Eisenhower: The White House Years

by Jim Newton

  On September 19, Ike ventured into the stream at Nielsen’s ranch and emerged with seven trout. He reluctantly left the ranch four days later, celebrating a successful vacation by cooking a final breakfast: corn cakes, eggs, sausage, ham, black-eyed peas, and redeye gravy, then heading back down the eastern slope of the Rockies to Denver.

  Once there, he was briefed on world affairs at Lowry Air Force Base, where he kept an office. At the United Nations, Molotov pledged “utmost consideration” of U.S. disarmament overtures, though his comments were undermined by the administration’s release of a letter from Bulganin setting Soviet conditions on the Open Skies proposal. In Mississippi, meanwhile, a Tallahatchie County jury took sixty-five minutes to acquit the alleged murderers of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, who had insulted the wife of one defendant and four days later been abducted from his grandmother’s house. In New York, the Yankees clinched the pennant with a win over the Red Sox; Don Larsen got the victory, and the Yankees secured their sixth banner in seven years, the twenty-first in their history.

  After briefly catching up on business, Ike departed for Cherry Hills, where, after some practice swings, he set off on the course at noon. He was interrupted twice by calls from Dulles but finished his eighteen holes at 2:00 p.m. He shot an 84, about average for Ike in those days, and enjoyed lunch with his foursome. He ate a sizable hamburger, adorned with thick slices of Bermuda onions, and sipped from a pot of coffee. By 2:15, the group was on the course again, trying to sneak in an additional eighteen holes.

  It was then that Ike, so cool in the face of genuine emergency and yet so susceptible to petty annoyances, began to grow anxious. He complained to the club pro about an upset stomach, blaming it on the onions, and fumed when called back to the clubhouse to take another call from Dulles, only to find that the operator had put the call through by mistake and that Dulles no longer needed him. “The veins stood out on his forehead like whipcords,” his friend and doctor Howard Snyder recalled. The group completed just nine holes that afternoon, and Eisenhower returned to his in-laws’ home in Denver cranky and uncomfortable.

  At home, Eisenhower and George Allen played a round of billiards, passed on an evening cocktail, and took a walk after dinner to settle Allen’s stomach, which also was bothering him. Afterward, Allen and his wife returned to their hotel, and Ike and Mamie turned in for bed around 10:00 p.m., retiring to their separate rooms. A few hours later, Ike awoke with pain in his chest. He groped for milk of magnesia, and Mamie, who heard him stirring as she returned from the bathroom, got it for him. She could sense that there was something seriously wrong. At 2:54 a.m., she urgently called Snyder, who rushed to the president’s side, arriving at 3:11 a.m.

  Snyder’s patient was agitated and at times incoherent, complaining of pain across his chest and shrugging off an oxygen mask. He was sixty-four years old and had a history of ailments, including his health scare in 1949 that prompted him to quit cigarettes after decades of heavy smoking. He was prone to irritation, and he was, after all, president of the United States; to say that he was subjected to stress would be hyperbolic understatement.

  Under Mamie’s anxious eye, the doctor said later, Snyder broke a pearl of amyl nitrite and injected Ike with papaverine hydrochloride, which seemed to have no effect. He then injected Eisenhower with heparin, an anticoagulant that would have been called for in the event of a serious heart attack. Eisenhower’s pain was undiminished, and Snyder’s notes indicate that he gave the president two injections of morphine, one soon after arriving and another at 3:45 a.m. Ike’s blood pressure was falling, his pulse was rising, and his skin was turning clammy. A rubdown with warm alcohol did not help, nor did hot water bottles. His blood pressure then “collapsed,” and Ike fell into shock, according to Snyder. Desperate to revive her husband, Mamie got into her husband’s bed at 4:30 a.m. and wrapped herself around him. Ike responded immediately, calming to her touch. He fell asleep, and Mamie remained with him until 7:00 a.m., when she quietly slipped out of his bed.

