A Visit Home to See Mama
Learning how other mamas have lived with their families gives us at least two types of lessons. Sometimes we learn new ideas to try with our own families, and sometimes we receive warnings about what to resist at all costs. We can always find mamas whom we believe do a better job than we do, and other mamas with characteristics we don’t respect. With prayer, wise discernment, humble hearts, and attentive observation, we learn from the strengths and weaknesses of others.
I am grateful for my recent visit inside one mama’s house, . . .
. . . the house where David and Ida Eisenhower reared six boys to adulthood.
Dwight, the third of the Eisenhower sons, graduated from West Point and began a career in the military.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Eisenhower was called to Washington, D.C. His father David died in 1942, just three months after the Japanese attack. In 1943, Dwight Eisenhower was made Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe with orders to command the Allied invasion of the continent.
American soldiers respected their commanding general so much that during the war, many went to his boyhood home in Abilene to show their respects to his mother. Ida served them lemonade on the front porch.
Allied forces gained victory in Europe in May of 1945. General Eisenhower was able to visit his mother less than two months later. While on that first visit back in Abilene, he gave a speech in which he praised his hometown and his parents.
Because no man is really a man who has lost out of himself all of the boy, I want to speak first of the dreams of a barefoot boy. Frequently, they are to be of a street car conductor or he sees himself as the town policeman. Above all he may reach to a position of locomotive engineer, but always in his dreams is that day when he finally comes home. Comes home to a welcome from his own home town. Because today that dream of mine of 45 years or more ago has been realized beyond the wildest stretches of my own imagination, I come here, first, to thank you, to say the proudest thing I can claim is that I am from Abilene.
Through this world it has been my fortune or misfortune to wander at considerable distance; never has this town been outside my heart and memory. Here are some of my oldest and dearest friends. Here are men that helped me start my own career and helped my son start his. Here are people that are lifelong friends of my mother and my late father, the really two great individuals of the Eisenhower family. They raised six boys and they made sure that each had an upbringing at home and an education that equipped him to gain a respectable place in his own profession, and I think it’s fair to say they all have. They and their families are the products of the loving care, labor and work of my father and mother; just another average Abilene family.
Shortly after General Eisenhower’s visit in Abilene, the Japanese surrendered and World War II was finally completely over. Ida died in 1946, just over a year later. After Ida’s death, General Eisenhower and his brothers donated the house to the Eisenhower Foundation, so that it could serve as a World War II Veterans Memorial. In 1954 a new Eisenhower Presidential Museum was dedicated next door. Now the home is open for guests to learn about the childhood of a future five-star general and President of the United States.
David and Ida Eisenhower had seven sons.
As President Eisenhower said, David and Ida made sure that each “had an upbringing at home and an education that equipped him to gain a respectable place in his own profession.” Arthur became a banker. Edgar was a lawyer. Dwight, as you know, was a five-star general and President of the United States. Roy was a pharmacist. Paul died at the age of ten months from diphtheria. Earl was an electrical engineer. Milton, younger than Dwight by nine years, served in government for many years, was a member of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, became a college president, and was a frequent advisor to his brother while he served as President.
While General Eisenhower visited in Abilene that June of 1945, a reporter asked his mother, “Aren’t you proud of your son?”
“Which one?” she replied.
Ida was wise to love her sons without partiality. That is one of the many lessons we can learn from this one very famous mama who was named Kansas Mother of the Year in 1945.
 Her children rise up and bless her . . .
Proverbs 31:28
Speech excerpt courtesy Eisenhower Presidential Library.