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in his army uniform and in an eighty-dollar standard-issue military coffin. He was laid to rest in the Place of Meditation, one of five buildings in the Eisenhower complex. Later that afternoon, a grieving Mamie Eisenhower returned to the gravesite. She placed a gladiola on her husband’s grave and chrysanthemums on her son’s. When she died ten years later, she was buried alongside them.

Touring the Tomb at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum

The Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum is located in Abilene, Kansas, approximately 150 miles west of Kansas City and 90 miles north of Wichita.

The complex is open daily from 7:45 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. from Memorial Day until mid-August. The rest of the year the opening hours are 9:00 a.m. until 4:45 p.m. The chapel is open year-round from dawn until dusk. All buildings are closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. A fee is charged for the museum only. Admission is $8.00 for adults aged sixteen to sixty-one. The fee for senior citizens is $6.00. Children ages eight to fifteen are admitted for $1.00. Children under eight are admitted free.

To reach the Library and Museum: Take Interstate 70 to exit 275. The Library and Museum are located about two miles south of I-70 on KS-15.

For additional information

The Dwight D. Eisenhower

Library and Museum

200 SE 4th Street

Abilene, KS 67410

Phone: (785) 263-6700

Fax: (785) 263-6715

www.eisenhower.archives.gov

Eisenhower was eight years old when his family moved into this Abilene, Kansas home

“On the morning of March 28, 1969, the old soldier issued his final command.”

—Richard Norton Smith

In 1967 amidst stringent secrecy, the former president traveled to Denver to exhume the remains of his first son, Doud Dwight, known to his doting parents as Icky, who had died of scarlet fever in 1921 at the age of four. The former president, his grief still fresh after four decades, accompanied the small casket to Abilene, Kansas. There he personally supervised Icky’s interment near the crypts reserved for himself and Mamie in a plain sandstone chapel across the street from his boyhood home and presidential library.

Thereafter Eisenhower’s health deteriorated rapidly. By the spring of 1968, a series of heart attacks led to his hospitalization at Walter Reed. Mamie took up residence in a tiny room next to his suite. One early visitor was the Reverend Billy Graham, whose help Ike sought in patching up an occasionally strained relationship with Richard Nixon. The upshot was Eisenhower’s public endorsement of his former vice president before Republican delegates met in Miami Beach that August to choose their presidential candidate. Pleased as he was by Nixon’s victory at the polls that fall, he was made even happier by the December nuptials of his grandson David to Nixon’s daughter Julie.

As Eisenhower’s condition worsened, Billy Graham returned to Walter Reed for a visit. After half an hour of conversation, Ike asked his doctor and nurses to leave the room. Taking the evangelist’s hand, he said, “Billy, you’ve told me how to be sure my sins are forgiven and that I’m going to Heaven. Would you tell me again?”

Graham reached for his copy of the New Testament. He read the old, familiar verses promising eternal life, before adding a short prayer of his own.

“Thank you,” said Eisenhower. “I’m ready.” On the morning of March 28, 1969, the old soldier issued his final command. After ordering his son and grandson to prop him up in his hospital bed, Ike told John Eisenhower, “I want to go. God take me.”

—RNS

John F. Kennedy

Buried: Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia

Thirty-fifth President - 1961-1963

Born: May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts

Died: 2:00 p.m. on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas

Age at death: 46

Cause of death: Shot by assassin

Final words: Reputed to have said, “My God, I’ve

been hit.”

Admission to Arlington National Cemetery: Free

John F. Kennedy was the first president born in the twentieth century. He was also the first