THE PRESIDENCY: First Active Week

Gettysburg was the vital center. Swooping up from Washington in two shuttling light planes, Ike's top aides landed with grave affairs of state and happy smiles of greeting. They found the President sprinting and strolling through alternate work and rest. They came away with a real sense of being in business again.

Gettysburg's citizens, long used to thousands of battlefield tourists, took Ike's arrival in stride, but their welcome was warm and deep. When the big presidential limousine rolled into the town square, Gettysburg was bedecked with bright bunting, venturesome boys hung from rooftops, and the high school band tootled "Happy Birthday" for Mamie's 59th. Patty Weaver, the mayor's daughter, thrust a bouquet of orchids and "Better Times" roses in Mamie's arms. Said Ike, thanking the town on Mamie's behalf: "I am just as delighted as she that you are the people who are going to be our neighbors, God willing."

G.I. Walnut. While the Eisenhowers were settling down at their farm, the town post office was getting its Grecian face lifted. Its harried mail couriers dogged their appointed rounds amid a continuous stream of federal furniture movers, painters, Army Signal Corps technicians and inquisitive reporters (see PRESS). The little, 42-year-old building, to which every telephone wire in the U.S. suddenly seemed to lead, had become a global solar plexus.

On the ground-floor, an easy eight steps from High Street, was Ike's bare office. In that small apple green room stood a standard Government worker's walnut desk, flanked by the U.S. and Presidential flags. That was about all.

Freedom without Fatigue. Ike spent two quiet days on the farm, puttering and strolling. He inspected a birthday gift of 48 spruce trees from the 48 Republican state chairmen, another of 48 flowering quinces from the Cabinet. He was delighted most of all with two Black Angus heifers sent by admirers: they upped the President's herd of cattle to 18.

Then he went to work, arising early one morning for his heaviest regimen since the heart attack. Before breakfast, Drs. Snyder and Thomas Mattingly gave him a thorough checkup. Said they: "Gradually increased activity has resulted in no signs of a fatigue or symptoms." Ike was sleeping ten hours a night, reveling in his freedom from a hospital room.

At the post office for the first time, he met Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks and Budget Director Rowland Hughes (see below). Weeks and Ike discussed a shift in plans for financing new highways. Instead of selling bonds, said Weeks, the Administration now leans toward pay-as-you-go federal taxes on gas, oil and tires.

By week's end, Ike had worked up to a three-hour session at the post-office desk, his longest yet. Among duties accomplished :

¶ Appointment to the National Labor Relations Board until 1960 of Maryland Republican Stephen Sibley Bean, 63, an NLRB trial examiner who fills the vacancy left by retiring Chairman Guy Farmer.

¶Designation as NLRB chairman of South Dakota Republican Boyd Leedon, 49, who has served on the board since March 1955.

¶ First top-level consultation on atomic matters since August, with AEC Chairman Lewis L. Strauss.