Congress Marks Eisenhower’s Centennial Year

American and British leaders lauded Dwight D. Eisenhower on Tuesday in early observances of the centennial year of his birth, and Eisenhower’s son said that his father had wanted to be remembered simply as “the good soldier.”

“He was the vaunted warrior who hated war,” John S. D. Eisenhower told a joint meeting of Congress held in honor of the World War II leader and two-term Republican President.

Members of Eisenhower’s family, including several occasionally squirming great-grandchildren, joined gray-haired veterans of the Eisenhower Administration in seats on the House floor.

Many of the guests and members of Congress--Democrats and Republicans alike--wore red-white-and-blue “I like Ike” buttons, copies of paraphernalia from Eisenhower’s 1952 and 1956 campaigns.

Eisenhower was born on Oct. 14, 1890, in Denison, Tex.

The Dwight David Eisenhower Centennial Commission, established by Congress to observe the 100th anniversary of Eisenhower’s birth, has planned observances throughout the year.

Winston S. Churchill, grandson and namesake of the prime minister who worked closely with Gen. Eisenhower during World War II, said that the changes in Eastern Europe would gratify both the military man and the British leader.

“How thrilled he and Churchill would be today, to see the peoples of Eastern Europe at last emerging as free nations from a nightmare of 50 years’ occupation, first under the Nazis, then the Soviet Red Army,” said Churchill, a member of the British Parliament.

Walter Cronkite, retired CBS television newsman who interviewed Eisenhower at length after he left office, said that the former President, speaking without notes, “had excellent recall of even the arcane details of all the important debates within, and the actions taken, by his White House.”

“No man did more to rid our planet of the Nazi scourge,” said Senate Republican leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.).

Later, at a White House luncheon to honor Eisenhower, President Bush said: “Every President admires other presidents. And so today I say it proudly . . . I always liked Ike.”