  Snyder let his patient sleep until 11:30 a.m., monitoring his blood pressure and respiration but, curiously, not alerting a cardiologist or the nearby hospital. Not until shortly after noon did the doctor call Fitzsimons Army Hospital, which dispatched its commanding general, Martin E. Griffin, to the president’s bedside (Snyder specifically requested that the general dress in civilian clothes). Griffin administered a cardiogram and immediately concluded that Eisenhower had suffered a major heart attack.

  Snyder’s actions during that troubled night were puzzling. If his reconstruction of events is to be regarded as truthful, his eight-hour delay in summoning a cardiac expert to Eisenhower’s side was inexplicably reckless, and his initial comment to Ike’s traveling press secretary that the president had suffered a bout of indigestion was cavalierly deceptive (Snyder justified it later by saying that Ike had in fact suffered from indigestion the day before). There is, however, another explanation, one that emerges from a remarkable reexamination of the episode in 1997. In it, the author Clarence Lasby argued that Snyder doctored his notes in order to cover up the humiliating truth: that he mistook Eisenhower’s heart attack for indigestion. Lasby’s analysis explained much: why Snyder had not immediately summoned expert help, why he misled the press secretary, why he failed to follow up his initial heparin injection (the medication wears off after about six hours, but Snyder did not indicate that he gave the president a second shot), why he failed to tell other doctors about the heparin and papaverine injections, and why Eisenhower’s shock is not reflected in any other notes of the episode. In fact, a second doctor who treated Eisenhower specifically noted after consulting with Snyder that “there has been no period of shock,” adding that “pulse and blood pressure have remained stable.” Those notations directly contradict Snyder’s later recitation of the events. It is possible that Snyder misremembered or simply failed to inform other doctors of the care he had given his patient; it is, however, far more likely that he retroactively adjusted his notes in order to conform to the story that he wanted others to believe—that he had promptly diagnosed Eisenhower’s difficulties and heroically tended to them.

  Snyder’s account presented the reassuring image of a president felled by a heart attack but saved by his attentive and responsive doctor and his caring wife. “The hours he slept during that period from early morning until 12 noon were more responsible for the ultimate recovery of the President than the entire remaining course of hospital treatment,” Snyder boasted later. The probable truth was far more unsettling: in the early hours of September 24, 1955, the president of the United States suffered a devastating heart attack and lay for eight hours in the care of a physician who misdiagnosed the event and then lied to cover up his near-calamitous mistake.

  Snyder himself did everything he could to discourage inquiry into that possibility. He wrote scores of unsolicited letters to friends and acquaintances—his own and those of the president—explaining that he diagnosed a heart attack and responded appropriately, thereby saving Eisenhower’s life. Those letters themselves are curious documents, invasive of his patient’s privacy, but they helped to squelch second-guessing of Snyder’s actions. Press inquiries were similarly blunted. When a reporter months later gingerly raised the issue of the long delay in summoning a cardiologist, Eisenhower brushed it off. “I understood it was as much as 10 hours,” she persisted.

  “It may have been,” Eisenhower responded. “But it probably may take some 10 hours to determine whether a person is suffering from having eaten some bad food or some other cause, I am not sure. I am not a doctor, you are sure of that.”

  Of course, Eisenhower’s answer did not conform to Snyder’s own account—that, soon after arriving, he had ascertained that the president had suffered a heart attack—but the discrepancy was lost in the relief at Ike’s recovery.

  The administration was scattered when Ike was hospitalized—Adams was returning from Europe; John Eisenhower was on a golf course in Virginia; Brownell was in Sp
ain on vacation; other members of the cabinet were in Washington or traveling. John rushed to his father’s side and found Mamie deeply worried. “I just can’t believe that Ike’s work is finished,” she told her son. Her worry was haunted by an eerie coincidence: Ike suffered his heart attack on Icky’s birthday.

  The members of the administration, meanwhile, returned to the White House and sorted out their duties. The National Security Council met on Thursday and the cabinet on Friday, as scheduled, with Nixon presiding from his own chair, leaving Ike’s seat vacant. Adams, meanwhile, decamped for Denver, taking his place at the president’s side. Hagerty was so grateful to see Adams arrive that he kissed him, undoubtedly shocking the dour Adams.

