw Pact was rival alliance to NATO and was signed on May 14, 1955 by the Soviets and its 7 communist 'satellite nations' in Eastern Europe consisting of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Albania. The 1955 Warsaw Pact created a coordinated defense among its communist nations to deter any form of attack from the West.

**NASA (1958)**

Summary: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA was created in 1958 during the Dwight Eisenhower presidency in order to coordinate research in rocket science and space.

**The Vietnam War (1955 - 1975)**

Summary of the Vietnam War: The Vietnam War (November 1, 1955 – April 30, 1975) between communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong communist guerrillas (backed by China and the USSR) against the non-communist South Vietnam (supported by US military aid and involvement). There were four US presidents during the Vietnam War: Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon  The first US combat troops were sent to Vietnam in March 1965 and left in August 1973.

**SEATO**

Summary: The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, known as SEATO, was formed during the Dwight Eisenhower presidency as the Southeast Asian version of NATO.

**U-2 Incident (1960)**

Summary: The U-2 Incident involving U-2 high altitude spy plane flown by pilot Gary Powers that was shot down over Russia on May 1, 1960. Gary Powers was eventually exchanged for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel made across Berlin's Glienicke Brucke bridge and is featured in the 2015 movie the Bridge of Spies.

**Area 51**

Summary: Area 51, part of the top secret US Military base in Nevada, drew attention during the Cold War in which covert technological experiments on weapons systems and aircraft, such as the U2 stealth plane were conducted

**The Interstate Highway System (1956)**

Summary: Construction on the federal Interstate Highway System started on June 26, 1956. Its length covered nearly 50,000 miles and began a new road culture and the automobile society during the Dwight Eisenhower presidency.

**The Eisenhower Doctrine (1957)**

Summary: The Eisenhower Doctrine was based on a speech that President Dwight Eisenhower made to Congress on January 15,1957, in line with the US Containment policy, in response to the Suez Crisis in which the Egyptian President Nasser had accepted aid from the USSR.

**Brown vs Board of Education**

Summary: The segregation practices in the U.S. school systems were challenged in  the Brown vs Board of Education case that resulted in the Supreme Court banning the practice of school segregation, effectively overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson.

**The Civil Rights Movement (1954)**

Summary: The Civil Rights Movement began in 1954 with the legal case of Brown vs. Board of Education followed by the 1955 Rosa Parks protest and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

**Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955 - 1956)**

Summary: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (December 1, 1955 - December 21, 1956) was the protest against segregation on buses, sparked by Rosa Parks, and organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. resulting in the integration of the Montgomery buses in Alabama.

**The SCLC (1957)**

Summary: Following the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott the SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was founded on February 14, 1957 and led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC organization, and the role of the African American Church and its black ministers, quickly became an important part of the civil rights movement

**The Little Rock Nine (1957)**

Summary: The Little Rock Nine crisis erupted on September 4, 1957 involving the admission of 9 African American students to Little Rock's Central High School.

**The Civil Rights Act of 1957**

Summary: The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed by Dwight Eisenhower to prohibit attempts to intimidate or prevent African Americans from voting and succeeded in showing that the Federal Government would not allow the southern states to do as they wished.

**The SNCC (1960)**

Summary: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in April 1960 by Ella Baker, a Civil rights activist who had worked for the NAACP and the SCLC, to assist student Civil Rights activists and organize 'Sit-ins', Freedom Rides and Voter protests throughout the Deep South.

## Post Presidency

Following the presidency, Eisenhower moved to the place where he and Mamie had spent much of their post-war time, a working farm adjacent to the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 70 miles (110 km) from his ancestral home in Elizabethville, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. They also maintained a retirement home in Palm Desert, California.

After leaving office, Eisenhower did not completely retreat from political life. He flew to San Antonio, where he had been stationed years earlier, to support John W. Goode, the unsuccessful Republican candidate against the Democrat Henry B. Gonzalez for Texas's 20th congressional district seat. He addressed the 1964 Republican National Convention, in San Francisco, and appeared with party nominee Barry Goldwater in a campaign commercial from his Gettysburg retreat. That endorsement came somewhat reluctantly, because Goldwater had in the late 1950s criticized Eisenhower's administration as "a dime-store New Deal". On January 20, 1969, the day Nixon was inaugurated as President, Eisenhower issued a statement praising his former vice president and calling it a "day for rejoicing".

## Death

On the morning of March 28, 1969, Eisenhower died in Washington, D.C., of congestive heart failure at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, at age 78. The following day, his body was moved to the Washington National Cathedral's Bethlehem Chapel, where he lay in repose for 28 hours. He was then transported to the United States Capitol, where he lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda on March 30 and 31. A state funeral service was conducted at the Washington National Cathedral on March 31. The president and First Lady, Richard and Pat Nixon, attended, as did former president Lyndon Johnson. Also among the 2,000 invited guests were U.N. Secretary General U Thant and 191 foreign delegates from 78 countries, including 10 foreign heads of state and government. Guests included President Charles de Gaulle of France, who was in the United States for the first time since the state funeral of John F. Kennedy, Chancellor Kurt-Georg Kiesinger of West Germany, King Baudouin of Belgium and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran. The service included the singing of Faure's *The Palms*, and the playing of the hymn *Onward, Christian Soldiers*.

