Mamie Daud Eisenhower, United States First
Lady, signature in black marker on 1975 Christening of the Dwight
D. Eisenhower CVAN-69 Carrier, cachet in blue, unaddressed fresh
&
VF.
Born:
14 November,
1896
Boone , Iowa
Father:
John Sheldon Doud ,
born 18 November, 1870, Rome, New York, meatpacker, died 23 June,
1951
Mother:
Elvira Carlson "Minnie" Doud, born 13 May, 1878,
Boone, Iowa; married 10 August, 1894, Boone, Iowa; died 28
September, 1960, Denver,
Colorado
Ancestry:
English, Swedish; Mamie Eisenhower's paternal
ancestors in the United States extended back ten and eleven
generations to England. They settled in Connecticut for over one
hundred years before migrating west to New YorkState where
MamieEisenhower's father was born, in the city of Rome. All of
MamieEisenhower's maternal ancestors were Swedish; her grandfather
Carl Severin Jeremiasson, born in Halland County, Sweden in 1841,
and her grandmother, JohannaMariaAndersdotter, born in Fjarar,
Sweden in 1841, immigrated to the United States and settled in
Boone, Iowa.
Birth Order and
Siblings:
Second of four children; three sisters;
EleanorCarlsonDoud (27 June, 1895 - 8 January, 1912), EdaMaeDoud (23 December, 1900 - 9
November, 1918), Mabel Frances "Mike" Doud Gill Moore (6 October,
1902 - 15 October,
1988)
Physical
Appearance:
Auburn
hair, blue eyes, 5'1"
Religious
Affiliation:
Presbyterian
Education:
Jackson Elementary School , 1902-1905, Colorado Springs, Colorado; Corona
[Elementary] School, 1906-1910, Denver, Colorado; East
Denver High School, sporadic attendance 1910-1914, Denver,
Colorado; The Mulholland [High] School, sporadic attendance
1910-1914, San Antonio, Texas; Miss Wolcott School for
Girls, 1914-1915, Denver, Colorado, a finishing school; Miss
Hayden?s Dance School, no date known, Denver,
Colorado
Occupation before
Marriage:
Mamie Eisenhower 's
early years were spent in a series of different towns and regions
in the Midwest and Southwest. Her father relocated the family from
Boone to Cedar Rapids, Iowa when she was only nine months old. In
1902, due to the frail health of her elder sister Eleanor the
family relocated first to Pueblo, Colorado, then to Colorado
Springs. In 1905, they settled permanently in Denver, Colorado. Due
to her mother's dislike of the severe winters, the Douds purchased
another home, in San Antonio, Texas and began spending the cold
months there in 1910. Thus Mamie Eisenhower split her high school
educations between two schools, one in Denver, the other in San
Antonio. From childhood on, Mamie Eisenhower was especially close
to all members of her family and they were extremely social in
their communities, often making their home a center of activity for
other children and families. Mamie Eisenhower had little interest
in academics, but her father, a successful businessman, taught her
the value of money and she early on developed an ease and skill
with budget and finance. Thus, while she was raised with creature
comforts including household help, jewelry and fine clothing, she
remained extremely conscientious about cost and was expert at
saving money. She played the piano, the electric organ and enjoyed
dancing, bridge and
canasta.
Marriage:
19 years
old to Dwight David Eisenhower (14 October, 1890 - 28 March, 1969),
West Point graduate, second Lieutenant U.S. Army, on 1 July, 1916,
Doud home, Denver, Colorado. The couple met during the winter when
the Douds lived in San Antonio, Texas and Eisenhower was stationed
at nearby Fort Sam Houston. Following their wedding, they lived in
the officers? barracks
there, the first of 33 homes that they lived in during the next 37
years of Eisenhower's military career
assignments
Children:
Two sons; Doud Dwight (Icky)
Eisenhower (24 September, 1917 - 2 January, 1921); John Sheldon
Doud Eisenhower (born 3 August,
1922)
A decorated hero, and later
U. S. ambassador to Belgium and military historian, John Eisenhower
served as a White House aide to his father. His son David married
Julie Nixon, the daughter of the 37th
President.
