We are pleased to welcome David Eisenhower who will talk to us a little bit about general eisenhowers military service and how he developed into a leader and eventually led to him being president. I always allow our speakers to introduce themselves and tell us what they want us to know about them. So i will turn this over to you, david. David thank you very much. Good to talk with you. I am use to looking into a screen but im talking to my classroom. We just had a three hour class on a president ial speech that broke up several minutes ago and i think for accommodating me. There was a several minute overlap in this program but we were able to resolve it. For myself, i am grandson of Dwight Eisenhower. I have spent a fair amount of time in abilene. Mary is living there now. This is a town that probably more than any other place in america reminds me of the town i grew up in. Gettysburg is on route 30 which turns into route 70 about a mile and a half north of where you all are. In the eisenhowers really shuttled between the two. They lived in gettysburg when i was growing up because of the proximity to new york and washington. But they decided to situate their library in abilene. So i spent a fair amount of time in abilene over the years. One is eisenhower war published by random house, and the second is going home to glory published in 2011 by simon schuster. These are books that bookend the eisenhower presidency. I will explain how those books came about. I went to amherst. Im a graduate of George Washington law school. Over the last 35 years or so, i have been a fellow at university of pennsylvania. And here, i teach Political Science communications. And i run a program here called the institute for Public Service. We provide kind of an alternative to the great business school. We have Public Service minded people that come to this school and its our job to inspire them. We have a unique feature in our program. We send students, everybody in our classes to the library of Congress National archives. To do primary research on speeches. And i have had a policy of not sending people to the Eisenhower Library because i would be prejudiced in the sense that i would be an impossible editor on any eisenhower project. I also dont want students to think that they are pleasing me or displeasing me by choice of topics. Ive made a couple of exceptions. Every exception i have made has been a use university project. It is one of the great facilities in the world. The only thing i would say is they match each other. I think abilene is the best possible place to do research on the presidency. Our topic tonight is at ease. The military eisenhower, the making of an officer and there is a lot of speculation on this topic because not a lot is known about Dwight Eisenhowers early years. Looking at the subject in the abstract, how he became a military officer is really a question of nature or nurture. Was it a role he was educated into or born into . I think mary would back me up on this. When we lived in gettysburg. With my father and my grandfather nearby, i grew up sort of attending a seamless seminar on military history. I wouldve called my grandfather a natural. The Gettysburg National park is a special place. And in the sense he had served, i think just the inspirational setting, the association between gettysburg and white eyes and hours test, the normandy battle, they are in a sense, parallel event. Normandy is the 20th century gettysburg in many ways. I think at some level, associating Dwight Eisenhower to this convenient place between new york and washington. Anyway, it was kind of a substitute for talking about world war ii. I was not discouraged from learning about world war ii but one of the reason i took it up was to fill in gaps. I was conscious that the Second World War and the european gator was something that my grandfather and father had in common that i was not a part of. The subject that they declined to discuss casually, but they discussed with enthusiasm the american civil war. We are approaching centennials of the various events. Publishers are turning out book after book after book so there is something to discuss every week. And i get the sense from both my father and my grandfather as military people. And we had no doubt about the importance of the war. We were surrounded by war figures. There is kind of a family story that we all tell. The year was 1954, 10 years after the normandy landings. Dwight eisenhower is president and his brother milton is president of penn state. Milton invites dwight to the commencement at penn state. This was a big event. Penn state is a huge diversity. And so what occurs there is a major logistical undertaking. June 1954, the event was threatened by rain and weather. And so there is a seem a scene that people describe. What are we going to do . He was standing off to the side and smiling and says june 6, 1944, i never worried about the rain. I think thats probably a pretty accurate description of what the war meant to him, never having to worry about the rain. Weve gone through a series of anniversaries. 