Abilene, KS – One goal of the tour was to visit the Evel Knievel Museum in Topeka, KS, and the other was to knock one more Presidential Museum off my bucket list. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum is in Abilene, KS. I wondered though, were there any Eisenhower family members still living in the community?
The get-it-done director of Abilene Convention and Visitors Bureau,Julie Roller Weeks, put the meet together as she introduced me to the youngest granddaughter of President Eisenhower, Mary Jean Eisenhower. “My job is to grow the businesses in this community,” said Roller Weeks. “If you’re having fun in Abilene, then you’re probably spending money in Abilene.”
We lunched at Hapisoul Cafe & Juicery.
A brief history note: Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, serving from 1953 – 1961. The Eisenhower’s had two sons, Doud and John. The first son Doud died of Scarlet Fever when he was 3 years old.
John, followed in his father’s footsteps, graduating West Point. He married and had four children. Mary Jean was the youngest, born in 1955. She saw her grandparents often at the White House since her father worked for the presidential administration as Assistant Staff Secretary in the White House, on the Army’s General Staff, and as an assistant to General Andrew Goodpaster.
Mary Jean Eisenhower was just a delight. She wore a black top and dressy black pants, simple gold earrings and necklace, and she had an easy smile.
Born two years into her grandfather’s first term, Mary Jean recalled an incident with a toy car when she was 5-years old and tooling around the White House lawn.
“I got my first speeding ticket at the White House,” she said. The Mattel toy company gave all four grandchildren an electric car. The siblings had to take turns, but when it was Mary Jean’s turn to drive, it was her brother who stepped in and said he had to.
“I thought it was odd… but, it was never my turn,” she said.
As the story went, one day Mary Jean’s brother was off doing something and so were her sisters and there she was alone, with the Thunderbird.
“I thought… Okay, it’s my turn,” she said. Having watched enough cartoons about driving she jumped in, turned it on and hit the gas.
“I was doing donuts in front of the diplomatic reception area,” Mary Jean said. “Suddenly there’s this hand and the man said, ‘Ma’am, I believe you’re speeding.’
“Well, I didn’t know how to brake and he told me to just take your foot off the gas. So, I didn’t know how much he would be revealing to my grandfather.”
Mary Jean took the ticket and went to her room and sat there the entire afternoon “just straining about the whole thing.”
Too young to even read the ticket, she eventually went down to dinner. “Granddad wasn’t home from ‘work’ yet… so I just looked around the table to see if anyone knew,” she said.
Two things were unacceptable in the Eisenhower family, one was… Click HERE to read the rest of the story at thebikewriter.com
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