He was born David Dwight (Ike) Eisenhower on October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas where his father David had found work as a railroad hand. He was the third of seven sons. The following year, the Eisenhowers returned to Kansas. Ida and David raised their sons in a simple clapboard home which Dwight would later remark had less floor space than his office at the Pentagon.
Dwight grew up in Abilene, where he absorbed the virtues of small town America that distinguished him for the rest of his life -- scrupulous honesty, self-reliance, determination, and hard work. Eisenhower saw education as a way to better himself and became as much of a scholar as he was an athlete. The balance between the two helped him to obtain an appointment to the United States Military Academy in 1911.
She was born Mamie Geneva Doud on November 14, 1896, in Boone, Iowa. The second of four daughters born to Elivera and John Sheldon Doud, Mamie was only nine months old when her family moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. At the age of six Mamie moved with her family to Colorado and in 1905 the Doud family settled in Denver at 750 Lafayette.
During her childhood years, Mamie attended Denver public schools, and like the daughters of many other prosperous and prominent Denver families, her education was completed at Miss Wolcott's, a private school.
Mamie was a bright and vivacious young woman in the fall of 1915 when she and her family were visiting friends at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. It was during this visit that Mamie met then Second Lieutenant Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dwight would later write of their first meeting in his book At Ease, that Mamie had a "saucy" face and attitude. A young officer just out of West Point, Lt. Eisenhower courted Miss Doud throughout the autumn of 1915 and on February 14, 1916, they formally announced their engagement. At noon on July 1, 1916, the couple was married in the Doud family home in Denver.
Mamie learned very early in their married life about his single-minded devotion to America. Over the years they lived at many Army posts. Sometimes the quarters were less than ideal. In Panama they lived on the edge of the jungle, and the wild animals screamed all night. Their quarters at Gettysburg during World War I, when Ike was training troops at an encampment nearby, were so poorly heated that Mamie thought she was going to freeze to death.
But the hardest of all times were the long periods when they were separated because there was no place for a wife where Ike was stationed.
As Ike rose in rank and his responsibilities grew, Mamie made their home a place of calmness and good cheer, where he could relax in the midst of his strenuous life. While the Eisenhowers lived at the White House, Mamie was a gracious and well respected first lady.
He was not the sort of man who brought his problems home and she rarely intruded in such matters as she knew he already had the best counsel available to make his decisions. Mamie later commented that she knew at times he went through a great deal of inner turmoil when some momentous decision was pending, "...he was not a worrier. Sometimes, after a day when he had to make some fateful decision, I have heard him say almost inaudibly as he lay in bed: 'God, I did the best I could today.' Then he would turn over and go to sleep. He was a man of great inner strength."
One of the most enjoyable periods came during the first five years after they left the White House. Although he still worked hard during his years of so-called retirement, at his writing and in meeting the great public demands placed upon him, it was relatively speaking, a time of relaxation. Mamie and Ike had more time to enjoy the pleasant business of just being together.