2019 was the 75th anniversary. It really began a trend in 2014 when at the normandy battlefield , either a head of state or head of government and the european theater decided to turn up for the dday 70th anniversary. This is beyond significant. We have put in the ukrainian president. The belarusians were there, the germans were there for the first time. Every belligerent decided that normandy was the point at which they would commemorate the victory of world war ii together. It couldve been moscow, leningrad, a lot of places. They came together to identify that site is a central moment of world war ii. One of my favorites put it on june 6, 1940 4, 75 years ago, the nazi war machine was attacked on the beaches of normandy. Dday was and is the single greatest event for good ever wrought by mankind. Which is a critical moment in central to the legacy of Dwight Eisenhower. What kinds of things could have trained him or his contemporaries for this supreme moment in American History and all that followed it. To say i grew up on a Civil War Battlefield and listens to Civil War History would be one thing. I am a great believer in visiting battlefield. My grandparents did expose us to normandy and fairly spectacular way. Remember, 1962, i was 14 years old. My grandparents decided to take my sister and myself to europe on a 38day trip. Thanks to records i have been sent from the library, to the extent that eisenhower was on a Diplomatic Mission for president kennedy, but the point of this was to tour, for the last time, these areas that had been so faithful for Dwight Eisenhowers wife. We took a passenger ship, the queen elizabeth. We disembarked at a critical allied port. I remember we boarded a train and it was introducing me and and to the war. We made our way down the invasion front which is very long. We stopped at every town and we can remember the throngs that turned out. So forth, these people who had living memories of the war that just ended 17 years before. We continued on from there and we get a sense of europe in the postwar era and we went to paris several times. We went to the point where allied forces entered germany. We took a cruise up and down the rhine. On to denmark which was liberated by british forces, to sweden which is a side trip back to paris and back to england and my grandfather was actually able to call on churchill who was still alive. We met many of his wartime colleagues in scotland which was close to the airbase where eisenhower was a military commander flying from washington back england and several transatlantic flights. At least the place had a great deal of sentimental significance for him. This time were we observed the sadness of postwar europe. The tumble and the significance in the european mind. Hundreds of thousands of people turning out from paris, london, and so forth. Brought home to us not by a trip, but a lecture. I was raised and mary probably the same in a nonpolitical environment. Knowing my grandfather as a neighbor for a number of years, my legal residence was in gettysburg some years after he died. We grew up knowing them principally as grandparents. We were aware of the war heritage, of worse. I knew my grandfather as a painter, golfer, bridge player, shooter. I knew him as a president. I knew him as a farm manager. Dwight eisenhower was the first to give me my job at . 25 an hour working as a farm hand. He was also the first to fire me in the summer of 19 to three, five years into my duty. I overstayed a lunch hour but fired and rehired that afternoon on the golf course. He allowed all of his associates one mistake a year. By and large, this was an idyllic. Gettysburg was a special place in politics seemed far away. I became a target of one of the most famous practical jokes, which was my election by acclamation to the only partisan position ive ever been elected to were held in my life which was secretary treasury for the democrats. It was supports to be supposed to be a welcoming gesture and practical joke. There is a little story on it that appeared in the new york times. My parents found out about it and thought it was funny. Granddad did not think it was funny at all. The man i had known for years i became to see general eisenhower in those moments. Someone who had an important persona when he had decided to exhibit it. I would remain that way perhaps indefinitely to Amherst College in the fall of 1966. My current wife julie nixon was at wellington smith that same fall. I got to know her very quickly and we were engaged very rapidly. We became an item and it almost didnt happen, by the way. Imagine the awkwardness i felt presenting myself at her dorm in the early days. I am david howes David Eisenhower and i would like to see julie nixon. She would say my name is harry truman. But i persisted. So we got together and i experienced this great adventure of 1968, an election that really moved the United States beyond. It was an Election Year dominated by the vietnam war. The candidate i was with throughout was Richard Nixon who is campaigning on a promise to end the war in vietnam and when the peace. Suggesting the natural connection between victory and war and victory and peace were being rearranged as the United States moves to a post world war era which begins at a final point in the nixon presidency. One of the things i learned throughout that campaign, a lesson about president ial leadership is something that i applied and studying about my grandfather. That is the fact that the presidency is a Mission Oriented job. The mission of the 1968 campaign was coming to grips with the vietnam problem. They explain most things about the nixon presidency. The dynamics of the watergate resignation in many ways. But the thing that made things work was the ability of people to relate particulars to the general. And that is to concentrate on the main task at hand, to extract the United States from a losing effort in vietnam and doing so in a way that would ultimately win the peace. As Dwight Eisenhower put it, we succeed only in so far as we identify in war a single overriding objective. And experiencing the 1968 campaign, i did not realize it at the time but i was rehearsing the eisenhower book. The singular purpose is what stands out in the record of Dwight Eisenhower as a record in that conflict. That aspect of leadership is something that he came by how . Was it nature or nurture . Its a question that i consider gradually over time but never wrote anything formally. My original intent going into the writing field was to become a writer. Perhaps to become a journalist. One