The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 28

28 Sunday, August 5,1990 The Salina Journal Photos courtesy of Elsenhower Museum Eisenhower, far right of the second row, was a member of the 1907 Abilene High School football team. Eisenhower, middle of the front row, played center field during the 1909 season for Abilene High School. Eisenhower's love for sports sprouted from youth in Abilene (Continued from Page 27) 14,1890 and has renewed interest in one of Kansas' most famous native sons. What people may not realize is that Eisenhower was not only one of the great military leaders in American history, he was also a man keenly interested in his days as a boy growing up in as a young man at West through middle age in the Army President of the United States. In short, "Ike" was a sportsman as well as a sports fan.

Abilene 1 Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison, third of six sons born to David and Ida at a young age fell in love with the outdoor life. The Eisenhowers moved to Abilene when Dwight was 6 months old and Dwight spent much of his time fishing and hunting before becoming enthralled with football and baseball during his high school days. Eisenhower's fishing Eisenhower gear, according to a story named "Ike's First Fishing was "a willow shoot, a length of stout string, and a five-cent hook from the general The bait was a can of worms dug from the family corn patch. Eisenhower and his boyhood buddies fished for bullheads at Mud Creek, seven blocks from his white wood frame, two-story home at 201 Southeast Fourth, and at the Smoky Hill River two miles south of Abilene. Ike also organized camping and hunting trips and during his teen-age years participated in winter wolf hunts.

His gun was a Winchester Model 189716-gauge shotgun that he bought with his allowance. Eisenhower and his friends also started a boxing club and went skating and sledding during the winter. During those days, just after the turn of the century, basketball had jiot yet caught on in Abilene. The town did have a tennis court, but Eisenhower had not yet heard of golf. In high school, Eisenhower was a student as a freshman and progressed to the A level during his junior and senior years.

But despite being a fine student, Ike's first love was sports. He lettered in baseball in 1908-09, in football in 1907-08 and was president of the high school's athletic association in 1909. Eisenhower, known as "Little was joined on the baseball and football teams by his older brother, Edgar, who was known as "Big Ike." Edgar was 21 months older than Dwight but the two graduated together after Edgar left school for a couple years to work. Edgar lettered three years in both football and baseball and was considered the team's top player. He was a fullback on the football team and first baseman in baseball.

During his junior year in school, the 1907 Abilene football team posted a 5-0-2 record, with three victories over Central Kansas Business College of Abilene and one each over Manhattan and St. John's Military. There were also ties with Junction City and St. John's. The team allowed just 10 points in seven games.

In a 6-4 victory over St. John's on Nov. 16,1907, the Salina Evening Journal's story on the game had Edgar Eisenhower scoring the game's only touchdown on a 5- yardrun. The 1908 baseball season ended with Abilene posting a 2-4 record, with one of the victories the 12-3 over St. John's Military on that "bright April afternoon" in Salina.

The other was a 19-5 thumping of Salina High School. During Eisenhower's senior year, the football team played four games but the scores weren't posted and the team had no coach. The baseball season, however, was more enjoyable. Abilene had a 7-1 record, losing only to the University of Kansas freshman team. There were victories over Chapman High School (4-3 and 43), St.

John's Military (4-1 and 3-2), Herington (4-3) and Junction City (12-3). In the high school yearbook "The Helianthus '09" it was written: "Makins and D. Eisenhower stick around the left and center garden patches. They work together and keep the team in good spirits by their Ike was one of the organizers of the Abilene Ike was a promising running back during his days at West Point. Before a career- ending knee injury, he was nicknamed the "Kansas Cyclone." High School Athletic Association and was voted its president during his senior year.

The dues were 25 cents a month, which was used for uniforms and other equipment. Ike also was the person who wrote to area schools to get on their schedule. The team rode a freight train to and from away games, with Eisenhower usually the person who lined up the transportation. During his freshman year in high school, an event took place that could have changed Eisenhower's life, and possibly the course of history, forever. Ike fell and scraped his knee while running on a wooden platform.

Infection set in and soon moved up his leg. For the next two weeks, Ike was in and out of a coma. The poison spread up his leg toward his abdomen and doctors thought amputating his leg was the only solution. But when Ike heard this, he replied "you're never going to cut that leg off." Ike told Edgar to promise that he would stop any effort made to amputate his leg "I'd rather be dead than crippled, and not able to play ball," said Eisenhower in his autobiography, "At Ease, Stories I Tell to Friends." Edgar, then 16 years old, promised, and stayed by his younger brother's side until the fever miraculously left after the second week. It took two months for Eisenhower to recuperate, which caused him to repeat his freshman year.

