NEWS FOR WOMEN Mrs Eisenhower Is A Bom Home-Maker

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28224, 12 March 1957, Page 2

NEWS FOR WOMEN Mrs Eisenhower Is A Bom Home-Maker

Mamie Eisenhower has hung a little sign in the White House which reads: “This is Our Home,’’ says Marie McNair in the “Washington Post.” It is the same motto, with a prayer beneath, which she has nailed to the wall some 28 times since she married a young Army lieutenant 40 years ago and moved into a two-room apartment. The story of Mrs Eisenhower could be told in the homes she has made. “I’ve kept house in everything but an igloo,” she said once when minimising the difficulty of being chatelaine of the nation’s 132-room executive mansion. Hovels and Palaces Mrs Eisenhower and the President have shared hovels and palaces in their years of moving. They once occupied a fraternity house which had a ballroom, but no kitchen or bed. Their early memories of married life include a rented room near Camp Meade, Maryland, where a frugal landlady shut off the electricity between 6 a.m. and 6 p.fn., and breakfast came out of a paper bag. There was an Army cottage mildewing in the steaming Panama jungles, plagued with ants, mosquitoes, snakes and bats. Wherever her husband’s duty took him Mrs Eisenhower managed to make a home. But in some ways home today in the White House is no different from what it has always been. There are flowers, preferably pink carnations, everywhere. There are a few good paintings on the wall, pictures of those she loves on every table. Today at 60, Mrs Eisenhower has begun another term of four years in the White House, looking younger than the day the door first swung open to her on January 21, 1953. Life for her has reached its fullest. She is grateful that her husband has overcome two serious illnesses; that her own health is better. She has four healthy, good-looking grandchildren whom she adores. Old Friends Along with her many official duties and the obvious restrictions upon a White House occupant. Mrs Eisenhower manages to find time for her old friends, many of whom shared the Army life with her in the early years of her husband’s career. When “the girls” get together, it’s usually for a session of Bolivia, a card game at which Mrs Eisenhower is an expert. Play begins about 2 p.m., stops at 5 p.m. for tea, and then goes on until dinner time. Occasionally they will break for a movie after tea, and if it’s a “cowboys and Indians” film, the President

will join them, providing his duties permit. Occasionally Mrs Eisenhower, will go to her friends’ homes to

play, but more often than not she entertains the group. “Every day that I can be with my grandchildren is the best day of my life,” said Mrs Eisenhower to a reporter a few years ago. Luckily, the youngsters are not far away—at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where their father. Major John Eisenhower, is stationed. Saturday is a red-letter day for the Eisenhowers, for unless there is a sniffling nose among them, Mrs Barbara Eisenhower brings her children to the White House to spend the day. What is the secret of this amazingly youthful looking grandmother with the clear unlined skin, blue eyes and size 14 figure? Her belief that bed rest is a very decided factor in good health, is 6ne of the reasons. She advises every woman of more than 50, if she can, to remain in bed late in the mornings. That habit undoubtedly aided her endurance when, during her first years in the White House, she would shake hands with hundreds of women every day. The President himself is partly responsible for limiting her receiving line appearances these days. “She insists on talking to every one—it’s a strain on her,” he once grumbled in concern about her health after she had just completed a meeting with 300 women. Still Welcome Actually, it is only a half-truth when voters back home hear that she has cut receptions for women’s groups to a minimum. The thousands are still welcome, but the White House is firm about saying that Mrs Eisenhower can meet personally with only the officers and directors of each group. She had originally tried making an appearance at the banister to wave, thus welcoming hundreds at once. But the women went home in a huff and the practice was abandoned. There is another reason, too, for her youthful look. Mrs Eisenhower likes people. She is Interested in them and finds them stimulating. She likes clothes, too —like any woman—and it is a rare day that she appears in public in the same dress twice. At one time, when she and the President were remodelling and furnishing their Gettysburg farm, Mrs Eisenhower had a twinge of conscience. She told one of her friends she was going to stop buying dresses and hats and put the money instead into things for the house. “What Ike Wants” The years have been kind to Mrs Eisenhower. She has what many women think is the most enviable position in the world. Perhaps no-one knows her innermost thoughts. Would she rather be First Lady, or a Gettysburg housewife? What Ike wants, she wants for him. And that’s the answer to that.