EISENHOWER, 34th, 1953-61

Dwight David Eisenhower was bald.

His prominent forehead, and broad mouth made his head seem larger than it was. He had a wonderfully expressive face and it was impossible for him to conceal his feelings. He was only a little above average in height and weight.

Failing to discover anything about him that portended greatness, journalists portrayed him as a good man. His beliefs were those of Main Street. Eisenhower and Mamie became engaged on St. Valentine's Day, 1916. Like the people in the old fairy tales they lived happily ever after.

He was the third regular army man to become President. He was the first President to be born in Texas and the first of German ancestry. He was the first President to hold a pilot's license. And he was the first to hold a televised news conference.

Louis Marx, the Toy King, said he had never received one good idea for a toy from a general. "You're on pages one, two and three of every newspaper," Marx said to Eisenhower in 1946. "You're the political Coca-Cola."

In 1959, Robert Woodruff, President of the Coca-Cola Company, scolded Eisenhower for a photo in which the President sipped from a Coke bottle through a straw — a sissy way to imbibe. Eisenhower responded, "when I tip up a bottle of Coca-Cola for a good drink it last only seconds — with a straw, a lot of talk and more walking, I was able to contact more photographers and newspaper correspondents."

In March 1949, Eisenhower's physician advised he cut his smoking from four packs to one pack of cigarettes per day. Eisenhower decided that counting his cigarettes was worse than not smoking at all. Frequently asked how he quit; he replied, all he did was put smoking out of his mind. "It helped," he would add with a grin, "to develop a scornful attitude toward those weaklings who did not have the will power to break their enslavement. I nursed to the utmost...my ability to sneer." His motto was "peace through understanding."

From 1955 to 1968, Eisenhower had 7 heart attacks and 14 cardiac arrests. After the first infarct, his press secretary opened Eisenhower's oxygen tent to ask how much information should be released at the upcoming press conference. Eisenhower was said to have replied that they should tell the public everything. As a result, Dr. Paul Dudley White discussed the President's bowel movements and relevant nursing care, leading to criticisms of indiscretion.

While in hospital, Eisenhower wore red pajamas with 5 gold stars on the collar. When told of the need for surgery, his immediate reaction was a wry smile. "Okay, if that's the way it has to be. If there's going to be another invasion, I want to know about it in advance and that it's coming off on schedule."

Eisenhower suffered from Crohn's disease. On the day of his fatal infarct he ate sausage, bacon, mush, and hotcakes for breakfast and a hamburger with raw onion for lunch. When Eisenhower experienced indigestion after lunch, he blamed the onion.

d. March 28, 1969 (Washington, DC) at 78 of congestive heart failure.