  Woodrow Wilson’s incapacitation offered the only guidance American leaders had for grappling with the inability of a sitting president to fulfill the duties of his office, and Wilson’s was a frightening primer in mismanagement. But Eisenhower’s cabinet was blessed by both ability and luck. Luck that Ike’s illness struck at a calm moment in domestic and international affairs: Congress was in recess; it was an off year politically; the glow of Geneva helped insure a tranquil summer abroad. And ability forged by two years of common effort and by Ike’s selection of his top deputies. An informal committee assumed temporary control of the government: Adams served as the personal conduit to the president; Dulles took charge of international relations; Brownell supervised domestic and constitutional questions; and Nixon, assiduously deferential, coordinated the cabinet and directed the administration.

  Nixon and Eisenhower in 1955 were closely associated but had never been friends. Barely acquainted when they were united on the Republican ticket in 1952, they found their early association strained by the Checkers debacle. Eisenhower recognized the younger man’s talents and deep intelligence, but Ike also patronized his vice president, who seemed too young and too political to be trusted entirely. Eisenhower’s contradictory impressions of Nixon—as capable but limited, intelligent but ambitious—persisted through their early years together but were abruptly challenged in the weeks after Eisenhower’s heart attack.

  Nixon calibrated leadership and modesty through those tense weeks, taking command but not power, deferring to Ike’s position even when Ike was confined to an oxygen tent or barely allowed to sit up. Eisenhower recognized the sturdy job that Nixon was performing, and he appreciated it, though, as ever, he viewed Nixon as a capable understudy, not a peer. “He is a darn good young man,” Eisenhower told Adams. He believed the country still regarded Nixon as “a bit immature,” and though Eisenhower himself did not, he understood why others, including Adams, perceived a lack of readiness. “He has not quite reached a maturity of intellect,” Adams said.

  To the immense relief of an anxious world, Eisenhower recovered. Just a few days after the episode, he announced to Snyder: “If I didn’t think you knew what you were doing, I would suspect you of having the wrong patient in bed.” He was ordered not to work from the day of his heart attack until October 1, but on that afternoon Adams spent twenty minutes with him, catching him up on official business. From then on, Adams was a regular visitor, at first for short conversations, then for more serious matters. Ike signed appointments, reviewed classified material, approved promotions, named an ambassador, drafted a letter to Bulganin. Nixon came with Adams on October 9, Dulles spent half an hour with Ike on October 11.

  On October 14, the president celebrated his birthday in the hospital, by then chafing at the restrictions imposed by his doctors and eager to handle an increased load; he grumbled about being tended to by too many physicians and was irritated by what he perceived as conflicting medical advice. Eleven days later, Eisenhower took his first unaided steps and was allowed to meet with reporters on the hospital rooftop. For the occasion, he dressed in a gift the press corps had presented him soon after he was hospitalized: a set of red pajamas with gold stars on the collar tabs and the words “Much Better, Thanks” embroidered over the breast pocket. Through those weeks, Ike’s spirits also were raised by the thousands who wrote to wish him well. Mamie wore out her hand responding, grateful to have a way to contribute. Some admirers mailed records, which Ike happily played on a phonograph in his room.

  Five weeks after the heart attack, Robert Cutler visited. He met Mamie at her parents’ house, spent an hour talking and drinking old-fashioneds, then headed to the hospital. Mamie was tense and scared, “speaking rapidly and decisively, sometimes with tears.” Cutler held her hand and comforted her. At the hospital over the next few days, Cutler assessed Eisenhower’s condition and left reassured. It was strange to see Ike, so enduringly vital, forced to sit still and quiet, but he was, Cutler thought, “a wonderful patient.”

  Eisenhower’s chief cardiologist, the internationally renowned Paul Dudley White, predicted that Ike would be able to leave the hospital between November 5 and November 12, and on November 11 he did. Eisenhower might have left even sooner, but he waited that long so that he would not be taken from Fitzsimons in a wheelchair. He wanted to be able to walk up the stairs to the airplane. Finally, he bade an emotional farewell to the medical staff before flying on to Washington. Thousands waited for him at National Airport and along the route from there to the White House. Ike did his best to stay calm, but he was jumpy and cross. Although he had asked for an open car to wave to crowds, a limousine was substituted at the last minute because the day was brisk. As a result, he squirmed back and forth to acknowledge well-wishers on either side of the car. “I was tired and annoyed by this inconvenience,” he complained decades later in his memoirs.

