ABILENE, Kan. They still like Ike in Abilene.
And why not? He executed the military plan that turned the tide of World War II in Europe, stopped Hitler and ultimately brought the war in that theater to an end. He did it by getting big-ego military leaders to work together by subjugating his own, by believing in his troops, by being willing to take all of the blame if it failed and none of the credit if it worked.
That he was the driving force behind the biggest invasion modern generations have known is made more stunning by knowing his hardscrabble story began not in Kansas but in Texas and ended not in Kansas but in Pennsylvania.
Dwight David Eisenhower was born Oct. 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas, but father David and mother Ida soon moved the family to Abilene, a rowdy town once known as the end point for long-horn cattle drives. Its hard to believe now as you drive Abilenes quiet streets dotted with stately Victorian homes, but one town marshal is said to have killed 50 miscreants. His name: Wild Bill Hickok.
Abilene had calmed down considerably by the time the Eisenhowers moved here, but there was still plenty of mischief for six rascally boys who grew up on what was considered the wrong side of the tracks. (Fifth son Paul died of diphtheria at 10 months.)
Bruises and emergencies were normal in a household of six boys who were convinced that they could outwit such small considerations as the law of gravity, Eisenhower wrote in At Ease: Stories I Tell My Friends.
The family eventually settled into a permanent home in Abilene in 1898, and it is that house that visitors can walk through on a visit there.
David and Ida were religious, their leanings influenced by a Pennsylvania branch of the Mennonites, and Bible readings were a constant in daily life. So was cooking; Ida was said to have made 27 loaves of bread a week to feed her young brood and taught each of the boys to cook and sew.
Education was prized. Both parents had graduated from college (a rarity in those days, rarer still for a woman), but because they were poor, the brothers often worked to support another brother who was in college.
Dwight, a good student and a better athlete, learned from his pal Edward Swede Hazlett that attending a service academy meant a free university education. He set his sights on the U.S. Naval Academy but was too old for admission; he turned instead to West Point.
Suddenly, a young man from a pacifist family and no military tradition was headed to New York to join a group of men who would graduate in 1915. They became known as the class the stars fell on. Fifty-nine of the 164 achieved the rank of general.
The early story of Eisenhower comes to life at the family home, but the rest of Eisenhowers story will be told in a slightly different way when the $10-million redo of the museum is unveiled at the end of July. The work was to have been completed before June 6, the 75th anniversary of D-day, but the 35-day partial government shutdown that ended Jan. 25 put an end to that.
But not to the desire to tell the story of Ike and Mamie Eisenhower, the vivacious young woman from Denver whom Eisenhower wed in 1916. In many ways, they completed each other he the serious student of the military, she the ideal hostess, wife and mother. Without Mamie, said curator William Snyder, there is no Ike.
But with Ike overseas during the war, Mamie was anxious, as revealed in their mostly affectionate, occasionally strained letters. She was aware of the rumors about Kay Summersby, Ikes British driver and secretary. Tension was understandably heightened when their son John, also a West Point graduate, wound up in war-torn Europe, writes Stephen E. Ambrose in Eisenhower: Soldier and President. (Their first son, Doud Dwight, born in 1921, died of diphtheria at age 3.)
Eisenhower had trained for the role he eventually was given supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary force all of his adult life.
He missed battlefield action in World War I and was convinced he would never advance beyond the rank of lieutenant colonel.