Occupation after
Marriage:
Being the spouse of a career
military officer who placed his duty to the Army and his country
above his family life proved difficult for Mamie Eisenhower
throughout the first thirty-five years of her marriage. The 1920
death of her first son, and her frequent trips back to the comfort
of her parents' home created tension between her and "Ike" as he
was always known. Nevertheless, she determined to establish a new
home for him in whatever place he had been assigned, including
Panama, Paris and the Philippines. Much of her time was spent with
other military wives and she sometimes involved herself in projects
benefiting the communities in which they lived such as establishing
a free hospital for Panamanian women who were racially barred from
the U.S. Army hospitals.
During World War II,
Eisenhower became Supreme Allied Commander of the European front
and famously staged the D-Day Invasion of June 5, 1944. Promoted to
five-star general, Ike led the final assault on Germany and
accepted their surrender on May 7, 1945. Throughout the war years,
Mamie Eisenhower lived in Washington at the Wardman Park Hotel. She
didn?t see her husband for nearly three years and it was a
difficult time. She had no secretarial staff yet was the subject of
thousands of letters and press inquiries. Her private life was
confined to her family and a handful of other Army wives and she
volunteered as a waitress at an Army canteen in Washington, once
serving coffee to an unwitting First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She
also suffered from depression and other anxieties, fearing for her
husband's well-being but also sometimes uncertain what to make of
both printed and whispered suggestions that he was having a love
affair with his Army jeep driver and aide, Kay Summersby. History
has not supported the story. The Eisenhowers wrote each other
often, and Ike?s devotion to his wife continued to grow over the
years.
After the war, Eisenhower
served as President of Columbia University, then as Commander of
NATO; Mamie Eisenhower thus also established homes in New York City
and on the outskirts of Paris,
respectively.
Presidential Campaign
and Inauguration:
The 1952 marked the first
presidential campaign in which the spouses of a presidential ticket
were consciously marketed to women voters as part of a larger
effort. Thus along with the Republican effort to enlist housewives
as supporters and party volunteer workers by translating political
issues into those most women of the era could relate to such as
grocery bills or having their sons, husbands sent to the Korean War
front, there were also "Mamie for First Lady," "We Want Mamie," and
"I Like Mamie Too" buttons (the last one a play on the popular "I
Like Ike" slogan). Mamie Eisenhower was an energetic and
enthusiastic figure on her husband's 77-stop train tour of the
nation, the candidate often finishing a speech by asking a crowd,
"How'd you like to meet my Mamie?" a cue for her to appear and
wave. On the whistlestop, she even willingly restaged a scene of
waving to reporters and photographers in her bathrobe and slippers.
Behind the scenes, she often listened to him rehearse his speeches
and sometimes gave suggestions to edit them in a way that spoke
more directly to the common citizen, in simple and direct language.
She also maintained a degree of control over who came onto the
campaign train, into their personal car to meet the candidate.
During their layovers in hotels, when the campaign manager assigned
her rooms that were apart from her husband's suite, she overruled
him. In both the 1952 and the 1956 presidential campaigns of her
husband, Mamie Eisenhower also made brief appearances on television
commercials and live broadcasts with
him.
Mamie Eisenhower was the
first president's wife known to be kissed openly in public by her
husband following his Inaugural ceremony. She encouraged her
husband to compose an Inaugural prayer which he recited at the
ceremony and also strongly approved the decision to invite
African-American opera singer Marian Anderson to sing at the
ceremony. She also arranged for the accommodations of her
African-American maids to stay in Washington, still segregated at
the time, and attend all the Inaugural
events.
