28 March 1969 A.D. 34th President, GEN Eisenhower, Passes—Age 78
28 March 1969 A.D. 34th President, GEN Eisenhower, Passes—Age 78
1969 – Dwight D.
Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States and one of the most highly
regarded American generals of World War II, dies in Washington, D.C., at the
age of 78. Born in Denison, Texas, in 1890, Eisenhower graduated from the
United States Military Academy in 1915, and after World War I he steadily rose
in the peacetime ranks of the U.S. Army. After the U.S. entrance into World War
II, he was appointed commanding general of the European theater of operations
and oversaw U.S. troops massing in Great Britain. In 1942, Eisenhower, who had
never commanded troops in the field, was put in charge of Operation Torch, the
Anglo-American landings in Morocco and Algeria. As supreme commander of a mixed
force of Allied nationalities, services, and equipment, Eisenhower designed a
system of unified command and rapidly won the respect of his British and
Canadian subordinates. From North Africa, he successfully directed the
invasions of Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy, and in January 1944 was appointed
supreme Allied commander of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of
northwestern Europe. Although Eisenhower left much of the specific planning for
the actual Allied landing in the hands of his capable staff, such as British Field
Marshall Montgomery, he served as a brilliant organizer and administrator both
before and after the successful invasion. After the war, he briefly served as
president of Columbia University before returning to military service in 1951
as supreme commander of the combined land and air forces of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO). Pressure on Eisenhower to run for U.S. president
was great, however, and in the spring of 1952 he relinquished his NATO command
to run for president on the Republican ticket. In November 1952, “Ike” won a
resounding victory in the presidential elections and in 1956 was reelected in a
landslide. A popular president, he oversaw a period of great economic growth in
the United States and deftly navigated the country through increasing Cold War
tension on the world stage. In 1961, he retired with his wife, Mamie Doud
Eisenhower, to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He died in 1969 and was
buried on a family plot in Abilene, Kansas.
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