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Things have never been more like the way they are today in history. Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order. I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens. I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age. When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do - lose. Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. It is far more important to be able to hit the target than it is to haggle over who makes a weapon or who pulls a trigger.

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Dwight David Eisenhower BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS:

Synopsis

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas. In 1945 he was appointed U.S. Army chief of staff. He became the first Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1951. In 1952 he was elected U.S. president. He served two terms before retiring to Gettysburg in 1961. Eisenhower died on March 28, 1969, at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Early Life

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas, to David Jacob Eisenhower and Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower. Dwight was the third of his parents’ seven sons. His parents had moved from Abilene, Kansas, to Denison, Texas, before he was born. In Denison, the family lived in a tiny house near the railroad tracks while David cleaned train engines for a living.

When Dwight was a year and a half old, his family moved back to Abilene so David could take a better job at his brother-in-law's creamery.

Military Career

After graduation, Eisenhower was stationed in Texas, where he met and started dating 18-year-old Mamie Geneva Doud from Denver, Colorado. The couple married nine months later, on July 1, 1916. Eisenhower was promoted to first lieutenant on his wedding day.

U.S. Presidency

In 1952 Eisenhower retired from active service and returned to Abilene to announce his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination. On November 4, 1952, after winning the election by a landslide, Eisenhower was elected the United States' 34th president. His domestic policy picked up where Roosevelt's New Deal and Fair Deal programs left off. In foreign policy, Eisenhower made reducing Cold War tensions through military negotiation a main focus of his administration.

Later Life

Following his presidency, Eisenhower retired to a farmhouse in Gettysburg with his wife, Mamie. Although he had resigned his commission as a general when he became president, when he left office his successor, President Kennedy, reactivated his commission. He also kept an office at Gettysburg College for the remainder of his life, where he held meetings and wrote his memoirs.

Dwight David Eisenhower SENATE CAREER:

Dwight D. Eisenhower, five-star general and thirty-fourth president of the United States, was born in Denison, Texas, to parents of modest means who moved to Abilene, Kansas, in 1891. After graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1915, Eisenhower was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in Texas where he married Mamie Doud in 1916. He served stateside during World War I, overseeing a training center in Pennsylvania. During the inter-war years he established an impressive reputation as a student of military science, gaining the rank of brigadier general. Consequently in December 1941, just after Pearl Harbor, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall tapped Eisenhower to head the War Plans Division, concentrating in Africa and Europe, and in 1943 President Franklin Roosevelt named him supreme commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). Eisenhower earned the rank of a five-star general and after the war became army chief of staff. In 1950, President Truman appointed him supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

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