In May 1909, Dwight and Edgar graduated from high school. Edgar left to study law at the University of Michigan. Dwight stayed behind to work at a local creamery to help fund Edgar's education. During that time, Eisenhower applied for entrance to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

He re-entered Abilene High School in 1910 to study chemistry, math and physics for the entrance exam at West Point. He also played another year of football and became the star of the team. On June 11,1911, Eisenhower took the train to West Point. At the time, he was a strapping, 6-foot, 170- pounder. West Point Sports remained the center of Eisenhower's life at West Point as he looked to escape the grind of military school.

During his freshman year, he ran indoor track to improve his speed, participated in gymnastics to improve his strength and reported to football team in the fall of 1912, weighing in at 174 pounds. It didn't take long for the young man from Abilene to impress Army head coach Ernest Graves. He was shifted from the line to the backf ield and got his break when starting running back Geoffrey Keyes was injured before the first game. Eisenhower was a sensation, leading Army to victories over Stevens Institute and Rutgers. The New York Times called Ike "one of the most promising backs in Eastern football" and nicknamed nun the "Kansas Cyclone." And in the win over Colgate later in the season, the Army yearbook read, "Eisenhower in the fourth quarter couldn't be stopped." But possibly Eisenhower's most famous game came on Nov.

9,1912, against the Carlisle Indian School and the legendary Jim decathlon and pentathlon winner of the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. Thorpe went wild during the game, running for two touchdowns (one 95 yards), passing for another score and kicking three field goals. Eisenhower, being the intense competitor that he was, arranged with teammate Charles Benedict to put a "high-low" tackle on Thorpe to slow him down. The two Cadets did just that and thought they had sent Thorpe to the sidelines. But as Eisenhower would later tell his younger brothers, Thorpe got up, walked back to the huddle and ran for another first down.

And later it was Thorpe who put on a fancy move as Eisenhower and Benedict crashed headlong into each other and were removed from the game. Carlisle won the game, 27-6. The following week, against Tufts University, disaster struck. Eisenhower twisted a knee, but didn't consider it to be serious. He spent a couple days in a hospital the next week hoping to be ready for the all-important Navy game.

But during the week, Ike was practicing a "monkey drill" in riding hall and landed wrong after an ill-timed vault over a horse. His knee crumpled, tearing the cartilage and tendons. He couldn't sleep for weeks. Eisenhower's spirits hit rock bottom when doctors took the cast off the leg and said he wouldn't play football again. This time, there was no arguing with the doctors.

It was one of the more disappointing times in Ike's life and he thought of resigning from West Point. The remainder of his life, his knee would become dislocated under strain. But Ike stayed in touch with athletics by becoming a yell leader. He also helped coach the junior varsity. Eisenhower's career at West Point was still a gu'ttering one.

He had two letters in football and one each in gymnastics and indoor track. And Ike never gave up his love for football. At the end of his life, Ike wrote "I believe that football, more than any other sport, tends to instill in men the eeling that victory comes through work, team play, self-confidence and enthusiasm that amounts to dedication." The Army years In 1915, Eisenhower's reputation as a football coach preceded him. He was asked to coach the football team at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, at $150 a season. Ike declined, thinking he wouldn't have enough time to devote to two jobs.

But Gen. Frederick Funston asked him to' 'reconsider' and Eisenhower led the team to a winning record. (Eisenhower) proved himself as a leader of men on the football field, as well as further in his military career," said Herb Pankratz, an archivist at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene. "In his early career, that kind of haunted him," In 1916, Eisenhower coached the football team at St. Louis College, a Catholic school that hadn't won a game in five years.

The team tied its first game, won its next five and then lost, just missing the championship. The college, which is now called St. Mary's of San Antonio, gave Ike and his wife Mamie a victory dinner, which started a lasting friendship between Eisenhower and the college. Ike later coached football at Camp Meade, Maryland, in 1919-21 and was called back to the camp in 1924 after a stay in Panama. Although he enjoyed the game, Eisenhower didn't like being labeled a football coach and eventually turned down a salary of $3,500 a astronomical total in those days to continue to coach football at Fort Benning, Georgia.

