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Dwight D. Eisenhower biography

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Quick Facts

  • NAME: Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • OCCUPATION: General, U.S. President, Journalist
  • BIRTH DATE: October 14, 1890
  • DEATH DATE: March 28, 1969
  • EDUCATION: Abilene High School, United States Military Academy at West Point, Command and General Staff School
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Denison, Texas
  • PLACE OF DEATH: Washington, D.C.
  • AKA: Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • Nickname: Ike
  • Full Name: Dwight David Eisenhower
  • AKA: Dwight Eisenhower

Best Known For

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States, promoted Atoms for Peace at the United Nations General Assembly in order to ease Cold War tensions.

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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.

Quotes

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

"There is—in world affairs—a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

"There must be no second-class citizens in this country."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.

In Abilene, Dwight’s three-year-old brother Paul died of diphtheria when Dwight was six years old. Despite the tragedy, Dwight formed happy childhood memories in Abilene that he would cherish throughout his life. Among these were his days playing baseball and football at Abilene High School.

After Eisenhower graduated from high school in 1909, he joined his father and uncle at the Bell Springs Creamery while also moonlighting as a fireman. Eisenhower used the money he earned to pay his younger brother Edgar’s tuition at the University of Michigan. The brothers had a deal: After two years, they’d switch places—with Edgar then working to support Eisenhower’s college education. Luckily for Edgar, he never had to live up to his end of the deal. In 1911 Dwight landed an appointment at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, where attendance was free of charge. Once again he was a star on the football field, until a series of knee injuries forced him to stop playing. In 1915 Eisenhower proudly graduated from West Point at the top of his class, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.

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.

For the first few years of Eisenhower’s military career, he and Mamie moved from post to post throughout Texas, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 1917, Mamie gave birth to the couple’s first son, Doud Dwight. That same year, the United States entered WWI. Although Eisenhower hoped to be commissioned overseas, he was instead appointed to run a tank training center at Camp Colt in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Throughout the war and afterward, Eisenhower continued to rise through the ranks. By 1920 he was promoted to major, after having volunteered for the Tanks Corps, in the War Department’s first transcontinental motor convoy, the previous year.

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