First
Lady:
20 January, 1953 ? 20 January,
1961
56 years
old
Mamie Eisenhower viewed
her role as First Lady without complication as being simply the
wife of the president and the hostess of the White House. Indeed,
few First Ladies seemed to better reflect the general role,
priorities and values of most middle-aged middle class American
women during her White House tenure than did MamieEisenhower in the
1950's: family, home, entertaining, and personal
appearance.
With her experience as a
high-ranking military spouse, Mamie Eisenhower knew well how to
manage a large staff, demanding nothing short of excellence from
them yet expressing personal, familial warmth for them. She was
famous for not only ordering that the mansion's carpets and rugs be
kept meticulously clean and clear of even shoe marks but for also
ordering up fancily-decorated cakes for practically every occasion,
including the birthdays of the domestic staff member. With her
favorite color of pink showing up frequently in her public wardrobe
and in the décor of the private quarters of the White House,
she helped to make it a popular color for textiles of the early
1950's, one paint company even offering "First Lady Pink" among its
pallet. Also copied were her famous bangs, a short hairstyle she
adopted in the 1920's at a time when she rekindled her marriage;
for sentimental reasons she would not change the look, despite even
public letters advising her to do so. Always coordinating her
accessories, she was voted onto the nation's best-dressed list for
clothing and hats. In the mansion, she spent much time on
overseeing flower arrangements using her preferred gladiolas. For
holidays like Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and Halloween, she
decorated the state rooms with paper decorations and had seasonal
music piped in. Even her personal tastes reflected the majority of
the nation: she was an avid television fan of the comedy series "I
Love Lucy" and the "Milton Berle Show" and watched them from a
porthole television set cut into the wall of the upstairs hall of
the private quarters.
The Eisenhowers entertained a
record number of heads of state in post-war era but even the
President's wish to use the rooms of the mansion had to first be
approved by the First Lady who kept the schedule for its use. With
her personal preference for light popular music, she hosted the
first White House performance of musical theater music, with
selections from hit shows then on Broadway. It was in the context
of her role as hostess that Mamie Eisenhower became a more
political symbol in several instances. During the 1953 annual Vice
President's dinner to which the entire U.S. Senate was
traditionally invited, Mamie Eisenhower did not permit an
invitation to be sent to the controversial Republican Senator
JosephMcCarthy of Wisconsin, then famous for his hearings on
un-American activities. It proved to be a useful way for the
President to distance himself from McCarthy without entirely
alienating the more conservative wing of his party. Mamie
Eisenhower also presided over a dinner and reception at which full
protocol honors were accorded to the president of Haiti when he
visited as the first world leader of African heritage to come to
the White House.
Perhaps her most dramatic role
as First Lady occurred in the hours and days following the
September 24, 1955 heart attack suffered by the President at her
mother's home in Denver. Mamie Eisenhower immediately contacted the
White House physician and cooperated in helping to keep her husband
warm before he was transported to Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in a
hastily created presidential suite there. For several weeks while
he recuperated, Mamie Eisenhower took full charge of the
administrative flow of work to the President, reviewing the
requests for visitors and meetings, limiting his schedule according
to medical advice and strictly managing his diet. She also assumed
not only her mail but the President's, responding to citizens and
world leaders alike. She played a similar role following his June
9, 1956, emergency ileitis operation, although it was not as
dangerous a condition as the heart attack had been. In the days
that followed his November 25, 1957, mild stroke, from which he
rapidly recovered, Mamie Eisenhower refused to permit the President
to attend a state dinner that was scheduled that evening and
successfully insisted that Vice President Richard Nixon take his
place.
Mamie Eisenhower was not
known to voice objections to any of her husband's major
presidential decisions. In the case of his sending federal troops
to ensure the integration of Little RockHigh School in 1957, she
was privately quite defensive of what she viewed as the rightness
of his action. After three decades in the non-partisan military,
Mamie Eisenhower began her tenure as First Lady without either the
intense loyalty to political party or a strong interest in the
Washington power hierarchy. She maintained many friendships with
Democrats and was apt to admire a political figure, such as
Democrat Averell Harriman, without regard to partisanship. One of
the few instances during her eight years as First Lady when she
campaigned for a candidate other than her husband was on behalf of
an old friend from Denver, Ellen Harris, then running as a
Republican for a seat in Congress. She expressed the view that "We
women have to have a voice in
things."
