Mamie Eisenhower - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

It was soon after completing her education at Miss Wolcott's finishing school that she met Dwight Eisenhower at San Antonio in October 1915. Introduced by Mrs. Lulu Harris, wife of a fellow officer at Fort Sam Houston, the two hit it off at once, as Eisenhower, officer of the day, invited Miss Doud to accompany him on his rounds. On St. Valentine's Day in 1916 he gave her a miniature of his West Point class ring to seal a formal engagement.

Lieutenant Dwight D. Eisenhower, aged 25, married Mamie Doud, aged 19, on July 1, 1916, at the home of the bride's parents in Denver, Colorado. Following the wedding, performed by Reverend Williamson of the Central Presbyterian Church in Denver, the newlyweds honeymooned a couple days at Eldorado Springs, Colorado a resort near Denver, and then visited the groom's parents in Abilene before settling into the lieutenant's crude living quarters at Fort Sam Houston.

The Eisenhowers had two children (only one lived to adulthood):

• Doud Dwight "Icky" (September 24, 1917 – January 2, 1921) died of scarlet fever.
• John Sheldon Doud (born August 3, 1922) – soldier, diplomat, author. Born in Denver, CO, he graduated from West Point in 1944 and earned a master's degree in English literature from Columbia University in 1950. After retiring from a military career (1944–1963), he was appointed ambassador to Belgium (1969–1971) by Richard Nixon. He has written three books: an account of the Battle of the Bulge: The Bitter Woods (1969); Strictly Personal (1974); Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day (1982).

For years, Mamie Eisenhower's life followed the pattern of other Army wives: a succession of posts in the United States, in the Panama Canal Zone; duty in France, in the Philippines. Although accustomed to more creature comforts than those afforded at military posts, Mamie adjusted readily and joined her husband in moving 28 times before their retirement at the end of his term as president.

During the Second World War, while promotion and fame came to "Ike," his wife lived in Washington, D.C. After he became president of Columbia University in 1948, the Eisenhowers purchased a farm (now the Eisenhower National Historic Site) at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was the first home they had ever owned. His duties as commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces—and hers as his hostess at a villa near Paris—delayed work on their dream home, finally completed in 1955.