  Ike stopped briefly at the White House, where his staff monitored him closely. “Every one of us took a deep breath,” Adams recalled. Ike and Mamie then proceeded on to Gettysburg to complete his convalescence, with Mamie zealously attempting to protect their home from being converted into an office, a mission in which she enlisted the help of the Gang (Robinson told Snyder he feared that possibility “more than any other possible development”). A local Catholic girls’ school turned out to welcome the Eisenhowers home, and they arrived in time to mark Mamie’s birthday, November 14. After the events of recent weeks, Mamie felt strongly that they should bless their home, and Ike invited the Reverend Edward Elson, the minister at the National Presbyterian Church, which the Eisenhowers had selected upon arriving in the city, to perform the ceremony. Elson bestowed that blessing in the home’s living room, asking that “it may henceforth be a place of health and healing, a haven of tranquility, an abode of love, and a sanctuary of worship. Bless all who call it home, and all the loved ones and friends who are encompassed by it in abiding love and devotion to Thee.”

  Mamie pulled herself together after the heart attack, but Ike still suffered. He was, like many heart-attack survivors, morose and ill-tempered, and he fretted over his ability to recover sufficiently to resume shouldering the burdens of his office. Adams was reassured by his alertness, though he noted that Ike had lost weight and color.

  Eisenhower shared his misgivings with Swede Hazlett, himself a victim of a heart attack. Ike described his rest and exercise regimen in some detail—a brief rest before lunch, daily swims and walks, eating slowly—and then allowed himself a moment of annoyance with his doctors. “I am to avoid all situations that tend to bring about such reactions as irritation, frustration, anxiety, fear and, above all anger,” Ike wrote. “When doctors give me such instructions, I say to them, ‘Just what do you think the Presidency is?’ ”

  Though the fall of 1955 was a tranquil time in international affairs, there were rising confrontations at home, at first subtle and then increasingly intense. The Brown decision in 1954 had done more than place the Supreme Court’s stamp of disapproval on segregation in public schools; it had supplied moral impetus to the growing demand for civil rights in all walks of life. If, as the Court ruled in Brown, “separate but equal” had no place in education, then what about restrooms or restaurants, beaches, golf courses, or buses?

  On December 1, 195
5, a Montgomery Fair department store worker, Rosa Parks, posed that question to the nation’s conscience by refusing to yield her bus seat to a white passenger. J. F. Blake, the bus driver, ordered her and three other black passengers to move to the back; no one moved. He got up from his seat and ordered them again: “You better make it light on yourself and let me have those seats.” This time, three of the passengers moved to the back, but Parks still refused. Blake warned her that he had the power to enforce segregation laws himself. Parks replied that he could do what he had to. She was not getting up. Blake arrested Parks.

  After a short but harrowing stay in the Montgomery, Alabama, jail—no place for a black woman in 1955—Rosa Parks defied her family’s objections and agreed to serve as a test case for the segregation of Montgomery buses. That was Thursday night. On Monday morning, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

  While Parks and her neighbors launched their crusade, Ike was still regaining his strength. He shuttled from his Gettysburg home to Camp David and back in early December, presiding over the National Security Council and eventually the cabinet. He entertained close friends and family, though his commitments were kept to a minimum. George Allen dropped in often, Ellis Slater came early in December, Dr. Snyder stayed close by. Slowly, Ike built up his workday.

  Eisenhower’s heart attack reframed for him the essential question of those weeks, one that he had pondered almost since he became president: Should he run again? The question had been on his mind for months. As early as February 1955, he volunteered to Len Hall that the GOP should search for a host city for its convention other than Chicago, where Eisenhower argued that the “reactionary fringe” would coalesce around that city’s notorious newspaper. Now, with election year at hand, Ike had no choice but to focus on his own candidacy.