Dwight D. Eisenhower was born during a terrible thunderstorm on Tuesday, October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas. He was the third of seven sons born to David and Ida Eisenhower. When still a small child, the family moved back to Kansas, where Ike grew up. He would become the Supreme Allied Commander of the European Theater of World War II, defeating the infamous Hitler, and later he achieved the White House as the 34^th President of the United States. Here are some interesting trivia facts about one of America’s greatest heroes.

1. Dwight Eisenhower used the nickname Ike from childhood. His elder brother, Edgar, was also called Ike, a shortened use of Eisenhower. Dwight was, for a time, known as Little Ike. He soon grew to be 5 feet, 10 and a half inches tall, so the little part of his name was dropped.

2. Ike had an uncle Lincoln Eisenhower, named for Abraham Lincoln. This uncle helped the Eisenhower family financially for a time, employing Ike’s father David at his dairy farm in Abilene, Kansas.

3. Eisenhower first came to Gettysburg in 1912 as a West Point cadet. He and Ulysses S. Grant are the only Presidents to have graduated from West Point.

Eisenhower, his wife Mamie, and their infant son Doud Dwight (nicknamed Icky) lived in Gettysburg for part of World War I, as Ike was the commander of Camp Colt at Gettysburg. Camp Colt served as the training ground for tank warfare. It was a necessary camp, as the tank was the new weapon of the age, and troops who used them needed to know how to work them. As the topography of Gettysburg was much like the Ardennes in eastern France, and since the battlefield had been preserved from the 19^th century, it proved a good fit.

4. Like Abraham Lincoln, Ike was an avid reader and was especially fond of history. Both of these future Presidents used their knowledge of the significant past to help them understand where they stood at their own crossroads of history. In Ike’s case, he understood battles, and war – though he detested them like anyone who preferred peace – and used that knowledge to help prepare the Allied troops in World War II before the pivotal D-Day invasion in 1944.

5. Ike was not a brigadier general (a one-star general) until the spring of 1941. He was promoted and named as the Chief of Operations Divisions for the U.S. War Department by Chief of Staff George Marshall in 1942. He was then named the Supreme Allied Commander of Allied Troops in the European Theater in December 1943 by President Roosevelt. He held the rank of a four-star general at the time, having been promoted earlier that year. A year later, in December 1944, General Eisenhower was promoted to the rank of five-star general, one of the few in U.S. history to achieve that rank.

6. For much of the 1930s, Ike was in the Philippines as the assistant to General Douglas MacArthur. With the threat of Japan looming over the Philippines, Ike needed to train the Philippine troops. This included the Philippine Air Force. In order to train them to fly planes, Ike had to learn to pilot a plane himself. Which he did.

7. When World War II ended, Ike took up painting as a hobby. He painted over two hundred paintings during the last twenty years of his life. These included still life, landscapes, and a few portraits. Interestingly, Winston Churchill also painted for relaxation. A letter from Ike to Churchill is on display at Blenheim Palace, in southern England, where Ike, as President, requests the old Prime Minister to visit him at his Gettysburg Farm, “from one artist to another”. Churchill accepted the invitation.

8. President Eisenhower suffered several heart attacks during his life, including a serious one in 1956. He had to convalesce at his Gettysburg farm for months, including the holiday season. He had just been reelected for a second term. Mamie later said that his time on their Gettysburg farm kept him alive for many years. While he gave up smoking after World War II, the constant smoking, stress, and sleepless nights contributed to his heart disease.

9. General Eisenhower’s Gettysburg physician (he had many physicians in Washington, D.C. as well) was Harrison Harbaugh. Dr. Harbaugh, who has also since passed on, once told us that General Eisenhower would have been an excellent candidate for an artificial heart, had that option been available to him.

10. When General Eisenhower died on March 27, 1969, his body was taken to Abilene, Kansas for burial. Three U.S. Presidents, two former ones and the current one at the time, all attended the final funeral for Ike at the chapel in Abilene. They were Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon. When Johnson was greeted by Ike’s pastor from Gettysburg, Bob MacAskill, who expressed surprise at seeing him, LBJ replied, “I wouldn’t have missed it. He was a very dear friend.”

Sources: Angelo, Beverly. First Mothers. New York: William Morrow Company, 2000. Eisenhower, Dwight D. At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends. NPS: Eastern Acorn Press, 1967. Smith, Jean Edward. Eisenhower in War and Peace. New York: Random House, 2013. Interview with Robert MacAskill, April 1998. Interview with Harrison Harbaugh, April 1998. Whitney, David C. and Robin Vaughn. The American Presidents. New York: Doubleday, Inc., 1993. Additional information at the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas, and Blenheim Palace, UK.