Resident Shares Memories of Meeting President Eisenhower

From Tom Mortenson:

With the visit of Gov. Mitt Romney’s youngest son, Craig Romney, to Temple Terrace, and knowing that three of Romney’s sons were Eagle Scouts, I reflected back on my first encounter with a president of the United States. It was in 1960, at the National Boy Scout Jamboree in Colorado Springs, CO, where I had the opportunity to be selected to visit with President Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower as one of a handful of Boy Scouts attending the Jamboree.

Ike was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. Among his many accomplishments were:

1. He sponsored and signed the Civil Rights Bill of 1957. This was the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction followed by a second in 1960. He was a firm believer in fighting racial discrimination, declaring: “There must be no second class citizens in this country.”
2. He gave birth to our interstate highway system.
3. He balanced the budget, not just once, but three times.
4. He ended the Korean War.
5. He kept the world at peace. Ike dealt calmly and rationally as he was confronted with major Cold War crisis every year he was in office: Korea, Vietnam, Formosa, Suez, Hungary, Berlin, and the U-2.

But here’s the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say. The first time Ike was in a polling booth was when he ran for president in 1952. There were those who hoped he would do this in 1948 when Harry Truman tried to interest Eisenhower in a run for the presidency. In a private meeting, Truman proposed that he and Eisenhower run together on the Democratic ticket, with Eisenhower as the presidential candidate and Truman in second position.

Eisenhower rejected this offer and ran as a Republican in 1952. In 1952, Eisenhower won with 55 percent of the popular vote and a landslide in the Electoral College, with 442 votes to Stevenson’s 89.

In 1956, Ike won an even more impressive victory than he had four years earlier. He carried 41 states and received nearly 58 percent of the popular vote.

I was 12 when I met him, and it was really something to talk with him. I shook his hand—don't recall either of us being nervous. He had a commanding presence—more like a grandfather than a man of power. His wife, Mamie, was not with him at the Jamboree, and I remember mentioning that my grandmother on my Dad’s side was also named Mamie.

Later in life, when I was at the Army War College at Carlisle, PA, I had the chance to visit their home and farm at Gettysburg. The ranger told me about how the retired president did not have secret service protection until after the Kennedy assassination.

He said that they would have former military personnel show up at their doorstep, who said they served under him somewhere. These men would introduce their wives and children to the retired general, and either Ike or Mamie would invite them in for coffee and Mamie would make cookies or serve some desert for all to enjoy.

Wonder if our nation will ever have that type of down-to-earth leadership ever again.