History
is His Story
How did “In God We Trust” end up on all our currency? “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? To
understand the story you have to understand where Eisenhower got his faith. His
parents were Pennsylvania Dutch Lutherans.
David and Ida moved to Hope, Kansas in the 1880s. They had both gone to college in
LeCompton. After a brief job in Denison,
TX, David Eisenhower moved to Abilene, KS, in 1892, about 150 miles north of
Ponca City and 40 miles from my old KS homestead (Hope is just 20 miles away!).
The family would be classified as deeply religious, attending first a Mennonite
church and then joining the Jehovah Witnesses, mainly at the instigation of
Ida. Dwight never joined, however, remaining more mainstream in his faith. The
family held twice daily devotions. She had 7 boys, and Dwight was the 3rd. All were nicknamed “Ike”. Dwight (Little Ike)
and his older brother Edgar (Big Ike) made a pact that they would alternate
years at college, the other working to pay tuition. But Edgar wanted a second
year of college right away so Dwight agreed to work another year at the
creamery. A friend had successfully
applied to the Naval Academy and encouraged Little Ike to do the same. He was
accepted at West Point.
Soon he fell very
much in love with Mamie Doud and they married in 1916, soon after he graduated.
Every year or so he was assigned to a different base so they never joined a
church but attended the Protestant base services. During WW I, Captain Eisenhower trained tank
operators and soon joined Colonel George Patton in Texas who espoused
aggressive “tank warfare”, not just using the tanks as an infantry backup. Ike
got assigned to the War College and it became apparent that he was a genius for
battle plans with a comprehensive brain for lining up resources and working
with differing personalities. Yet he remained a major for 16 long years. In 1941, he was promoted to Brigadier
General. He and Patton went to N. Africa
and the result was a stellar campaign through Tunisia, Sicily and southern
Italy until Ike was chosen to handle all the egotistical and prickly generals
of the Allied Command for Operation Overlord, D-Day. He achieved this by
keeping close personal control over the entire operation and letting them claim
the glory of victories. The pictures of
Ike’s heartfelt conversations with troops ready to land in Normandy, knowing
that half would sustain casualties, are quite real. He was humbled by their devotion, even by
those far beneath him in rank. And he often shared scripture.
After the war, he
served as military governor of US sector of occupied Germany, General of the
Army, and then in 1948 became President of Columbia University, NY. Truman
suggested he run for President as his Democrat successor. But the little secret was that though Ike
could work with anybody, he disliked Columbia’s atheistic professors and the
welfare state. He chose to run as a
Republican, was secretly conservative, but was also an advocate of NATO, opposed
by the Republican right wing isolationists. Most of us remember President Eisenhower
as a “bipartisan and relaxed”, but historians who have studied his papers say,
no, he was secretly, intensely involved in every decision, a deviousness he
learned from being in military command, desiring unpredictabilitiy. In 1952 Ike
joined the Presbyterians and was baptized.
But something was
eating at Ike. From 1948 to 1955 television viewing went from 172,000 families
to 32 million. As the habit spread,
those who ran the networks began to flex cultural muscles and openly
contemplated a society in which all standards of behavior would be up for
redefinition in moral relativism governed by only ratings. Ike quietly listened
and decided that the character education of American youth should not follow
this. He suggested “under God” (from
Lincoln’s Inaugural) be inserted into the pledge to some congressmen, and in
1954 they passed it. He is famously quoted, “Our government makes no sense
unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith—and I don’t care what it
is.” Typical Ike Talk, Mamie explained. This didn’t mean he was indifferent to
the articles of faith, but sincere faith should be an important component of
all Americans. Then some suggested “In God We Trust” (4th verse of
national anthem) become a national motto and be on all coins. The media dubbed this as “Piety on the
Potomac”. Indeed it was subtle. Mamie later said that Ike thought this was
one of the more important things he had achieved. From a guy who had defeated Hitler, blocked
communist expansion, rebuilt Europe, built the Interstate Highways, NASA, and
other things, this is a quite an assessment!
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