At a book festival in Fort Lauderdale, I met David Eisenhower, Ike's grandson, who was promoting his book 'Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower,' in which he describes attending the Yankees' 154th game in 1961. The whole family had been following Mantle and Maris chase Babe Ruth's home run record across the country.
'What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.
In my lifetime, we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We've gone from John F. Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in twelve years, we'll be voting for plants.
Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he would lock his eyes on to mine and keep them there.
Why should the Eisenhower memorial be over twice the size of WWII Memorial? Why should it be so vast as to comfortably house two Lincoln Memorials, two Washington Monuments, and two Jefferson Memorials - all six at once?
Eisenhower was my war hero and the President I admire and respect most.
I've always tried to be fair to my subjects. That's easy when they are as likable and admirable as Lewis and Clark, or Eisenhower.
Nixon is finding out there are no tails on an Eisenhower jacket.
Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.
On rare occasions, Dad used to reminisce about when he met Eisenhower and how Churchill would pop in, in the late hours of the evening or night, carrying a cigar, when he'd obviously had a good dinner.