Eisenhower Library & Museum: Abilene, KS

Eisenhower Museum

Ike's Wartime Staff

At the Eisenhower Center, on the same grounds as IKE’s boyhood home in Abilene, KS, is his museum and library—two separate buildings. The museum is filled with memorabilia from the WW II years and the Eisenhower presidency (1952-1960). With U.S. entry into WW I in 1917, Ike requested an overseas assignment. Instead, he was destined to be a training instructor and saw no combat. He attained the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel, but with the Armistice on Nov. 11, 1918, he was returned to his regular rank of captain. During peacetime he attended the General Staff School and the Army War College. He once served on the staff of GEN Douglas MacArthur. Just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, his command of a large scale Army maneuver would give him his first star. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, BG Eisenhower was summoned to Washington as Assistant Chief of Staff for War Plans. In March of 1942, he received his second star (major general). Promotions were rapid in wartime! And in July of that year he was promoted to lieutenant general (three stars) as the commander of Allied forces in Europe. Eisenhower never commanded a combat unit in the field throughout his career.

Ike's Staff Car: His cozy relationship with his
attractive female Irish driver was controversial.

IKE commanded the invasion of North Africa, Sicily and Italy and by February 1943 was promoted to four-star general. In December of that year President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him Supreme Allied Commander. The greatest invasion in history, known as Operation Overlord, would be in the making and take place on June 6, 1944, D-Day. In December, he was made one of only five five-star generals in American history. (The others were George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Omar Bradley and Henry [Hap] Arnold.) In May of 1945, Eisenhower accepted the surrender of Germany. The war in Europe was over. In November he became the new Army Chief of Staff under President Truman. In 1948 he resigned from the Army and assumed the role of President of Columbia University until 1950. He took a leave of absence to accept a military position as NATO Commander in Europe until May 1952.

Ike & Mamie at the White House

During his run for President of the United States, the media learned that Ike had never confessed a Christian faith, nor had he ever been the member of a church. His response was that he would take care of that when he got around to it. Just days after his inauguration in 1953, he was baptized and joined a Presbyterian church in Washington D.C. During the Korean Conflict, he signed a truce that brought an armed peace along the border of South Korea that same year. We were graduating from high school at that time; the Cold War with the Soviet Union was in full swing. Jerry enrolled in ROTC his freshman year in college thinking that if he had to go to war, he wanted to go as an officer. 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. That same year Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in Denver, Colorado. After seven weeks he left the hospital, and doctors were optimistic regarding his recovery. In November 1956 he was elected for his second presidential term. That would be our first chance to vote. It was a proud, exciting November day when we strolled to the polls, hand-in-hand, as seniors at Bowling Green State University to cast our votes for IKE as 34^th U.S. President.

In domestic policy IKE continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs fostered by Democrat predecessors while 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 which Truman had begun. "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. The Interstate Highway System was perhaps his greatest peacetime accomplishment.

Ike and Mamie's Tomb at Eisenhower Center

Before he left office in January 1961, for his farm in Gettysburg, PA 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 on March 28, 1969. Ironically, he lived four years longer than Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, his opponent in the 1956 election. Adlai had insinuated during the campaign that IKE’s health should be a concern to voters.

IKE was only an average student in high school and West Point, but he studied hard and excelled in courage, persistence, and keen insight. He was an excellent athlete, avid golfer, and completed many paintings during his retirement years. We continue to display prints of two of these on our living room wall.

Five Star General Dwight D. Eisenhower who would
become President of the United States

When this library is filled with documents, and scholars come here to probe into some of the facts of the past half century, I hope that they, as we today, are concerned primarily with the ideals, principles, and trends that provide guides to a free, rich, peaceful future in which all peoples can achieve ever-rising levels of human well-being." Dwight Eisenhower at the groundbreaking for his library in 1959.