Eisenhower Born: D-Day Commander and Highway Builder

Dwight David Eisenhower commanded more than two million Allied troops on D-Day, the largest seaborne invasion in human history. Five years later he was playing golf in retirement. Then the Republican Party found him and made him president. Born in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890, and raised in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower graduated from West Point in 1915 and spent the interwar years as a staff officer, never seeing combat in World War I. His organizational abilities and political skills, the capacity to manage enormous egos and competing national interests, caught the attention of George Marshall, who promoted him over hundreds of more senior officers to command the North Africa invasion in 1942 and then the Supreme Allied Command in Europe. He made the decision to launch D-Day on June 6, 1944, in bad weather, after his chief meteorologist found a brief window in the storm. He wrote a note taking full responsibility in case the invasion failed. He put the note in his pocket and didn't need it. He won the presidency in 1952 and served two terms. His major achievements were structural rather than dramatic: the Interstate Highway System, which he signed into law in 1956, remains the largest public works project in American history and fundamentally reshaped how Americans live, work, and travel. He sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 to enforce school desegregation after Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to block nine Black students from entering Central High School. He kept the country out of direct military involvement in Vietnam, Korea, and the Suez Crisis despite significant pressure to intervene. His farewell address in January 1961 warned the country about the military-industrial complex, the growing influence of defense contractors and the permanent arms industry on American policy. The phrase was coined by his speechwriter Malcolm Moos, but it was delivered with the authority of a man who had run the military-industrial complex for thirty years and understood exactly what it was becoming. He died on March 28, 1969, at 78.