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<em>John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower</em> was born Aug 3, 1922, in Denver, CO, to Army Major Dwight David Eisenhower and the former Mamie Geneva Doud. He has written that, growing up an Army son, he spent very little of his youth on Army posts. He attended grade school in Washington, where his father, the future five-star general, was working under General Douglas MacArthur, Class of 1903, in the War Department. During those years he met many of the future leaders of the Second World War. He had the good fortune, not accorded to many, of spending his grade school years in one school and almost all his high school years in the mountains of Luzon, Philippine Islands.</p>
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In 1940, John entered “Beanie” Millard’s West Point preparatory school in Washington along with a good many future West Point classmates. Appointed by Senator Arthur Clapper of Kansas, he entered West Point on Jul 1, 1941, in the class of 1945, later changed to the class of 1944 in the acceleration of WWII.</p>
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John writes that, as a plebe, he had a strange situation. The “Beanie spec” set him in good stead in the first months of academics. He was totally unprepared, however, for the practicalities of the disciplinary system that calls for time budgeting—shining shoes and brass, acting as room orderly, and other chores. As a result, he stood number one in A Company’s plebe class after the first month but at the same time was deficient in conduct. Gigged for every small offense in the Blue Book, but only once, he managed to bring the demerits under control. His “Beanie spec” soon ran out and he settled into the upper third of his class, graduating on D-Day, Jun 6, 1944.</p>
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John writes that his military career was complicated by the balancing required of his normal military duties and the fact that his father was, in turn, Supreme Commander in Europe, Army Chief of Staff, and in time the 34th President of the United States. John later came to believe that his own career’s high point was his 1948-1951 tour in West Point’s English Department, in one year of which he earned a master’s degree at Columbia University. Following West Point and the Armor Advanced Course at Fort Knox, John served with the 3rd Infantry Division for fourteen months in Korea, a source of pride in later life.</p>
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Upon graduation from the Army’s Command and General Staff College in 1955, John served in the operations directorate of the Army General Staff. His father later brought him into the White House as an assistant to Brigadier General Andrew Goodpaster, staff secretary and defense liaison officer.</p>
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When his father’s presidency ended in January 1961, John went on “leave without pay” to act as his father’s principal assistant in writing his presidential memoirs at Gettysburg, PA. The two years of leave ran out before the project was finished. Although he had been selected for the Army War College, John confided to a former West Point roommate that he did not think that he had earned that assignment. In early 1963 he elected to resign from the Army. His roommate writes, “John resigned his commission just a year before he could have retired at half pay. I don’t think I know anyone else who would have done this.” John, a lieutenant colonel, joined the Army Reserve from which he eventually retired as a brigadier general.</p>
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With the completion of the presidential memoirs in 1964, John found his true calling, writing books of nonfiction. He began successfully with <em>The Bitter Woods</em>, the story of the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944. He later claimed that, as an Army brat and a sometimes temporary aide to his father, he had at least shaken hands with nearly every Allied officer mentioned in the book.</p>
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In the spring of 1969, immediately following his father’s death at Walter Reed Army Hospital, John was appointed to be the United States ambassador to Belgium. He described the position as highly social but otherwise not very challenging, and later claimed lightly that he had “kept the peace” between America and Belgium for 2-1/2 years. In September 1971, longing to get back to writing, he returned to the United States.</p>
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In his writing career, which spanned over forty years, John wrote or edited a total of thirteen books, “with one in the mill.” The first four dealt with WWII. He then turned his attention to American relations with Mexico. In the three books pertaining to that area, his favorite was his biography of General Winfield Scott, the best friend West Point ever had; he is buried in the West Point cemetery. Other subjects included American participation in the First World War and a reminiscence of his father’s role in the Second World War, emphasizing Ike’s relations with other Allied commanders and civilian leaders.</p>
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In June 1947 John married Barbara Thompson, daughter of an Army colonel. The couple divorced in 1986.</p>
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John died December 21, 2013, at his home in Trappe, MD. With him at his death were Joanne Thompson Eisenhower, his second wife, and the four children of his first marriage—David, Anne, Susan, and Mary Jean; John’s four children joined their mother, Barbara Foltz, at Christmastime. Also surviving were eight grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. John’s funeral and burial were in April 2014 at West Point.</p>
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John wrote this final paragraph, “With it all, though his military career was short, John never really felt that he had left the Army. ‘You can take the man out of the Army,’ he liked to say, ‘but you can’t take the Army out of the man.’”</p>
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Be Thou At Peace, John.</p>
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<em>— Written by John in August 2013, adapted by a classmate.</em></p>