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Helen Fulks was my eighth grade U.S. History teacher. We called her Miss Helen because for as long as anyone could remember, everyone had called her Miss Helen. Roger Eichelberger was my American History teacher in high school. We called him Coach because he coached the baseball team. I always enjoyed history in school, and those two teachers brought it to life in a way for which I will always be grateful. They helped me to understand that history is full of important lessons as well as fascinating tidbits that may or may not be of any importance at all.
Imagine a new president taking office at a time of war. The war has a specific location, but the real enemies are in other places. The war started with backing from the United Nations. The new president wants it to end. End it he will, after just six months in office.
Am I trying to see into the future and predict actions of our new president? No, I am recalling a former president, a different war and a different century. Dwight Eisenhower was the president. The war was in Korea, but it was against communist aggression. The time was the middle of the Twentieth Century.
On July 26, 1953, Eisenhower announced to the American people that the shooting was over, and a truce had been signed in Korea. There were no victory celebrations, no ticker-tape parades, no sense of victory. Members of the president’s party criticized him for not seeking victory, while the Democrats warned that the truce merely released communist forces to attack in other places. While many disapproved of his actions, Eisenhower himself counted peace in Korea as one of his proudest achievements.
While listening to Adlai Stevenson accept the Democratic nomination for president, George Allen, a friend of the soon-to-be president, remarked about Stevenson, “He’s too accomplished an orator; he will be easy to beat.” Of course, Eisenhower did beat him. After he was elected, he gave a speech of his own that overwhelmed the western world. Speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors early in 1953, he delivered a speech he entitled, “The Chance for Peace.” The speech was directed at the Soviet Union. In it, he laid out specific actions that the Soviet Union needed to take in order for them to be taken seriously with regard to peace around the world. But he did not stop there. In counting the cost of a world without peace, he eloquently stated, “The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated. The worst is atomic war. The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” He went on to say, “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” He listed the price being paid: “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than thirty cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of sixty thousand. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than eight thousand people.”
The man who had been the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe during World War II understood, perhaps as no one else could, the cost of war. He understood it because he had experienced it. That might well have been the reason he seemed to reach for peace with such determination and without fear of the criticism of others.
Taking office at a time of war is not the only point of similarity between Eisenhower and Obama. The Eisenhowers almost always ate their evening meal in the west sitting hall of the White House. They were usually joined by Mrs. Doud, the president’s mother-in-law, who lived in the White House with her daughter and son-in-law.
Sometimes it is not always clear whether we are reading important lessons or interesting tidbits. Regardless, I am grateful to Miss Helen and Coach Eichelberger for adding to my appreciation of history. I am also thankful that Stephen Ambrose wrote Eisenhower: Soldier and President. That is the book I happen to be reading just now, in case you were wondering.
As we begin this season of Advent, we look toward Bethlehem and the birth of the Prince of Peace. Because of His birth, peace is possible, in our hearts and in our world. Pray for His coming, that His peace might fill the hearts of those who are hungry and not fed, those who are cold and not clothed, those who would do harm and not help.
Joy and peace,
Ed
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