Wednesday, March 27, 2013

I Like (the) Ike (Center)

The job hunt rolls on, but hopefully something will materialize in relatively short order.  In the meantime, I’m just doing what I have to do.

A while back I did get to have a little day trip up to Abilene for a visit to the Eisenhower Center.  The have a good museum, with lots of interesting artifacts.  One that stood out to me (despite being only a couple feet from a piece of real Moon rock) was the actual teleprompter scroll DDE used during his speech that mentioned the “military industrial complex”.

On the grounds are a number of buildings, including a house DDE lived in growing up.  I was surprised to find out that it was still in the original location, not relocated from elsewhere in town.  It had a very nice front parlor room.

DDE and Mamie are buried in the chapel also on the ground of the center.

I read an excellent biography about Eisenhower (by Michael Korda) a few months back, which helped make this a very interesting little visit to a place I had not been to since high school.  Though DDE is not commonly mentioned in the pantheon of the greatest U.S. Presidents, I think he was an intelligent fellow that understood compromise and devotion to duty.  It would be nice if more of that could be injected into government today.
"Of men who have a sense of honor, more come through alive than are slain, but from those who flee comes neither glory nor any help."
~Homer, The Iliad

2 comments:

Teacher said...

I felt a similar way when I was near John Adam's seat in Independence Hall on our recent trip to Phili. One of my favorite presidents and first to suggest the "I" word.

Who brought back that particular moon rock? Where was it from?

EthanG said...

I don't recall the procurer or provenance of the moon rock, sorry. It was gray, though!