When The Eisenhower Home Became The Eisenhower National Historic Site

December 02, 2020 Posted by: John D. Hoptak

With just a few signatures and after much reflection, Dwight and Mamie’s beloved farmstead—the first and only home they ever owned—became the Eisenhower National Historic Site.

The formal transfer of the property to the National Park Service took place at the Eisenhower's home, the deed transferred in person to Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, who had been sent to Gettysburg by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Johnson praised the Eisenhower’s decision to donate their home and property. In addition to Secretary Udall, President Johnson also sent White House aide and speechwriter Horace “Buzz” Busby to Gettysburg to observe the transfer.

Two days later, Busby related the emotional event in a letter to Johnson.

“Our helicopter landed at the Eisenhower farm in mid-afternoon,” related Busby. “While the sun was shining, the wind was biting and the General had been asked to remain inside.” Ike had been suffering from poor health of late and they did not want him outside with a cold wind blowing. “He emerged anyway,” said Busby, to greet their guests. Udall and Busby accompanied the former president to his favorite room in the house—the glass enclosed back porch—where just moments before, Ike had been painting and Mamie had been playing solitaire. “Our conversation was cordial and simple, no ceremonies, no signing, no onlookers,” wrote Busby, who soon discovered, however, that beneath the calm and the quiet, emotions were running deep for seventy-seven-year-old Dwight and seventy-one-year-old Mamie. “Repeatedly,” said Busby, Mamie’s “eyes welled with tears as she talked” about how much the home and farm meant to her. Before departing, Udall and Busby then toured the “very handsome rooms of the house,” then, with deed in hand, they made their way to the helipad and headed back to Washington. “As we left,” said Busby, “the General decided to walk us to the helicopter, even without his coat and hat.”

The transfer of the property was quiet and solemn, and quite understandably an emotional moment for Dwight and Mamie. Busby thanked President Johnson for sending him along on this “mission to Gettysburg.” It produced, he said, “a memory to last a lifetime.”



Photograph of Mamie and Dwight Eisenhower transferring the deed to their Gettysburg property to Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, on November 27, 1967.
Photograph Courtesy of Eisenhower National Historic Site


Soon after the transfer of deed, Dwight and Mamie headed west to spend the winter in Palm Desert, California. Sadly, before he was able to return to Gettysburg, Dwight suffered his third heart attack and would spend the next ten months at Walter Reed Medical Center. He died there in March 1969, having never made it back home to Gettysburg. After her husband’s death, Mamie secured a special use permit with the National Park Service to continue to reside in her Gettysburg home until her own death in November 1979.




Sources:
Birkner, Michael J., et. al. Eisenhower’s Gettysburg Farm. Images of American Series. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2017
----------------. “The Eisenhower’s at Twilight: A Visit to the Eisenhower Farm, 1967,” Adams County History, Vol. 13, Article 6 (2007), available at https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi...