Golis: A prairie town still celebrate its favorite son

ABILENE, KANSAS

Not many visitors arrive here by accident. Dropped down in the middle of the Kansas prairie, 2½ hours west of Kansas City, Abilene once served as the northern terminus for Texas cattle drives plying the Chisolm Trail. No less than Wild Bill Hickok was the town marshal.

These days, a more subdued Abilene lives on as a place to buy farm supplies, store grain and honor its favorite son, Dwight David Eisenhower.

In 1892, David and Ida Eisenhower left Texas and returned to Kansas, not knowing what history held for their 2-year-old son. The younger Eisenhower would grow up to be a war hero and the 34th president of the United States. And when it came time to designate a site for his presidential library, he chose the place where he grew up rather than the place where he was born, which was Denison, Texas.

Folks here are not shy about recalling what Eisenhower said about his hometown: “I come from the very heart of America.”

In the years following his presidency, it was said that Ike — his popular nickname — presided over a period of complacency in America. What people forget is that peace and quiet may have been what the country needed after two decades dominated by the Great Depression, a world war and the war in Korea.

In “Eisenhower in War and Peace,” the respected biographer Jean Edward Smith recites the major achievements of the Republican Eisenhower’s eight years as president and then concludes, “With the exception of Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower was the most successful president of the twentieth century.”

Agree with Smith or not, it’s safe to say that historians are rethinking their original appraisals of Eisenhower’s time as president.

The museum is comprehensive in its review of Eisenhower’s successes — the diversity of military training and experience that prepared him for leadership in war, the D-Day invasion of France and victory over Nazism, creation of the interstate highway system, his decision to send troops to enforce desegregation at Little Rock’s Central High School, the appointment of Earl Warren as chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Like other presidential libraries, however, the library glosses over the less pleasant moments of biography. Blink and you could miss references to Ike’s vice president, Richard Nixon. The library ignores critics who fault Eisenhower for failing to publicly challenge the red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Rumors of a relationship between the general and his wartime chauffeur, Kay Summersby, are left unsaid.

As a military officer and politician, Eisenhower always seemed content to have people underestimate him. Unlike his contemporaries — the American generals George Patton and Douglas MacArthur, or the British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery — Ike was never burdened by an unmanageable ego.

His success required hard work, patience and a degree of humility, perhaps gained through hard experience. He grew up in modest circumstances. For two years after high school in Abilene, he worked at a local creamery.

Then he learned a West Point education was free, and he might gain admission because a Kansas senator was making appointments based on merit, not family connections.

And so Dwight Eisenhower of tiny Abilene, Kansas joined what was later called “the class the stars fell on.” From the 1915 class at West Point, there would be four generals (including Eisenhower and Omar Bradley), seven lieutenant generals, 24 major generals and 25 brigadier generals.

With 6,400 people, Abilene could be cast as the all-American small town. It features stately homes and an old-fashioned downtown. (Check out Amanda’s Bakery and Bistro.) In addition to the Eisenhower library, Abilene is home to the Greyhound Hall of Fame. (It’s about dogs, not buses.)

We knew we weren’t in California anymore when the radio announcer shared the latest market price of wheat.

Then it started to rain, but not a California kind of rain. It turned dark as night, thunder and lightning bolts crashed all around, trees whipped in the wind and water came down in buckets. People visiting the museum raced to the lobby to watch the spectacle.

In 1919, Eisenhower participated in an Army convoy that traveled coast to coast, often on dirt tracks. What was called an “expedition” required 62 days to cover 3,251 miles.

Now Abilene exists as a stop along Interstate 70, one of dozens of major highways that exist because Eisenhower presided over the creation of the interstate highway system, all 41,000 miles.

Sixty-three years later, the Eisenhower presidency is often recalled for his farewell speech in which he warned of the power of “the military industrial complex.” It’s a term often used when critics warn of runaway defense spending.

“Every gun that is made,” he once said, “every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” The cost of a single heavy bomber, he said, is the equivalent of 30 schools, or two power plants, or five fully equipped hospitals.

Next month, the free world celebrates the 79th anniversary of D-Day and the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler.

Twenty years after D-Day, Eisenhower visited the American cemetery on the bluff above Omaha Beach. Nine thousand Americans are buried there. He told newsman Walter Cronkite, “I say once more we must find some way. We need to gain an eternal peace for this world.”

It would be beyond our imaginations today, but each major party wanted Eisenhower to be its candidate for president in 1952. He was a war hero, and in the day, there weren’t destructive differences between the parties.

And so we learn about a time in which Americans understood that governing a large and diverse nation requires good will and common sense. Eisenhower once said, “In the middle of the road is all the useful surface.”

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.

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