Eisenhower Administrations - Early Life
Early Life
It is ironic that Eisenhower, the career soldier and war hero, should be the son of Mennonites, a German Protestant immigrant group famous for their radical pacifism. In his childhood the family continued to read every night from the Bible but seemed to have lost the sharp condemnation of war their ancestors had brought from Europe. Eisenhower's grandparents had emigrated from Pennsylvania to Kansas in the 1870s and their son, Eisenhower's father, became a shopkeeper in Hope, Kansas. He was bankrupted in the business depression of 1888. Mortified by this failure, he was a grim and humorless figure to his six sons, of whom Dwight was the third.
The future president was born in Denison, Texas. His family lived there for a short time but he was raised in Abilene, Kansas. As a child Eisenhower had a hot temper and recalled later that he sometimes hurt himself in a fury when he did not get his own way. Learning from his...
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