RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) –
Leading up to America’s 250th birthday this Summer, we are revealing things you may not know about our presidents.
We feature a military legend of World War II who would ascend to the highest office in the land. One of only nine US officers to rise to the rank of 5 Star General.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas, the third of seven sons. “Ike” grew up in Abilene, Kansas, and graduated from West Point in 1915. He married Mamie Doud in 1916. The couple had two sons.
World War I ended before Eisenhower’s deployment to Europe; he went on to serve as an aide to General John Pershing and Army Chief of Staff for General Douglas MacArthur.
Two years after the US entry into World War II in 1941, General Eisenhower was appointed the Supreme Commander of Allied forces. He was responsible for planning the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe that began on “D-Day,” June 6, 1944. Dubbed “Operation Overlord”, 195,000 Allied forces stormed the beaches in Normandy, France. Germany would surrender in May of 1945.
After the war, he left active duty to become the president of Columbia University. Two years later, in 1950, President Truman asked Ike to take command of NATO.
By 1952, Eisenhower was persuaded to run for president. With the campaign slogan “I Like Ike”, he defeated Adlai Stevenson to become the 34th President of the United States.
During his two terms in the White House, Eisenhower signed an armistice to end the Korean War in 1953, managed Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union, strengthened the Social Security system, increased the minimum wage from 75-cents to $1, and created the Interstate Highway System, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and NASA.
But he was slow to use his presidential authority in the 1954 US Supreme Court case “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka” that ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional. Eisenhower would sign legislation in 1957 and 1960 to protect black voters, and he ordered the armed forces to be desegregated.
In his farewell address in 1961, Eisenhower warned of the “Industrial Military Complex”, a partnership between the military establishment and big business that could influence the federal government.
Eisenhower retired to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and worked on his memoir.
He died in 1969 after a long illness. Dwight D. Eisenhower was 78 years old.
During Eisenhower’s presidency, Dr. Jonas Salk developed the Polio vaccine, and Alaska and Hawaii were made states in 1959.
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