Despite her strict view that
married women should not pursue careers outside of the home, Mamie
Eisenhower did not equate this with docility. From her own personal
experiences, she believed adamantly that women were superior to men
when it came to real estate, savings, investment and purchasing
decisions, never underestimating the importance of women's economic
power. "Your independence," she wrote in "If I Were a Bride Today,"
an article that appeared in Today's Woman magazine,
"depend[s] on you?[the only way] to avoid debt?is for the husband
to give his wife the paycheck and let her be responsible for it?If
he sets up charge accounts and pays the bills?things are almost
certain to get out of hand?" She herself practiced this in the
White House. She encouraged the kitchen staff to use boxed
cake-mixes and Jell-O for both efficiency and lower cost. Often she
scanned the daily newspapers to see what bulk food staples were on
sale and prompted the housekeeper to make such purchases for not
only her own family but for state
entertaining.
Mamie Eisenhower held a press conference on March 11,
1953, just weeks after becoming First Lady but documentation shows
that President Eisenhower's advisors opposed even the slightest
suggestion of the First Lady having official responsibilities
beyond that of hostess and James Hagerty, his press secretary,
cancelled any prospect of further press conferences. He also halted
an effort for her to support public television, fearing it might
raise questions of government sponsoring propaganda. The
President's Chief of Staff Sherman Adams prevented an effort to
streamline and formalize her relationship with women's clubs across
the country. Although she voiced her objection to the West Wing
seeking to control her public life, Mamie Eisenhower ultimately
acquiesced.
One way in which Mamie
Eisenhower kept an unfettered line to the public was through her
extensive correspondence. She believed strongly that each person
that took the time to write to her deserved a personal response and
she signed tens of thousands of letters during her tenure. On
occasion she exercised some small political influence when she
passed on inquiries that she supported for military housing,
enlistment deferments, transfers, pensions, and civil service
employment, and even suggestions such as a tattoo of blood type for
servicemen, to Administration officials. Another venue were her
frequent statements of public support to military or
defense-related crises and issues of her era such as support for
the United Nations because women "knew well the anxiety and anguish
that war brings," and increasing blood donations for gamma globulin
to prevent "the crippling and deformity that so often follows a
polio attack." In her Civil Defense statement, the First Lady noted
that "any housewife may be tomorrow's heroine?.It is difficult in
the midst of our present day lives, filled with so many home and
community activities, to believe that an atomic attack could happen
here. It can happen. We must be
prepared?"
Part of her large commitment
to entertaining was also serving as the President's ceremonial
stand-in. In the post-war era, the President had less time for the
ceremonial appearances many of his predecessors had acceded to; in
Eisenhower's case, the First Lady began to assume many of the group
and association appearances previously made by a President. Many
large women's groups requested a meeting with the popular Mamie
Eisenhower and she expended great time and effort to do so, often
spending several hours a day during the tourist season, either
shaking hands or waving and speaking from some stairs to
delegations that snaked their way through the state
rooms.
In later years, Eisenhower
would concede that he often consulted Mamie Eisenhower's view on
issues he was facing, calling her "my invaluable, my indispensable,
but publicly inarticulate lifelong partner." During an economic
conference, he told participants, "Let me try this out on Mamie.
She's a pretty darn good judge of things." He further observed,
"She is a very shrewd observer. I frequently asked her impression
of someone, and found her intuition good. Women who know the same
individual as a man do give a different slant. I got it into my
head that I'd better listen when she talked about someone brought
in close to me." In later years, even Jim Hagerty would concede
that Mamie Eisenhower could "argue with him [the President] plenty
of times about his policies?" Although she only visited the Oval
Office on four occasions, the First Lady learned the names, faces
and backgrounds of the support staff that served the President, as
well as the Cabinet members and often sought them out with praise
after she'd heard of their accomplishments from the President: it
helped to lift morale. Other times she would contact the wives of
such officials to praise
them.