That evening, Eisenhower's body was placed onto a special funeral train for its journey from the nation's capital through seven states to his hometown of Abilene, Kansas. First incorporated into President Abraham Lincoln's funeral in 1865, a funeral train would not be part of a U.S. state funeral again until 2018. Eisenhower is buried inside the Place of Meditation, the chapel on the grounds of the Eisenhower Presidential Center in Abilene. As requested, he was buried in a Government Issue casket, wearing his World War II uniform, decorated with Army Distinguished Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters, Navy Distinguished Service Medal, and the Legion of Merit. Buried alongside Eisenhower are his son Doud, who died at age 3 in 1921, and wife Mamie, who died in 1979.

President Richard Nixon eulogized Eisenhower in 1969, saying:

> Some men are considered great because they lead great armies or they lead powerful nations. For eight years now, Dwight Eisenhower has neither commanded an army nor led a nation; and yet he remained through his final days the world's most admired and respected man, truly the first citizen of the world.
>
>

## Facts and trivia

* Dwight D. Eisenhower was the last American President born in the 19th Century, as well as the only General to serve as President in the 20th century.
* The Eisenhauer (German for "iron hewer or "iron miner") family migrated from the German village of Karlsbrunn to the Province of Pennsylvania in 1741, initially settling in York, Pennsylvania. The family moved to Kansas in the 1880s. Accounts vary as to how and when the German name Eisenhauer was anglicized to Eisenhower. Eisenhower's Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors, who were primarily farmers, included Hans Nikolaus Eisenhauer of Karlsbrunn, who migrated in 1741 to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
* Eisenhower was born into a large family of mostly Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry in Denison, Texas, and raised in Abilene, Kansas. His family had a strong religious background, and his mother became a Jehovah's Witness. Eisenhower, however, belonged to no organized church until 1952.
* He was born David Dwight Eisenhower, but reversed the two upon entering West Point Military Academy.
* As a child, he was involved in an accident that cost his younger brother Earl an eye, for which he was remorseful for the remainder of his life.
* As a boy, Eisenhower developed a keen and enduring interest in exploring the outdoors. He learned about hunting and fishing, cooking, and card playing from an illiterate man named Bob Davis who camped on the Smoky Hill River. While his mother was against war, it was her collection of history books that first sparked Eisenhower's early and lasting interest in military history. He persisted in reading the books in her collection and became a voracious reader on the subject. Other favorite subjects early in his education were arithmetic and spelling.
* At West Point, Eisenhower relished the emphasis on traditions and on sports, but was less enthusiastic about the hazing, though he willingly accepted it as a plebe. He was also a regular violator of the more detailed regulations and finished school with a less than stellar discipline rating. Academically, Eisenhower's best subject by far was English. Otherwise, his performance was average, though he thoroughly enjoyed the typical emphasis of engineering on science and mathematics.
* Eisenhower later served as junior varsity football coach and cheerleader. He graduated in the middle of the class of 1915, which became known as "the class the stars fell on", because 59 members eventually became general officers.
* While Eisenhower was stationed in Texas, he met Mamie Doud of Boone, Iowa. They were immediately taken with each other. He proposed to her on Valentine's Day in 1916. A November wedding date in Denver was moved up to July 1 due to the pending U.S. entry into World War I. They moved many times during their first 35 years of marriage.
* The Eisenhowers had two sons. Doud Dwight "Icky" Eisenhower (1917–1921) died of scarlet fever at the age of three. Eisenhower was mostly reluctant to discuss his death. Their second son, John Eisenhower (1922–2013), was born in Denver, Colorado. John served in the United States Army, retired as a brigadier general, became an author and served as U.S. Ambassador to Belgium from 1969 to 1971. Coincidentally, John graduated from West Point on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He married Barbara Jean Thompson on June 10, 1947. John and Barbara had four children: David, Barbara Ann, Susan Elaine and Mary Jean. David, after whom Camp David is named, married Richard Nixon's daughter Julie in 1968.
* Eisenhower was a golf enthusiast later in life, and he joined the Augusta National Golf Club in 1948. He played golf frequently during and after his presidency and was unreserved in expressing his passion for the game, to the point of golfing during winter; he ordered his golf balls painted black so he could see them better against snow on the ground. He had a small, basic golf facility installed at Camp David, and became close friends with the Augusta National Chairman Clifford Roberts, inviting Roberts to stay at the White House on numerous occasions. Roberts, an investment broker, also handled the Eisenhower family's investments.
* *Angels in the Outfield* was Eisenhower's favorite movie. His favorite reading material for relaxation were the Western novels of Zane Grey. With his excellent memory and ability to focus, Eisenhower was skilled at card games. He learned poker, which he called his "favorite indoor sport", in Abilene.
* Prior to being elected President, Eisenhower served as president of Columbia University, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, and was the first Supreme Commander of NATO.
* During his two terms in office, Eisenhower approved $25 Billion to be used 41,000 miles of highway in America, arranged a truce in Korea, created NASA, and admitted Hawaii and Alaska to the Union, becoming the first president to oversee 50 states.
* A favorite place to get away, the Presidential retreat known as Camp David, was named after Eisenhower's grandson.
* In his farewell address to the nation, he expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers, which he dubbed "the military–industrial complex".
* Historical evaluations of his presidency place him among the upper tier of American presidents.

## References

* https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Eisenhower-1