THE PRESIDENCY: The Youngest Brother

(4 of 7)

Milton lived through a repressed childhood, rebelling vainly under a luxuriance of shoulder-length curls, which his mother finally cut during his fifth year. The older brothers were impressed, in rotating succession, as Milton's nursemaids, a boring duty that Dwight relieved by rocking Milton's cradle with one foot while absorbed in a book. Earl, 19 months older than Milton, was held out of school for a year so that little Milton could enjoy his protective custody.

"Lions! Snakes!" Family life in the roomy, two-story house with the pillared porch flourished on a steady diet of Bible reading and chores, but when these were done, the lusty young Eisenhowers were discharged to tumble in the cavernous hayloft out back, above Uncle Abraham Eisenhower's veterinarian establishment. Milton, frail and spindly from scarlet fever in his fourth year, was a frequent outcast kibitzer, to be seized unawares by mischievous hands and flung bodily into the black haymow amid terrifying cries of "Lions! Tigers! Snakes!"

Some of the effects of Milton's childhood remain evident today. He is extremely sensitive to personal relationships and, says an old Penn State colleague, he "pathetically wants to be liked." Similarly, the butt of his brothers' childhood jokes, he still dreads being laughed at, once suffered for weeks after being unexpectedly photographed at Key West, Fla., with a vacationing Ike, in gaudy shirt and short pants.

"You're Fired." Unable to compete physically with the other brothers Eisenhower, young Milton went after recognition through mental achievement. To his surprise and surpassing pleasure, Milton found himself rising high in the esteem of brother Dwight, who rewarded Milton's scholastic accomplishments with prizes from his own slender wages at the Belle Spring Creamery. "I was tremendously impressed that Dwight wanted me to succeed," says Milton today. An Abilene schoolteacher, Annie Hopkins, was installed in the household to supervise the homework of both Milton and Earl, did such an expert job on Milton that his Latin teacher accused him of using a pony. He bookwormed his way through Abilene High School with 26 "ones"—the equivalent of A's—out of a possible 31, six years later (in 1924) graduated with honors from Kansas State College at Manhattan with a degree in industrial journalism.

Tempted by a standing job offer on the Abilene Daily Reflector, Milton was even more attracted by the promise of a teaching career from Kansas State President William Jardine, who had been vastly impressed by the scholarship of earnest, bespectacled Milton Eisenhower. Milton accepted Jardine's offer—but wound up with another job. A Republican Party fieldworker came to Kansas State to help Milton organize a campus political club, casually suggested that Milton apply for the consular service. Milton did; soon came a telegram offering him a consular post in Edinburgh. Milton uneasily approached Jardine for an honorable exit route from the faculty register. "Well," said President Jardine with a twinkle, "that's the sort of thing you have to figure out for yourself. But you're fired."