He finally relented, but only to be the backfield coach. Instead, Eisenhower wanted to "coach" an army of soldiers, not players. After missing action in World War Ike wanted to have the opportunity someday, if it presented itself, to lead an army into battle. Less than two decades later, Eisenhower got that chance. Eisenhower learned to play golf in 1925 while stationed at Fort Leavenworth and quickly became enthralled with the sport.

In June 1926, during a family reunion in Abilene, three of Dwight's brothers joined him on the golf course at Abilene Country Club. According to one biographer, Roy shot in the 70s, while Arthur, Edgar and Dwight shot in the 80s. During World War II, Ike and one of his aides, Capt. Harry Butcher, were able to play an occasional round amongst the bomb craters near his headquarters south of London. Mr.

President In 1952, Eisenhower became the 34th President of the United States, but long before that he had become one of the more popular people in the world after leading the Allies to victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. "He came back a hero and his social life turned around," Pankratz said. "Heads of corporations wanted to go fishing and hunting with him. But he only accepted if there were no strings attached." White House files contain over 200 entries where people sent fishing flies to Ike in hopes that it would improve his ability to catch the big ones. Eisenhower also was an avid skeet shooter, and when the ducks and quail were not in season he received some tips from John Merrill Olin, president of Winchester Repeating Arms Company, to help with his shooting.

The two would correspond with with his problems and Olin with recommendations. 'He took sports and recreation very seri- ously," Pankratz said. "Later on, after his heart attack (in 1955), he took it very seri- ously for health reasons." It was Eisenhower who in 1956 started the President's Council on Physical Fitness. But hunting, fishing, football and baseball aside, Eisenhower's true love during his presidency was golf. Laurence H.

Burd of the Chicago Tribune asked Eisenhower one day at a news conf er- ence about his special love for golf. Burd; "Mr. President, different Presidents have had different favorite hobbies and sports. In your case you seem to find a special appeal and a special value in golf. Could you tell us just what this special thing is for you about the game?" Eisenhower: "Well, a funny thing, there are three I like all for the same reason, golf, fishing and shooting, and I do first because they take you into the fields.

There is mild excercise, the kind that an older individual probably should have. And on top of it, it induces you to take at any one time, two or three hours, if you can, where you are thinking of the bird or that ball or the wily trout. Now, to my mind, it is a very healthful, beneficial kind of thing, and I dp it whenever I get a chance, as you well know." Almost every afternoon, weather permitting, and if he did not go to a golf course, Eisenhower practiced his short game on the White House lawn. Golf was more than a hobby. It was a passion.

Ike was first introduced to the sport as a young officer at the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth in 1925. From than time on, he practiced and played at every opportunity. After his election in 1952, he frequently spent mid-week afternoon at a golf course and spent a lot of time playing golf on vacation. His golfing habit became a political issue when some thought he spent more time on course than in the Oval Office.

White House records have him playing 449 games in his last four years as president, according to a 1984 Eisenhower Foundation Newsletter titled 'Eisenhower and When he took his "working vacation" he headed to Georgia and played at 211 times, during his eight years as president. Golfing legend Bobby Jones was a person Ike spent many afternoons with on the links at Augusta National Golf Club. C.L. Sulzberger, chief foreign correspondent for the New York Times, knew Ike's golf game as well as anyone. The two played many rounds together in post-war France.

"He had slight fade with his woods," Sulzberger wrote. "The five-wood was a favorite but he was also good with his 8 and 9 irons. And when (Eisenhower) approached the ball, he would say, 'Lord, give me strength to hit it Eisenhower generally scored in the high 80s and carried a handicap of 14 to 18. It was an unwritten rule, according to Sulzberger, that no one in Eisenhower's group talked business or politics. Ike wanted to concentrate on golf.

Ike's interest in golf had a lot to do with the increase in popularity of the sport in the 1950s and '60s. The Golf Writers Association voted him as the outstanding contributor to the sport in 1954. An international amateur competition known as the Eisenhower Trophy is named after him. But regardless the sport, Ike was a true fan. He spent many an afternoon watching the Washington Senators toil in the American League basement.

He was also present at several World Series games. One of Eisenhower's favorite stories about himself, according to a column written by John Hall of the Los Angeles Times, involves a boyhood conversation he had with one of his best friends. "I know exactly what I want to be in life," Ike said. "A good baseball player, a real professional like Honus Ike then asked his friend what he wanted to be. "President of the United States," was the answer.

Reflecting back on this story many years later, Ike said "Neither of us got our wish.".