Eisenhower Read Free

brothers.
    Religion, too, was at the core of their lives. David Eisenhower was raised as a member of the River Brethren, a Pennsylvania Mennonite sect whose Kansas migration swept along the Eisenhower family. Of the nine River Brethren congregations that settled in Kansas in the 1880s, four were clustered in Dickinson County, where Abilene was located. They nevertheless remained a small sect, never numbering more than six hundred followers in the area. They practiced a firm, devotional faith, with emphasis on the moral value of work, the permanence of marriage, and an aversion to gambling, smoking, and drink. Dinner was followed by readings from the Bible; when members of the family fell ill, their fellow congregants prayed for their recovery. But if religion was central to the Eisenhower home, so was a spirit of inquiry. Though David grew up with the River Brethren, he and his wife dabbled with the Baptists and the Methodists and finally joined the Bible Students, a tiny Mennonite group devoted, as the name suggests, to biblical study.
    Ida’s force of will and David’s financial distress combined to create, in some minds, the impression that David was a marginal figure in the Eisenhower home. Ida was indeed a source of great strength. She cared about her values and was entirely devoted to her sons. The slighting of David, however, does him an injustice. Ike recalled his father as a forceful parent, an occasional wielder of the hickory stick against his sons; he fought, usually successfully, to control a brooding temper. “He was not one to be trifled with,” Ike wrote many years later, “unless you were prepared to take the consequences.”
    Their stay in Texas was brief. Soon after Dwight was born, the family returned to Kansas, where the Eisenhowers settled first into a small cottage, then into a modest home that they purchased from David’s brother, Ike’s uncle Abe. From that point on, David and Ida and their growing family of boys shared a two-story white clapboard ranch house, most of the boys sharing bedrooms in decidedly tight quarters: the home was 818 square feet, smaller than the office Dwight would eventually occupy as chief of staff of the Army.
    Abilene was then, as it is today, a modest post on the Kansas plain, windswept in winter, blazing in summer. Wide porches shielded residents from the sun of the prairie, and dust gathered in the corners of every home. The sun beat down on the wheat that extended for miles in every direction. Shade trees shimmered in the evenings and supplied the switches used to discipline the Eisenhower boys. Floods enriched the soil and occasionally did damage. Cattle thundered through the rail yards, heading for eastern markets.
    Though destined for a career of breathtaking consequence, Dwight gave bare indication of such potential in his early years. He jockeyed for position in a home of intense competition. Ida and David ran a formidable household where Ike was one of six brothers. Arthur was the oldest, followed by Edgar, then Ike; Earl, Roy, and Milton were younger. A seventh, Paul, died of diphtheria in infancy. Surrounded, Dwight had to wrestle for an identity. Even his nickname, Little Ike, was a nod to his brother Edgar, known in those years as Big Ike. Nor was school a source of distinction. He was a bright student but hardly a dazzling one. Ike’s math teacher mildly recalled him as “a very capable and interesting boy.” Ike himself recognized his limits. “Baseball, football, boxing were all I wanted to know,” he confessed.
    For Little Ike, Abilene was formative in ways both subtle and obvious. He fished and trapped and would remain comfortable sleeping in tents and wading in streams his whole life. He struggled with a powerful temper, once beating his fists until they were bloody because he was denied the right to trick-or-treat with his older brothers. He was fascinated by history, particularly military affairs and leaders. He took to sports and learned to