KANSAS: I Chose My Way

It was around 3 o’clock in the morning when Mrs. Trula Robinson, the housekeeper, heard the old lady call. She had pains in her stomach, but after Mrs. Robinson had brought her a glass of water she said: “Now you go back to bed.” Fifteen minutes later, in the dark loneliness of the rambling house where she had lived so long and brought up her five sons, 84-year-old Ida Stover Eisenhower died of a heart attack.

She had come a long way to the old house. Left an orphan at five, she went to live on a Virginia farm with her German grandparents. She left them at 15. Her grandparents did not believe in education for women; Ida Stover did. She got a job as a cook and when she was 21 followed her seven brothers west. Her brothers went their various ways. Ida Stover went to Lane University, a small school at Lecompton, Kans.

Two years later she married a fellow student, David Eisenhower, a young Swiss. She soon settled down to the task of raising a family.

In Abilene, Kans., old trail’s end of the western cattle routes, she brought them up: Arthur, who became a bank official; Milton, who became a college president; Earl, who became a chemical engineer; Edgar, who became a lawyer; and Dwight.

Dwight wanted to go to West Point. Over Dwight, Ida Eisenhower prayed. She was a member of the River Brethren, a Mennonite sect, and she did not believe in armies or war. But when his appointment came she said: “I chose my way,” and she let Dwight choose his.

She was proud of Dwight, as she was proud of all her sons. She was proud of him as a man, not awed by his military prowess. And she always called him Dwight. Once in a letter to his wife she inquired tartly: “Who is this Ike you mention?” .

In the last years of her determined, independent life, she rocked on the front porch of the old house, watching another generation grow up in the Lincoln Public school yard across the street.

Last week a procession of 21 cars, including Dwight Eisenhower’s command car, followed Ida Eisenhower’s grey casket through Abilene’s quiet streets to the end of an elderly lady’s way.