Mamie Eisenhower topic for Club au Courant

Cutline for picture: L-R Deana Covin, hostess; Pat Sers, program presenter; Yvonne Kennedy, hostess Club au Courant met Jan. 21 in the home of Yvonne Kennedy with co-hostesses Deana Covin and Janis Slayter.

President Jan Elliott called the meeting to order with a quote, "If your absence doesn't make any difference, then your presence probably doesn't either." The club recited the Club Collect before refreshments. The dining table was splendid with a lovely vase of fresh Shasta daises. Various assortments of fruit, cakes and finger foods were served. Betty Collins was welcomed as a guest.

The club collected $42 for Helping Hands.

The January program was brought by Pat Sers who selected Mamie Geneva Doud Eisenhower as her First Lady to present to the club. Her research revealed many unknown facts about her life which members were unaware.

Mamie was from a wealthy family whose father was in the meat-packing business. She was born in Boone, Iowa, on Nov. 14, 1896. She moved to Cedar Rapids, later to Colorado Springs and then to Denver. However, their second home was in San Antonio for the winter months. They would send two maids ahead on the train to ready the house and two more maids would travel with them in a seven passenger touring car called a Steamer.

Mamie had three sisters named Eleanor, Buster and Mike. Sadly, Eleanor died at the age of 17 of heart failure. The ground was so frozen it was impossible to bury her until spring.

Mamie, although very bright, was at best a mediocre student. Her formal education was often interrupted by travel, illness and death, but the Douds were most serious about giving Mamie and her sisters proper training. In the school year l914-15 Mamie enrolled in a finishing school for daughters of prominent families in Denver but insisted on leaving after one year.

By now Mamie was regarded as one of Denver's most captivating belles. In 1915, she made her social debut in San Antonio, arranged by Judge Robert P. Ingrum. Through the Ingrum family Mamie met Dwight Eisenhower, who had grown up in a struggling "boy family" whereas Mamie had been raised in a wealthy "girl family." They were immediately attracted to one another. Mamie admitted the lean, broadshouldered soldier with a magnetic smile was the "handsomest man" she had ever met. Ike didn't seem to worry about keeping Mamie in the style she was accustomed. He was an excellent poker player and supplemented his income with his winnings.

They became engaged on Valentine's Day and married July 1,1916, in the Doud home. They visited Ike's parents in Abilene and Mamie learned Ike's mother did all her cooking and cleaning. On visits to them she would have to hang her head out of the upstairs window to smoke her cigarettes for the Douds, rigidly Pennsylvania Dutch, didn't believe in cards or alcohol.

Not long after Christmas in 1916 Mamie found out she was expecting a baby at a time when President Wilson was calling for war against Germany and Ike was facing going to war. A son was born and named Doud Dwight Eisenhower. They called him Ickey. Sadly, Ickey died at the age of three and a half from scarlet fever. It was one disaster from which the parents never fully recovered.

Through their early years of marriage Mamie seemed to enjoy making their housing livable. Mamie would boast she could sew and make drapes. From the millions of mosquitoes and their house on stilts in Panama, to army barracks (once next door neighbors to George and Bea Patton), the Villa St. Pierre in Paris when Ike was the commander of NATO to the White House and her first real home at Gettysburg she always was the typified homemaker. Mamie was good at entertaining and their house or quarters would most often be dubbed "Club Eisenhower." Army life dictated a high standard and Mamie referred to this work she shared with Ike as "our careers."

Mamie again had a son on Aug. 3, 1922, and named him John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower.

War was brewing and now Dwight had become a general. It was in the November 1942 issue of LIFE that rumors of Ike's temptations started swirling. A caption read under a picture, "Kay Summersby, pretty Irish girl who also drives for General Eisenhower…" opened a long and painful chapter in Mamie's life as rumors of a romance continued. Years later, Summersby commented that General Eisenhower "was like an older brother to me, kind, thoughtful and considerate…Yes I was in love with Eisenhower, and so was everybody else who had anything to do with him."

In February 1948 after more than 33 years of service to his country Dwight David Eisenhower retired from active military duty to their Gettysburg farm. Mamie once said, "I am an army wife — the other things were interims."

The other things were wife of the President of Columbia University and later First Lady of the United States. At the inauguration after the oath of office President Eisenhower spontaneously turned to his First Lady and kissed her. Also, he broke precedent by starting his inaugural address with a prayer he had written himself.

They spent eight years together at Gettysburg, where Mamie enjoyed entertaining and watching her soap operas. But Ike, after his third heart attack, spent the last year of his life confined to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Mamie seldom left his side. He died March 28, 1969.

She was the first First Lady born in the 19th century and the first one to preside over the Space Age. As the years wore on she began to withdraw and died Nov. 1, 1979. She is buried in a small chapel called the Place of Meditation on the grounds of the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, beside her husband and her son Ickey.

Ms. Sers shared other facts about Mamie's personality, private family life and how she coped while Ike was away, and conditions that are inconceivable by today's standards. This enlightenment of Mamie Doud Eisenhower's life and her indomitable spirit gave the club members a deeper understanding of the pain and endurance that our army wives and first ladies experience.

Members present were Frances Adams, Rev. Charlotte Austin, Dimples Burns, Dorothy Camp, Deana Covin, Marion Dovel, Jan Elliott, Marcella Harkrider, Yvonne Kennedy, Kay McKinley, Agnes Oliver, Vivian Patton, Clemmie Richards, Ima Roberts, Jean Robertson, Pat Sers, Justine Stanley, Dr. Opal Stewart, Ellen Watson, Dianne Wilson and Betty Collins, a guest.