posted November 29, 2005 03:03 PM            

By SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Writer
Fri Nov 25, 9:42 PM ET

Dwight D. Eisenhower had been dead for more than a decade before scholars began calling him one of the greatest presidents in American history.

Now planners have chosen one of Washington's most prominent sites for a grand memorial to the humble man from Abilene, Kan.

The plaza-style memorial across the street from the National Mall would honor Eisenhower's legacy of public service, joining the collection of nearby monuments to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

"It was his total approach to domestic and international politics that set him apart," said Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Carl Reddel, executive director of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission. "He's a much more profound figure than many realized."

The memorial site, selected earlier this year, was approved this month by the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission. If it passes muster with two other advisory groups, the commission will formally recommend it to Congress next year.

Completion of the memorial itself remains at least five or six years away, Reddel said. There is no design yet, although planners envision both a physical structure and a "living element" that would offer programs explaining the president's role in history.

While many remember Eisenhower first as the general who launched the D-Day invasion of France and led the Allied forces to victory in World War II, the memorial would focus on the unheralded accomplishments of his two presidential terms from 1953-1961.

"He kept the peace during the Cold War," said Dan Holt, director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene. "Most people don't understand how difficult that was in the 1950s."

The Republican remained popular throughout his presidency, but when he left office, historians dismissed him as timid and indecisive. His reputation began to grow in the early 1980s, after the publication of several influential books revealed his "hidden-hand" style of governing behind the folksy demeanor.

"Ike had a management philosophy that if you take sides on major issues publicly, you polarize both those who support you and those who are against you, so he tried to stay in the middle," Holt said.

Eisenhower was criticized, for example, for not publicly condemning Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his communist witch hunts in the early 1950s. Archives later revealed the president's secret campaign to undermine the Wisconsin senator.

On the domestic front, Eisenhower was the driving force behind creation of the Interstate highway system and helped push through the first two civil rights acts since Reconstruction. In 1954, he made it clear he would uphold the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education by sending National Guard troops to quell rioting in Little Rock, Ark.

Reddel said the memorial site itself provides "thematic context" because it is surrounded by many of Eisenhower's accomplishments.

The four-acre site stands in front of the Department of Education, which Eisenhower established as part of a Cabinet-level agency in 1953, and next door to the Federal Aviation Administration, created during his administration in 1958.

Eisenhower also signed legislation that created NASA, so it is apt that his memorial will be across the street from the National Air and Space Museum.

___

On the Net:

Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission: http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051126/ap_on_go_pr_wh/eisenhower_memorial
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posted November 30, 2005 02:52 AM            

Born in Texas in 1890, brought up in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower was the third of seven sons. He excelled in sports in high school, and received an appointment to West Point. Stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant, he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom he married in 1916.

In his early Army career, he excelled in staff assignments, serving under Generals John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, and Walter Krueger. After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called him to Washington for a war plans assignment. He commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, he was Supreme Commander of the troops invading France.

After the war, he became President of Columbia University, then took leave to assume supreme command over the new NATO forces being assembled in 1951. Republican emissaries to his headquarters near Paris persuaded him to run for President in 1952.

"I like Ike" was an irresistible slogan; Eisenhower won a sweeping victory.

Negotiating from military strength, he tried to reduce the strains of the Cold War. In 1953, the signing of a truce brought an armed peace along the border of South Korea. The death of Stalin the same year caused shifts in relations with Russia.

New Russian leaders consented to a peace treaty neutralizing Austria. Meanwhile, both Russia and the United States had developed hydrogen bombs. With the threat of such destructive force hanging over the world, Eisenhower, with the leaders of the British, French, and Russian governments, met at Geneva in July 1955.

The President proposed that the United States and Russia exchange blueprints of each other's military establishments and "provide within our countries facilities for aerial photography to the other country." The Russians greeted the proposal with silence, but were so cordial throughout the meetings that tensions relaxed.

Suddenly, in September 1955, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in Denver, Colorado. After seven weeks he left the hospital, and in February 1956 doctors reported his recovery. In November he was elected for his second term.

In domestic policy the President pursued a middle course, continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs, emphasizing a balanced budget. As desegregation of schools began, he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to assure compliance with the orders of a Federal court; he also ordered the complete desegregation of the Armed Forces. "There must be no second class citizens in this country," he wrote.

Eisenhower concentrated on maintaining world peace. He watched with pleasure the development of his "atoms for peace" program--the loan of American uranium to "have not" nations for peaceful purposes.

Before he left office in January 1961, for his farm in Gettysburg, he urged the necessity of maintaining an adequate military strength, but cautioned that vast, long-continued military expenditures could breed potential dangers to our way of life. He concluded with a prayer for peace "in the goodness of time." Both themes remained timely and urgent when he died, after a long illness, on March 28, 1969.