of things you do as a writer is write what you know about. And in the late 70s i was at a point in my life where i think i was nostalgic. I want to revisit this time in gettysburg so i entered a contract with random house to do a book on Dwight Eisenhower. This would have been a profile of him late presidency and early retirement years. And i came up with a manuscript on that pretty quickly. The problem was i could not start it. Random house was my it or, Jason Epstein was enthusiastic about what we had. If youre going to have a vivid portrait of a farmer, its not exactly poignant in the context of his hopes in 1960s. Above all, the resumption of the cold war in 1960 which greatly disappointed Dwight Eisenhower who became president unconvinced with the idea of bringing about the kind of reconstruction brought about after the u. S. Civil war. I found that the u2 affair really required me to go back to 1958 to the lebanese intervention. The brinksmanship over the u. S. And soviet. Sputnik events of 1957. I cannot tell that story without going back to the 1956 election. This was a fair and hungry which is a great melodrama. Clashes across the board and one of the high points of the cold war. I would have to go back to the geneva conference of 1955. The indochina war made me look at korea and required me to look at mccarthyism in the 1950 two election, and you get the idea. I keep all in back. I find myself committed to a much longer project than i anticipated. At one point, i did the logical thing and i tried to approach it from the other side. Dwight eisenhower was born on october 14, 1990 1890 in texas. That raises the question of nature, not necessarily nurture. Who was he early in life . There are a lot of problems that developed and theres also the question of context. This is abilene as we know, very close to the western frontier. This is something that Dwight Eisenhower as a young boy was imbued. It was part of his character. Think the late 19th century, it was probably very special, being an american anywhere. The individual hes often compared with is ulysses s grant. I do not recall my grandfather offering a lot of opinions on grant. He offered many opinions in defense of his lieutenants. But ulysses grants presidency begins as close to Dwight Eisenhowers birth as george w. Bush is to us today. He was born in a postgrant civil war environment. Grant is a very interesting speaker. A very interesting president in a very underrated president. The great and all girls kind of capture the spirit that Dwight Eisenhower was born into. His first inaugural, grant says, the young men of this country, those who from their age must the the rulers 25 years from now have a peculiar interest in maintaining the national honor. A moments reflection as to what will be our commanding influence and the nations of the earth. If they are only true to themselves, should inspire them with national pride. Four years later, he speaks thusly and a sort of forecasting dwight career. In the future, while i hold my present office, the subject of acquiring territory must have the support of people before i will move into any position looking towards the acquisition of new land. But i do not share in the apprehensions held by many as to the dangers of our government becoming weakened by reason of the expansion of american territory. Commerce, education, and the Rapid Transmission of thought and material had changed all of this. I do believe that our great maker is preparing the world in his own good time become one nation speaking one language and armies and navies will no longer be required. So he had these themes in america with Dwight Eisenhower as a young boy. America as kind of a city on a hill and preparing ourselves with great responsibility. And we are leading to kind of an international and noble civilization. The body it seems to me that the paradox and yet his greatest fame will be achieved serving overseas not as far. And so he is an american citizen and a citizen of the world. Who was he . I encountered all kinds of ambiguities. Theres very scant documentation of his boyhood. It covered a lot of sins. Dwight eisenhower was able to register at west point in june of 1911 listing tyler texas. Apparently its better to be from tyler. He called himself david Dwight Eisenhower. Theres no explanation for why he did that, particularly. He neglected to tell west point that he had played professional baseball in 1909 and 1910 which would have cost him his amateur status. An episode where red patterson asked general eisenhower at a 1947 giants game, he was that then director of a public relations. He said organized baseball has all kinds of rumors that you played pro ball and the story is you played under the alias of wilson in the kansas stately. There were two wilsons in that league. Which one was you . Dwight eisenhower the one that could hit. Thats the story he told me. Look at Kansas State League and you can see there are two wilsons. Another was a picture and another was a first baseman. Nobody knew the difference. Dwight eisenhower as a young man studied history and was imbued by the stories of general washington, general grant. Alexander the great. Whether Dwight Eisenhower was a reader or not, we dont know. He went to west point and we knew he was an outstanding athlete. The class of 1915 was loaded with football players. Dwight eisenhower gets injured, played the game of the century against carlisle. I believe his second year, he injured his knee and that knee injury permanently took him out of football. I am back from a trip to west point. Had lunch with several instructors and we were talking about west point war. Theres not a lot on file at the Eisenhower Library. His roommate kept a diary the whole time. So you can get sort of a picture of this fella, but it is somewhat indistinct. We do