The pink lady

Thursday, January 12, 2012

GETTYSBURG, PA – We had a schedule to meet this morning, as we had to catch the bus at the Visitor Center to visit the farm of President Eisenhower. Once again, Val and I got a personal tour, as we were the only passengers on a bus that could hold about 40 people!
Dwight D. Eisenhower went to West Point military academy in 1911 to take advantage of the free education it offered. Instead of the overseas service he had hoped for when World War I broke out, he spent those years at Gettysburg training soldiers for the army’s tank corps. He liked the area so well that he bought a farm there in 1950 for his wife Mamie and their family – the only property they ever owned.
Since we were the only two visitors to the farm this morning, our guide let Val and me step beyond the velvet ropes into the Eisenhowers’ gracious living room and see, up close, the signed portrait of Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the Persian carpet given to them by the Shah of Iran and the Ming Dynasty vases on the mantelpiece of the marble fireplace that had once belonged to Abraham Lincoln.
In spite of many expensive gifts on display from world figures the Eisenhowers met during Ike’s presidential years, the house was not palatial or ornate. We got a real sense of their down-to-earth tastes in the sun room where Mamie watched “As the World Turns” on TV in the afternoons, or in the small bedroom where Ike doffed his slippers and took his daily afternoon nap on doctor’s orders after a heart attack in 1955.
The pink toilet, sink and bathtub, plus towels, bathmat and accessories, showed us what Mamie’s favourite colour was! Even in their pale green master bedroom, the bedspread was pink, and the linen closet had more quilts and towels of the same hue on its shelves. The portrait in the living room of Mamie showed her wearing the dress she had worn to the president’s inauguration – pink chiffon with long, pink gloves up past her elbows.
In Mamie’s front hall display case was a whimsical collection of tiny carved wooden angels, Hummel figurines, gaudy miniature tea cups and even six plastic figures of presidents and their wives (including herself and Ike) that she had collected from cereal boxes!
It was really interesting to follow Dwight D. Eisenhower’s remarkable achievements, as Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces in the Second World War, president of Columbia University, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Supreme Commander of the newly-formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the first Republican US president in 20 years. We saw photos of General Montgomery when he visited the farm, as well as Nehru and Churchill. We also watched a video of the aging retired president strolling through the farm with Walter Kronkite that CBS used to eulogize him after he died in 1969.
It was a privilege to see the personal surroundings of such a great man, and walk through his home as if we were just dropping in to say hello.
We spent our afternoon following the auto tour of the Gettysburg battlegrounds, following the signs to the different locations and reading the plaques on some of the hundreds of monuments scattered throughout the entire region. They even call some of the trees in the area “Witness Trees”, as they stand where they were growing when the historic battle took place.