Eisenhower and Me

In about a month, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the nation's 44th President. Given that the first nine months of my life took place during the administration of Herbert Hoover, my lifetime has now encompassed 14 of this country's 44 presidents, or nearly one-third of all American Presidents. We're talking Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, James Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.M. Bush, William Clinton, George W. Bush and now Obama.

In June 1953 I "commenced" by adult and professional life in the quad before Royce Hall on the Westwood campus of the University of California at Los Angeles, receiving a BA in International Relations. That same week I flew to Washington, D.C. to take the oral examination for the US Foreign Service and I turned 21. By this time Dwight David Eisenhower had been President for five months. He was thus the first President of my now a bit more than 55 years of adult life. Of all the Presidents during this period he probably had more impact on my life than any other.

The first impact was felt that same June just after my oral exam. For a period of over 50 years, politics in America was dominated by two public philosophies: the Democratic Party had Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" and the Republican Party had Warren Harding's post World War I slogan a "Return to Normalcy". I was caught in the latter as the first measure of the Eisenhower administration was to reduce the size of the federal government. The Eisenhower "reduction in force" or "RIF" meant that the State Department did not hire any new foreign service officers between 1953 and 1955. After my oral exam I was told by the State Department people that I had been certified "eligible for appointment" but that they weren't hiring. I was told to get my military service out of the way and then let them know when I was available.

I came of age during the Korean War and I was, like all young male Americans, registered for the draft. I had actually been taken to Los Angeles in the summer of 1952 for a pre-induction physical which I passed, but was deferred to continue my college education. In June when I returned from Washington, D.C. I "volunteered" for the draft. Being a Foreign Service Officer did not exempt one from the draft, but had I been appointed in the summer of 1953 I wonder if I could have gotten further deferments. Anyway I was inducted in September 1953. My college classmates who did not volunteer were inducted in October. But at induction I was affected a second time by Eisenhower actions: he had brought to a conclusion the Truman administration mess in Korea with a Truce Agreement signed in August 1953. I was thus joining a "peace-time" Army in the process of imploding, that is, reducing numbers sharply and closing bases.

The third thing President Eisenhower did for me was to refuse to commit American forces to support the French in Indo-China. Despite political pressure from the right after the French loss at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Eisenhower kept away from major commitment and let that country achieve independence in 1955 as two countries, North and South Viet Nam divided by the 17th parallel. So I went neither to Korea nor to Viet Nam but after a 13 months of largely inactive service I was sent to Germany. By this time, after 10 months in the greater New York metropolitan area, I had met and married Nydia Medina of Brooklyn.

We spent the first year of our married life sharing an apartment with a German couple that spoke no English. The location, however, reflected the fourth thing Eisenhower did that affected me. After World War II Germany had been divided into four zones of occupation. Berlin, the capital, had its own four zones. The Brits had northwest Germany, the French the west central portion and the Americans the south, principally Bavaria. The east stayed with the Russians. When Eisenhower became President, as a successful former Army General, he concluded that having all our troops aligned along the border with the Russians made no strategic sense. His policy change was to have American support forces move into the French zone where they could put distance between them and the combat troops in the front lines. I found myself assigned to the 17th Signal Battalion (allegedly I was a field radio repair specialist, but that's another story) located in Pirmasens, Pfalz. We were a few miles north of the French border between Karlsruhe on the Rhein and Saarbrucken. We were housed in a Wehrmacht five story masonry building. We got virtually nothing of the modern buildings built in the American zone.

The fifth and last thing President Eisenhower did that affected me was to reorganize the State Department's personnel structure. I did get an honorable discharge from the US Army, return to San Diego and finally secure my appointment to the Foreign Service as of April 1, 1956. Nydia and I took the train from San Diego to Washington and rented an apartment just past the DC line in Prince George's County, Maryland. Traditionally the Foreign Service had filled all the overseas posts while those who worked in the bureacracy in Washington were part of the general Civil Service. The Administration had hired the former President of Brown University, Henry Wriston, to review the personnel structure and his recommendation that foreign and domestic personnel be integrated into a single Foreign Service was adopted.

So my first assignment was in Washington, DC in the Educational Exchange Service (we administered Fulbright and Smith-Mundt scholarships for foreign students) that had been previously all civil service. The philosophy was that people working in Washington should have first hand experience of working abroad and that those abroad needed periods of "reculturalization". In 1956 many of the department chiefs and administrators were women, having come to Washington during World War II, taking jobs as secretaries, and then remaining in place, rising in rank as the years went by. Civil service employees above clerical status were forced to join the Foreign Service with its obligations to take overseas assignments or seek other employment. During my first tour in Tokyo the consular division was staffed with a number of "Wristonized" officers. The overall career impact was that fairly lengthy assignments in Washington, where one did not get a housing allowance, became common.

While subsequent Presidents affected the country and me to varying degrees, especially during the Johnson and Reagan years, I have to think that President Eisenhower had the most direct impact on my life.