Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb__ A Tour of Presidential Gravesites - Brian Lamb [61]
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Buried: Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum, Abilene, Kansas
Thirty-fourth President - 1953-1961
Born: October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas
Died: 12:35 p.m. on March 28, 1969, in Washington, D.C.
Age at death: 78
Cause of death: Congestive heart failure
Last words: “I want to go. God take me.”
Admission to Dwight D. Eisenhower Library
and Museum: $8.00
Dwight Eisenhower’s childhood fascination with military history led him to West Point. He worked his way up through the army ranks to become a five-star general—one of only five in history. A hero of World War II, Eisenhower held the lofty title of Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization when he won the Republican presidential nomination in 1952. In both the ’52 and ’56 elections he ran successfully against Democrat Adlai Stevenson.
In his two terms as president, the lifelong military man saw the end of the Korean War. He also presided over the admission of the forty-ninth and fiftieth states—Alaska and Hawaii.
It was not until they left the White House in 1961 that Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower settled into their first permanent home, a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The seventy-year-old former president wrote his memoirs in between rounds of golf. Despite the relaxed schedule, the general’s health began to suffer. He’d survived one heart attack as president and had several more after he retired.
These pylon plaques on the Eisenhower Center grounds describe the contributions of the Eisenhower family
On May 14, 1968, Eisenhower traveled to Washington. Weakened by each successive heart attack, he was admitted to Walter Reed Army Hospital, where he lived out the last ten months of his life. His wife stayed in a suite down the hall. Finally, on March 28, 1969, the old warrior’s heart gave out.
Three years earlier, Eisenhower had approved a funeral plan carefully crafted by the Military District of Washington, which has oversight of modern presidential funerals. Each moment of the ceremony was outlined with military precision in a fifty-four-page document, including the timing of the gun salutes and the pace at which the procession would travel down Constitution Avenue. Many of those elements, including the riderless horse preceding the caisson, had been seen just a few years before at the funeral of John Kennedy.
Eisenhower’s body was taken to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda. Citizens waited to pay their respects in a line that stretched six city blocks. In twenty-four hours, fifty-five thousand people passed by the catafalque. President Richard Nixon, who had served as Eisenhower’s vice president, gave a eulogy. Government offices closed and flags flew at half mast.
The funeral was held at Washington National Cathedral. Two thousand invited guests filled the church to capacity. Representatives from more than seventy-eight countries attended, including French President Charles De Gaulle. Lyndon Johnson was also there on his first trip to Washington, D.C., since leaving the White House. Thousands more gathered on the lawn in freezing weather to listen to the service over a public address system. Reverend L.R. Elson quoted scripture and the congregation sang “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” and “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
After the funeral, Eisenhower’s body was taken by train to his hometown, Abilene, Kansas, the site of Eisenhower’s presidential library. In Abilene, the hearse passed slowly by Eisenhower’s modest boyhood cottage on its way to the library. Thousands lined the route. Three hundred invited guests gathered at the library steps. A minister read Psalms 23 and 121 before the military guard fired its twenty-one-gun salute and the bugler sounded taps. The former president’s widow was given the flag that covered his casket.
The walls of the crypt are inscribed with quotes from several of Dwight Eisenhower’s speeches
Eisenhower was buried as he wished