The 34th President lived rather modestly after finally retiring. He was the Supreme Allied Commander of our forces in Europe during the Second World War and the head of NATO forces after that. He “retired” to become the president of Columbia University until being the President of the United States.
The first time I heard of Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was in
November 1952 when my mother took me inside the voting booth at our Upper West
Side polling place. She voted for the other guy, Adlai Stevenson. Adlai was
crushed – twice – becoming the Democrat's sacrificial lamb in 1956. 1952 marked the first
time a Republican was president in three decades. And Ike, as everyone called
him, was also wanted by the Democratic Party to be their nominee.
We recently toured the battlefield at Gettysburg and the Eisenhowers spent their last years at a farm near the site
of that conflict. Ike, and his wife Mamie, had lived in an estimated 40 homes
during his military career and had some rather fancy temporary housing for
eight years in Washington DC. But the Gettysburg farm was the couple’s first
and only home.
The home was rather modest.
In fact, he had to write a book, Crusade in Europe, to afford to
purchase it. I had read a first edition of the book about a quarter century ago
from my mother’s estate. But alas, it has been lost.
We had a guide, another New York social studies teacher, who
reminded me of some of the events of his Presidency, such as the Suez crisis. The Israelis,
British and French invaded Egypt to gain control of the Suez Canal without
Eisenhower’s knowledge. Ike was livid and had strongly warned Britain not to
invade. He threatened serious economic damage unless the three invaders pulled
out, including major financial damage to Britain’s economy. Historians say that
the crisis signified the end of Great Britain’s role as a one of the world’s
major powers. Egypt was allied with the Soviet Union at that time and the
threat of a possible nuclear war was realistic. Yet in any high school history
course, this crisis isn’t even mentioned. It drives me crazy that events I
consider as touchstones in my lifetime, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the
JFK assination, the 1968 assinations of Malcomb X, Martin Luther King and Bobby
Kennedy, Woodstock and the first lunar landing get so little attention. The
wars in Korea and Vietnam have been consolidated into a day’s study of “the
cold war era.”
But Ike’s role in history has been well established and I
need not go any further into that. What I was astounded to discover was how
ordinary and simple his home was.
When the Eisenhowers purchased the home circa 1950, the
house was falling apart and had to be completely rebuilt. In fact, there was a
colonial-era house found underneath the house. The couple built a small stone
house next to the main brick house and then spent much time renovating the main
house. But the house, when completed, was modest. The main living room was only
slightly larger than most people’s living rooms. And the other rooms were all
within the normal range. There are eight bedrooms, but two were allocated to a
maid and an aide. In addition to the master bedroom, Ike had a smaller bedroom which doubled as a study. What surprises me is that the home is so simple. Ike and Mamie spent a lot of
time on the back porch, doing things most people did in that era. They watched black-and-white television. Ike loved westerns while Mamie was obsessed with the soap
operas. There was a card table, and Ike loved to paint. The house has several
of his paintings and it is estimated that about 250 paintings are in private
circulation. Move into the bathrooms and you’ll see nothing special. A simple
toilet, sink and bathtub were the mainstays throughout the house. The kitchen
had appliances of the era, such as a mixer. The
bedrooms had portable radios – large ones, many times the size of today’s alarm
clocks. The beds were generally twin size.
About the only special thing in the house was some wallpaper
Mamie had put in. It contained the great seals of every state. The pattern was
a standard one offered by the manufacturer, and the company simply changed the
background color to suit her tastes, which was usually a light pink.
It’s such a contrast to the way we view the homes of former presidents. The Clintons live in a mansion in an exclusive enclave outside New York City. The Bush families own a sprawling ranch. The Kennedy compound in Hyannis is large and isolated. But the Eisenhower family simply craved privacy. The farm had no identification that a former president lived there. Today, the driveway had a “do not enter sign at the street,
but nothing to indicate the former president lived there. About the only
concession to the life he led was a small Secret Service building next to a
barn.
According to our guide, Ike loved to take visitors to the Gettysburg battlefield and he also had a small golf hole installed. But it was a working
farm as he raised Angus cattle and frequently showed them.
Ike was a president who apparently cared more about what was
right rather than himself. What a contrast to the very rich candidates of the
election of 2016. Could you imagine The Donald or Hillary spending their time in a manure-laden barn instead of being full of bull?