Although she never sought to
address a specific social issue, it is a popular fallacy that Mamie
Eisenhower undertook no public initiative. Towards the end of her
tenure, she committed herself to two causes. Following the
President's heart attack, Mamie Eisenhower became increasingly
aware of the prevalence of heart disease. She assumed both local
and national chairmanship of The American Heart Association's
fundraising drives to widen its scientific research and public
awareness. (Although she herself was a cigarette smoker, there was
not yet any scientific findings released tying smoking and heart
disease.) It was not an unsubstantial role that she played: the AHA
president praised her years of sponsorship which proved it's "most
fruitful" with a 70 percent increase in income and jump in the
volunteer force to 750,000. Mamie Eisenhower, he wrote, "made
possible many dramatic advances in the research?.as well as in our
supporting programs of education and community
service."
Through many of her old
friendships with spouses of retired military personnel, she also
became aware of the financial difficulties they endured. She helped
to raise funds and broke ground for what was then called the "Army
Distaff Home," to provide affordable, secure retirement housing and
health care services for Army widows who, at the time, received
minimal benefits from the government. Aided by thousands of Army
wives around the world, the 16 acre facility in Washington, D.C.
was financed, lushly landscaped and opened its doors in 1962 with
the name "Knollwood."
It was also in her last years
in the White House that she encountered her first public criticism.
Columnist Drew Pearson pointed out that she violated the Railroad
Act by accepting gratis train travel to "Maine Chance," a
Phoenix, Arizona spa run by her friend, the beautician Elizabeth
Arden. Mamie Eisenhower suffered from an inner ear condition called
Meniere?s disease, which caused her to suffer bouts of severe
dizziness. When she appeared unsteady because of these episodes,
rumors that she was an alcoholic were printed in the 7 June 1959
issue of the tabloid National Enquirer. She was also
criticized for shopping in a chain store by the National Federation
of Independent Business and endured press scrutiny when she
inadvertently crossed a picket line at the Bonwit Teller department
store, having been incorrectly told that the dispute only involved
the shoe concession.
According to the memoirs of
Richard Nixon, Mamie Eisenhower also played an unwitting role in
the 1960 election when she telephoned his wife Pat Nixon. The First
Lady was worried about the President's potential health risk
if he carried through on his promise to vigorously campaign for his
Vice President in the last crucial weeks before the election. Pat
Nixon passed on the request to her husband. The Nixon campaign did
not request that President Eisenhower schedule campaign event
appearances. Nixon subsequently lost by a razor-thin
margin.
The Eisenhowers retired to
their Gettysburg, Pennsylvania farm which they had purchased in
1950.
Post-Presidential
Life:
Mamie Eisenhower was
relieved to begin a retirement with her husband in healthy
condition. They traveled through Europe and enjoyed an active
social life, often visiting Georgia and California in the winter
months where the former president played golf. Mamie Eisenhower
warily agreed to serve as a co-chairman with incumbent First Lady
Jacqueline Kennedy to raise funds for a National Cultural Center in
1962, and she accepted the Kennedys' invitation to attend a state
dinner for the Japanese Prime Minister. During that visit, she
inspected some of the historic restoration work that her successor
had conducted in the mansion but expressed little enthusiasm for
it.
During the Kennedy
Administration, Mamie Eisenhower successfully persuaded her husband
to intercede with Republican Senator Everett Dirksen to approach
President Kennedy on behalf of his former Chief of Staff Sherman
Adams, who was suicidal as he faced federal charges of income-tax
evasion. The two Republicans promised to support Kennedy in
whatever legislation he wished if he would put the Adams case in
the "deep freeze." As it turned out, Kennedy sought and obtained
the support of Eisenhower and Dirksen for his historic 1963 Testy
Ban Treaty.
