Since we retired, my wife and I have been traveling to presidential libraries. In the past year, we visited the libraries of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. We have plans for a trip through the Midwest and east to see the libraries of Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy. We’ve also visited presidential memorials to Andrew Jackson (The Hermitage) in Nashville and Calvin Coolidge in Vermont. While the presidential libraries extol the accomplishments of these men, they also point out their mistakes and regrets.
The most recent library we visited was that of Dwight D. Eisenhower in Abilene, Kansas. Eisenhower was a third son, raised in a family of modest means in rural Kansas. He was educated at West Point Academy and entered service at the end of World War I, although he didn’t see action in that conflict. He devoted his military career to the study of the art and logistics of war which eventually prepared him to serve as “supreme commander of the allied forces” for arguably the most successful military campaign in modern history ending World War II. After the war, he served as army chief of staff, participated in the formation of NATO and also served as president of Columbia University. Toward the end of the presidency of Harry Truman, Eisenhower was approached by both the Republican and Democratic parties to stand as their candidate for the office of President of the United States. He campaigned as a Republican, was elected and served two terms as president.
While his military career was about the preparation and prosecution of war, his hope was always for peace. There is a quotation in his memorial chapel from a speech given in 1953 which moves me. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
History has much to teach us if we will take the time to learn from it.
Max Lundberg
Sandy, Utah