Mamie Doud Eisenhower

Presidential First Lady. She was the wife of the 34th U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and served in this position from January 1953 until January 1961. The second of four daughters of a meatpacking executive, she grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Denver, Colorado, and the Doud family winter home in San Antonio, Texas. After completing her education at Miss Wolcott's finishing school, she met Dwight Eisenhower at San Antonio in October 1915. As a new 2nd Lieutenant, he had just graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York and was serving in his first assignment in Texas. They were married in July 1916 at her father's home in Denver. Her life then followed the typical pattern of other career U.S. Army wives with a succession of posts in the United States, the Panama Canal Zone, overseas in France, and the Philippine Islands. During World War II, while her husband served in the European Theater, she lived in Washington, D.C. and was active in many volunteer endeavors in support of the war effort. When her husband became president of Columbia University in 1948, they purchased a farm (now the Eisenhower National Historic Site) at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the first home they had ever owned. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower ran for President on the Republican ticket and defeated Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson. As First Lady, she was a gracious hostess but carefully guarded her privacy. She suffered from Meniere's disease, an inner-ear disorder that affects equilibrium, and she was uneasy on her feet, which fed rumors that she had a drinking problem. She was known as being thrifty and clipped coupons for the White House staff. Her recipe for "Mamie's million-dollar fudge" was reproduced by housewives all over the country after it was printed in many publications. Upon leaving the White House after her husband completed his second term in 1961, they moved to their Gettysburg farm, and they spent eight years together in quiet retirement while wintering in Palm Desert, California. After her husband's death in 1969, she continued to live full-time on the farm until she took an apartment in Washington, D.C. in the late 1970s. In September 1979, she suffered a stroke and was hospitalized and died there in her sleep two months later at the age of 82. In June 1980, her birthplace in Boone, Iowa, was dedicated as an historic site; Abigail Adams is the only other First Lady to be so honored.