While attending the funeral of
the assassinated president in 1963, Mamie Eisenhower encouraged her
husband to accept an overture by former President Harry Truman to
renew their acquaintance. For many years afterwards, when she made
an annual drive from Pennsylvania to Kansas, she stopped to
telephone Bess Truman in Missouri. When an oral history of Truman
later claimed that Eisenhower had an affair with Kay Summersby and
a television dramatization of the alleged affair aired, Mamie
Eisenhower expressed her confidence to friends and family of the
falsehood of the claim but did not attack either the late former
president or the television network. Her husband's wartime love
letters to her were subsequently
published.
Eisenhower 's heart condition rapidly worsened six years after
he left the White House and by 1968 he was permanently
hospitalized. During this time, in conversation with incumbent
First Lady and friend Lady Bird Johnson, Mamie Eisenhower expressed
her fears of living alone and unprotected as a presidential widow.
Mrs. Johnson spoke to her husband about it, and President Johnson
signed legislation that offered lifetime Secret Service protection
to presidential widows. During his last few months, Mamie
Eisenhower moved into Walter Reed Army Hospital to be with him,
where he died in April of
1969.
Often expressing loneliness
for her late husband, Mamie Eisenhower kept herself as active as
her health permitted. She made an annual drive to visit his grave
in Kansas, and to see her elderly uncle Joel Carlson in Iowa. She
also spent many of her winters in Palm Desert, California. When she
dedicated a hospital wing there dedicated to President Eisenhower,
Mamie Eisenhower delivered another public speech. Likewise, she
spoke at the first commencement of Eisenhower College in Seneca
Falls, New York, an institution she strongly supported with
financial gifts and heading up fundraiser events. She also lent her
name to her community's institutions such as Gettysburg College and
an historic preservation drive which sold old bricks from the town
square as a fundraiser.
Throughout her post-White
House years, Mamie Eisenhower maintained a close friendship with
the family of her husband's former vice president; in 1968, when
Eisenhower was spontaneously asked by a group of reporters who see
viewed as a viable Republican candidate for the presidency, it was
Mamie Eisenhower who interrupted to suggest Richard Nixon. With the
1968 marriage of her grandson David to the daughter of President
Richard Nixon, Mamie Eisenhower was considered a member of the
First Family and frequently made overnight stays at the White House
and Camp David. In 1972, she taped a television campaign
advertisement endorsing Nixon's re-election, and recalled his
loyalty to Ike. During the Watergate scandal, she remained a loyal
friend to Pat Nixon, although she did not express her views on the
President's ultimate decision to resign in 1974. Mamie Eisenhower
felt it unpatriotic to question the authority of the White House
and supported the Vietnam War policy under LBJ and Nixon, while
conceding that it was an unusually difficult struggle for U.S.
troops. She was adamant in her opposition to the so-termed "Women's
Lib" movement or use of the term "Ms." as a way of addressing
women; she stated that she had no idea what women wished to become
liberated from, and was startled when a woman Secret Service
agent was assigned by rotation to protect
her.
In widowhood, Mamie Eisenhower
became staunchly partisan. Although she warmly welcomed President
and Mrs.Carter to her Gettysburg home in the summer of 1979, she
publicly supported the gubernatorial candidacy of Republican
Richard Thornburg in her state. Despite a warm and long friendship
with Dr.Loyal Davis and his wife Edie, the parents-in-law of Ronald
Reagan, Mamie Eisenhower suggested that she intended to support the
Republican presidential candidate George H.W.Bush just months
before the 1980 presidential primaries began. In her last year,
Mamie Eisenhower applied for a suite at Knollwood (see above) so
she could be around friends and closer to family members. Since
entry was possible only when an opening occurred and there was
widespread public misunderstanding of her application she withdrew
it, a matter she explained in her last interview, with reporter
Barbara Walters that aired several days after her
death.
Death:
82 years
old
1 November,
1979
Washington ,
D.C.
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