Ike’s route to interstates went through Iowa

Iowa only has one president, but Iowa has two first ladies. Lou Hoover is obvious but also Mamie Eisenhower, wife of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is also from the Hawkeye State. Born in Boone, her family later moved to Cedar Rapids and lived in two different homes.

Her first home, which no longer stands, was close to her elementary school, the old Jackson Elementary on Fourth Avenue. Later, Mamie’s family lived in a house on Third Avenue which still exists today. Her birthplace in Boone, while still standing, ran into financial problems and is no longer open to the public. I was lucky to see it just before it was shuttered.

Mamie never forgot her home state, and President Eisenhower, a big believer in remembering your roots, came with Mamie to both Boone and Cedar Rapids several times as President and first lady.

History books are great but I personally loved hearing first hand accounts of history from family. In 1956, my uncle, who was eligible to vote for the first time, waited in a long line during blizzard in Hiawatha to vote for Eisenhower. My grandfather attended a corn picking contest in Marion on Oct. 17, 1958. Both Eisenhowers made the trip to Eastern Iowa that day along with a little known senator from Massachusetts John F. Kennedy.

From what I heard, it was a very “nice Iowa October day.” I’m still not sure if my grandfather was being facetious or not, but he didn’t mince words about how large the crowd was that day at the Dostal farm. He said the city announced the crowd at 80,000, but he always claimed that number was low. He mentioned a line President Eisenhower used during his speech: “Speeches won’t pick corn,” and I heard Grandpa use this line many times! While Ike was giving his speech, Mamie was touring her old stamping grounds, including Jackson Elementary.

While the Eisenhowers will forever be linked to Iowa by Mamie’s early life, there’s one big legacy that has Ike’s fingerprints on it that Americans utilize everyday, regardless of where we live. The Interstate Highway System also has roots in Iowa.

When Ike was a soldier in 1919, he went on a government-funded convoy from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. The 3,300 mile trip, which went right through Iowa following the old Lincoln Highway (much of which is now Highway 30,) took a whopping 62 days to complete. Over the years, Ike didn’t forget how the cross-country travel had been nearly impossible at times. During his service in WW2, he saw first hand how Germany’s Autobahn made moving military essentials a smooth process. When he became President Eisenhower, Ike used his experience and his political capital to pass the Interstate Highway Act, which created over 42,000 miles of highway.

Every time you see those Eisenhower Interstate signs on I-380 and I-80, we can thank President Eisenhower, who passed away 55 years ago on March 28, 1969, for not only making our commutes better but also making the family road trip much easier. The Eisenhowers might have been world travelers, but they never forgot Mamie’s roots in Iowa.

Tom Babbage first became a presidential history enthusiast as a third grader at Indian Creek Elementary School in the Linn-Mar district. He now resides in Casa Grande, AZ.